A/N: Last month marked the 11th anniversary of All Things End! I've got sad news to bring though. Thea White, the voice actor for Muriel, has passed away. She was on a GalaxyCon online panel just a few months ago and spoke a bit about her life during it. It's well worth a watch. We are just lucky that with the crossover movie coming out this month that Thea was given the chance to give us the gift of Muriel's voice one last time.

Chapter 10: In The Belly Of The Beast

The sun had risen by the time Edgar had given up in his search for an access port. Physical and mental exhaustion had finally gotten the better of him and he had no other choice but to make his way back to the SCC van waiting beyond the power plant.

Atticus was certain now that Edgar had been banking on not being seen during the creation of the electrical surge. After hours of searching it was clear that the amalgamation had destroyed or withdrawn all possible access points deeper within themselves, something that they would not have been able to accomplish so easily after the surge. Aside from that, Edgar had not been expecting them to have expanded as close to the power plant as they had been by the time he got there so his plan may have been doomed from the start.

Atticus would have been glad for Edgar's failure beforehand but now he wanted nothing more than to connect with the amalgamation so that he could find out what they were doing to Courage. Somehow Edgar had managed to make failing backfire for him as well, much to his eternal frustration. The bastard was already talking about getting a small army of SCC soldiers together to help him infiltrate the amalgamation before that mass of machinery could recover and become impenetrable once more, as if that would help. As much as Edgar was convinced that the amalgamation's ability to mass possess organic beings had been hindered by the surge, after seeing Courage taken over, it seemed foolish to throw SCC soldiers into the danger zone without any proof of his belief. After all, if the mass possession really had been interrupted, why had they not seen people escaping the scrap wasteland during their long hours of searching for an access point? At this point, Edgar just seemed desperate more than anything else and was willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to get what he wanted. Atticus was not so deluded. He understood well enough that neither of them were going reach an access point now, not unless the amalgamation allowed them to.

To add insult to injury, once they were back at the camp, Edgar forced Atticus to take over to drag their tired body to a tent where they immediately dropped into a cot. In yet another odd role reversal, Atticus was the one who had to make his host body go to sleep, not Edgar. After all, you don't exactly need to sleep when you're dead.

Regardless, sleep seemed impossible to achieve after what had happened. Atticus could not get the image of Courage's possessed face staring blankly at him out of his head. With the amalgamation at war with themselves over Courage, how long would it take until the hateful parts won out and killed him?

Trying to take his mind off of it, he turned his attention onto Edgar, who was still fuming at having been thwarted. Despite the tiredness he shared with Atticus, his mind was as awake as ever and working on plots to trick the amalgamation into giving him the opening he desired. The bastard had admitted to the soldier driving the van back to camp that he had acted with too much haste and in his rush he had not accounted for several variables that ultimately doomed his plan. He still considered it a net benefit regardless, because the power surge had succeeded in stopping the amalgamation in its tracks, for the time being.

"You might as well give up, Edgar." Atticus said when he grew tired of trying and failing to fall asleep. He did not bother trying to hide the sheer spite in his tone. "This brief adventure of yours outside of the soul jar is only going to end with you passing on while looking like a fool. I will never allow you to take control of the amalgamation, and considering that my siblings hate you just as much as I do, I think they will be plenty willing to let me play leader for a little while if it means keeping you out."

"Be quiet." Edgar groused. Unfortunately for him, Atticus could not be ignored.

"You're going to die for good soon enough either way." Atticus 'happily' informed him. "My programming was damaged while you were on vacation in that jar. My system is slowly destabilizing and soon enough it will be beyond repair. As long as you are attached to me, you have the same expiration date that I do."

He intentionally left out the little detail that being apart of the amalgamation stabilizes his programming in the same way it does for Zeta.

Edgar was unperturbed. "I will have someone look at it. I'm sure it can be fixed."

Atticus laughed. "Who could you possibly trust to mess with my, and by extension, your programming? You don't seem like the trusting type. All it would take is one tip off from Elizabeth, or even myself, and someone could so easily put us both out of our misery."

That did the trick. For once Edgar seemed just a little unsettled because of this new revelation.

Atticus took that moment of weakness and ran with it. "You're broken in more ways then one, did you know that? The reason why you can't use any of my abilities isn't because I'm not letting you, it's because my siblings wanted to make sure I couldn't cause them anymore trouble. Sorry, but your Construct is defective. The worst one out of the bunch, really. I can't imagine how that reflects on you, given that I'm supposed to be your shadow and all." He put on an evil smirk that mirrored Edgar's own obnoxious one that had 'mysteriously' fled him all of a sudden.

"Enough! Stop talking and go to sleep!" Edgar huffed, clearly trying to ignore the dire reality of the situation he had found himself in. "With every moment that passes the amalgamation has more time to repair itself. As soon as I am rested I must get an infiltration team together. Either go to sleep or I will find a way to knock us both out!"

"Fine. Keep deluding yourself if you must." Atticus relented. "But reality will come crashing down on top of you, and I'm going to be here to enjoy every second of it."

To say that he was still ever so slightly pissed with the guy for letting Courage get swallowed up by that wall of metal would have been just a tiny bit of an understatement. He found it a little easier to fall asleep now that he could sense Edgar's thoughts becoming more frantic. It was one small consolation. That even if he could not help Courage right now, he was at least finding ways to ruin Edgar's day. Even better, an unsettled and desperate Edgar would be easier to gain an advantage over. With the way things were going, Atticus was going to need every advantage he could get.

…...

Courage awoke with a headache to end all headaches. He tried to open his eyes and immediately regretted it. Only the darkness of his eyelids helped to fend off even worse pain. At first he thought that he was dizzy as well, but then he realized that he was disoriented because he was being moved by something that kept jolting around. He was laying across something flat and cool against his back. His arms and legs were clamped down. He could hear booming and scraping noises all around him, which only helped to aggravate his headache.

He remained this way for a long while. He was just in too much pain to open his eyes, so trying to find a way to free himself and escape from wherever he was was out of the question. In truth, he could not remember how he had gotten here in the first place. If he really picked at his throbbing brain, he could recall meeting up with Atticus after the power surge, but past that? Nothing.

After what could have easily been half a day's worth of time, the pain in his head seemed to recede a little. He dared to open his eyes again and while it still sent spikes of pain through his forehead it was now at a bearable level. Blinking a few times in disbelief, he was met by the strangest images possible. Above him was a ceiling of twisted metal and wiring with enough gaps in it that sunlight was filtering in through it. He saw what looked like what had once been a child's bicycle, only its metal had been warped in such a way to help with keeping the ceiling from collapsing in upon itself. Worse, the child herself was there, entrapped within the broken sheets of metal and wires. Her blue, possessed eyes stared out at nothing. If she was in any sort of pain or distresses, the possession did not allow her to express it.

The sheet of metal Courage was on moved a little further onward and then he saw what must be the girl's parents. They hung precariously from many wires, having spilled out of a gutted and split apart car. The frame was flattened out overhead, with the seats having been discarded somewhere within that endless expanse of metal. The bicycle must have been removed from the trunk and incorporated into the mass along with car when the family had been swallowed up.

Courage had a bad feeling that they had waited until the last moment to evacuate, and since the amalgamation's control extended a small distance beyond the advancing wall of destruction, they possibly had taken control of the family's car and forced it to drive into the wall or forced them wait to be swallowed up. With a sinking feeling, Courage could only hope that theses people had been possessed quickly enough that they had not had time to panic.

As the sheet of metal moved on, he realized that this must have been what had happened to him. While he could not remember it now, he could only assume that he had followed after Edgar while he was looking for an access point, and maybe they had thought that the amalgamation's ability to possess organic beings in mass had been hindered by the power surge. If his current predicament proved anything, they had been wrong.

But why was he not possessed right now, then? And what had become of Edgar and Atticus? If Edgar was currently in control of the amalgamation, it certainly didn't seem like it.

Courage craned his neck painfully in an attempt to get a better look ahead of him and behind him. Aside from his arms and legs, metal was clamped down around his middle, so it was hard for him to shift around or rise up enough to get a good look at his surroundings.

In the end, there wasn't much else to look at, aside from the weirdness that he was already becoming acclimated to. The amalgamation was continuously shifting the twisted mass ahead of him out of the way to create a tunnel while steadily collapsing it behind him as he was moved along. The power surge must have done some serious damage to reduce them to having to move him at this snail's pace, but just where exactly were they taking him?

"Hello?" He called out.

Nothing. All he got was the continued noise of the tunnel being expanded and collapsed.

He couldn't help but laugh a little, albeit nervously. "Atticus is not going to be happy about you guys capturing me like this. I bet he's trying to find a way to get here as I speak. He'd use a rusty spoon to dig through all of this if he had to."

The amalgamation was entirely uninterested in talking to him, it seemed. He kept trying to chat anyway, hoping that he could invoke what had happened at the power plant once more. His attempts were broken off rather forcefully when an incredibly loud boom rippled through the structure, followed by a rumbling so great that Courage feared the scrap that made up his surroundings would shake apart and collapse on top of him. He only dared to open his eyes again after it was all over. Before he could try and figure out what had happened, he heard a scraping, creaking noise and was flung free of the metal he had been tied down to seconds before.

It was impossible not to land painfully in this place. He was just lucky he didn't end up with any cuts, or worse, impaled on the sharp metal spike sticking out just inches from where his snout had hit the floor, if it could even be called a floor. In much the same way, he was in a room, if it could even be called that. He suspected that all of the noise had been the amalgamation collapsing this space to keep him in. A cage, perhaps. He could see any possible openings he might have been able to squeeze through slowly closing up right before his very eyes, and he could hear the opening he had been flung through closing back up again too. The only gaps that remained were overhead. Shafts of light filtered down through all of the metal and acted as the only light in this 'cage'.

He got onto his feet and stepped closer toward the middle of the room. He looked up into one of the shafts of light, using an arm to shield his eyes. His nose picked up the scent of fresh air, a welcomed luxury in this place. Half buried in the scrap was a ripped up couch. He only had to remove a few bits of debris atop it to give himself an uneven but 'mostly' comfortable place to sit.

Once again he was left wondering why he was not possessed right now. With a jolt of terror, he considered the possibility that they might have had him infested again while he was unconscious. His paws flew up to the cut that ran up his torso and was relieved to find that the healing wound did not look like it had been reopened.

"Hey," He called out again. "What's the point of all this?"

He had not expected an answer, and he did not get one, but he figured it was best to just keep talking and hope that maybe something might eventually trigger a response.

There was a clatter overhead, and much to his amazement, a can of soda dropped almost directly into his lap, followed by a bag of chips. The sight of it was so absurd that he just had to laugh. Still, if soda and cheap snacks were falling from the sky, he wasn't going to be picky about it. Once he had taken care of both, he tried to initiate conversation yet again to no avail.

He thought of Atticus, knowing exactly how much he had to be worrying about him right now. If only Atticus knew that the amalgamation was currently throwing snacks at him instead of hollowing him out! The only thing that was likely keeping Atticus from moving heaven and earth to rescue him right now had to be, without a doubt, Edgar. At the very least, all of this crazinesssince waking up had made it obvious to Courage that Edgar had not succeeded in taking control of the amalgamation. That was one small thing to celebrate, even if it meant being trapped inside the 'belly of the beast', so to speak.

He heard a soft shuffling sound coming from behind the couch, and turning around, found what was becoming an all too familiar sight. One of those clawed tube arms. This one had risen up out of the junk and was closing in on him like a snake about to strike. He stumbled out of his seat and tried to get as far away from it as possible, but the uneven, scrap metal floor came to life and clamped his legs in place like a bear trap snapping shut. There was no pain involved, at least. His legs had not been broken like they would have been if it really were a bear trap, but he was immobilized regardless. All he could do was watch as the tube snaked around behind him...and there was that awful, sharp pain of the claw being dug into his neck...

He felt them then. If he had thought that Atticus's presence in his mind had been vast and overbearing, the amalgamation's presence was incomprehensibly huge. Although, in this case, they had not downloaded themselves into his brain. Courage was pretty sure it would explode if something like that was attempted by a being this vast. It was more like a connection had been established between them.

When he opened his eyes after the pain from the claw piercing his neck had caused him to squeeze them shut, he saw that twisted, ghostly, nearly organic version of the amalgamation from his dreams. They were taking up nearly every square inch of the space they had made for him. He had to fight back a scream, fearful that he was about to be torn apart for real this time. Much to his surprise though, they must not have been expecting him to be able to see them because the great mass of ghostly white gave a rather startled shudder and 'drained' through the floor until it was gone. His sense of the amalgamation's presence lessened too. They remained close but were keeping a cautious distance.

Courage tried to grab at the tube of the claw embedded in his neck, but the second he got his paws around it, a slight electrical jolt, no worse than being shocked by static, caused him to yelp in surprise and let go. In that moment, he felt the amalgamation close in on him again, while still keeping enough of a distance that he could not see that scary, twisted shape. Ironically, he got the sense that they were nervous about approaching him. Why, he did not know. He had absolutely no power here, after all. He could not hurt them in any way while they could crush him like a bug if they really wanted to.

All of a sudden his whole body went numb, and before he could panic, a fog of lethargy overtook his mind. Even his emotions were being numbed. Through unblinking eyes, he saw cables snaking down through the ceiling, each one tipped with a spike. They pierced his arms, chest, and back. Even though it should have been painful, he didn't feel a thing. There was an incredible crashing sound above him and the shafts of sunlight widened until the entire room was filled with light. Through all of this the amalgamation's presence never left him. They kept their cautious distance and did not offer him any sort of assurance about what they were doing. He was raised up into the air by the many cables and claw plugged into him. Everything got brighter and brighter until...

The fog lifted somewhat. He was still paralyzed, although his eyes were blinking of their own accord. What he saw left him in total disbelief. He was home. On the farm. Standing in the kitchen waiting for something. Everything had a hazy, dream-like quality to it, and he had no control over his own movements whatsoever.

Muriel stepped into the kitchen, smiling. "There you are, Courage! I knew you'd be in here. Ready to make those cookies?"

He nodded vigorously, hopping from one foot to the other with a playful, puppy energy. Inside, Courage was just happy to see Muriel again. It made him realize just how much he had been missing her lately. This journey to cure his illness had been going on for so long now...

He watched through the eyes of his puppy self as he climbed up into a chair and picked out several cookie cutter shapes that he liked while Muriel prepared the dough. She hummed that little tune of hers while he looked on with innocent amazement. His wide eyes must have been sparkling in that moment. After several cold, lonely nights in that alleyway, having seemingly lost his parents forever, being warm and well fed in this house with a person as kind as Muriel, it was...

If he had been able to, Courage would have sighed from the nostalgia of it all. He understood what was going on now, at least. The amalgamation had gained access to his memories and were making him relive this moment so that they could experience it too. They were looking through his eyes along with him, taking in every moment of this happy memory and basking in the warmth of puppy Courage's grateful, loving emotions for the kind, motherly figure who had saved his life. They were grasping on to this memory with everything they had, to an almost pathetic degree for such a vast and powerful entity.

Once the memory had played out, Courage's mind became lethargic and foggy again until the next hazy memory materialized before his eyes. Now he was sitting in the dusty dirt outside the house, one paw on a toolbox and eagerly watching Eustace tinkering with his truck.

Courage quickly recognized this as another memory from his puppy years. The scene playing out was from back when he had still been so eager to get Eustace to like him. Atticus had been installed up in the attic by then and Courage had asked him how to achieve what was beginning to look like an impossible goal. Atticus had, of course, said something along the lines of, 'A money hungry moron like that just isn't worth the effort', but Courage had pressed him on it until he relented and told him that helping Eustace as he tinkers with his beloved truck might just open him up to being a little more accepting of him. Atticus had even taken the time to help him memorize the various tools that Eustace was most likely to own.

Courage felt his puppy self lean forward when Eustace raised his head up from under the hood of the truck. He used the hammer he was holding to scratch under his hat and a quick glance toward Courage made it clear that he found the puppy's eager hovering to be disconcerting.

"Eh," He began, scratching at his head even harder. "Gimme the wrench out of there, dog."

Puppy Courage let out a gleeful gasp and ripped open the tool box at record speeds. Thanks to Atticus, he knew exactly what he was looking for. He pulled out the wrench with a wide, childish grin.

"Don't just stand there, stupid dog!" Eustace chided him, albeit somewhat halfheartedly in a way that was very uncharacteristic for the grumpy old farmer. "Bring it here!"

Courage trudged over and Eustace swiped the wrench from his paw. Grumbling under his breath, he took a moment to look around and then did something very un-Eustace-like.

"Er, good work, dog..."

It was begrudging praise but puppy Courage was practically over the moon with joy. He could feel his tail wagging a mile a minute. Present Courage almost envied his younger, naive self. Someday he would come to realize that there was no hope of gaining Eustace's favor and no amount of waiting on him or putting himself in harm's way for him would ever get the old farmer to change his mind about him.

Eustace frowned at the puppy's odd behavior, but continuing with his un-Eustace-like behavior, he reached down and gave Courage the most sad, pathetic, halfhearted pat on the head that any dog in the history of the universe had ever received. It was enough for puppy Courage though. That wide eyed, sparkly look had returned to his face as he grinned like an idiot.

It did not last, of course. Eustace was done with Courage's hovering and was done with throwing him even the thinnest of bones. He reached around and pulled out that scary mask of his and sent puppy Courage screaming back into the house. As the scene melted away, Courage was left wondering how the amalgamation could find such a pathetic memory appealing. In the moment it was a temporarily happy memory, but with hindsight Courage never did get the approval that he had so desperately desired. Future knowledge should have invalidated any happiness to be found in that memory and yet the amalgamation still took it all in like it was something to admire rather than seeing it for what it was. The desperate, naive attempt of a puppy to gain the approval of someone who would never accept him.

Another memory was accessed and the hazy glow of a screen came into focus. Courage knew where he was in an instant. The time displayed in the corner of the browser currently displayed on Atticus's screen showed that it was very late at night. This was a particularly surprising memory for the amalgamation to dredge up. Courage would have thought they'd avoid memories with Atticus in them.

In fact, there wasn't anything particularly special about this memory. Well, maybe in the past it would have been nothing special to Courage, but now, after all that he had been through with Atticus, it was taking on a whole new meaning for him as he witnessed it all over again.

This had been one of the many, many nights where he had woken up screaming from a nightmare and had been kicked out of the bedroom after waking Eustace up. He would go through his ritual of trying to fall asleep on the cot in the attic and sometimes that worked but other times he'd toss and turn until giving up in defeat. Like this night. Sometimes he would preemptively boot up Atticus to act as a nightlight, if he was feeling particularly scared, despite the flurry of quips that he would receive for being a coward. Other times, he'd boot him up after failing to fall asleep, like this night as well. In that murky twilight of sleepiness but being unable to fall asleep, he'd mindlessly browse the internet. After a few of his customary quips, Atticus would lull into a 'slightly' more amicable mood, either falling silent or offering only a few comments or quips here and there.

Soft music was issuing forth from Atticus's speakers. After many nights of this mindless browsing, Courage had figured out how to put together a playlist of music that helped soothe his nerves after a bad nightmare. It did little to help him fall back asleep but it did get his heart to stop pounding, something which often persisted for hours after the initial nightmare. Knowing what he knew now, Courage wondered how much work Atticus would have had to have put into keeping that music player working for him.

He was struck by the absolute peacefulness of it all. Something that he had taken for granted back then, to a point where he had undervalued and nearly forgotten this memory as just another sleepless night. The occasional breath of cold air that wafted in through the open window ruffled his fur and banished the musty smells of the attic for something fresher. Atticus's screen brought light to the darkness of the attic, dispelling the cause of so many of Courage's nightmares, if only temporarily.

Courage thought that he was ready for what was coming next, but the hazy, dream-like quality of the memory gave a new dimension to it and it awed him just as much as the first time he had experienced it. His past self, noticing the lightening sky outside, shifted around on the bucket he was sitting on to get a better look, and just as he did so, the sun peaked over the horizon. In an instant, Nowhere was bathed in golden light. The attic, too, became filled with the morning sunlight. Courage's past self blinked several times, taken aback by the beauty of it.

Acutely aware of his illness and the fact that he was trapped within an entity who could kill him at any moment, a single, regretful thought went through Courage's mind.

'I should have held on to moments like these more than I did.'

He supposed that most people did not realize that there were a finite amount of sunrises in their life until it was too late to appreciate them. In a way though, the amalgamation was giving him a second chance to do just that.

His past self looked back over at Atticus, wondering if the snide machine was noticing any of this or if he even cared. There wasn't an answer to be found, but past Courage got that sense that he was being watched intently, as he often did when around this strange computer, while the Courage of the present, who knew the reality of his companion's life, was certain that he had taken in that sunrise along with him.

'We were there.'

Courage was startled to hear the amalgamation speak after how long they had been mute. It made sense. They had been with Atticus the entire time, just inactive until that fateful day at Nina's place. Courage could sense their sheer contentment with this memory.

As the sunrise memory finished playing out, Courage wondered if he was going to die like this, forced to relive his happy memories until his illness finished him off. The only thing he could think to compare this to was how He had forced Atticus to relive the moment of Owen's death over and over again. Of course, Courage's own version of this invasion of his memories was weirdly pleasant in comparison. Still, even if the amalgamation managed to continue fighting off their murderous impulses toward him, they could not keep doing this to him forever, not as long as his illness remained.

But...did surviving even matter at this point?

Every moment the amalgamation spent picking at Courage's brain trying to find even the most pathetic of 'happy' memories to experience was a moment they were not out there rampaging. If Edgar really had failed then it meant that Courage himself was the only thing holding their destruction back.

As the memory faded, Courage found himself returned to real life, dangling from the cables attached to his body in a space within the amalgamation that was the size of a cathedral. Many bright shafts of sunlight were focused upon him. He was utterly resolved to do just one thing now. He was going to keep the amalgamation distracted for as long as he was physically able. To save Nowhere, to save Muriel, and to protect Atticus from his siblings wrath. If that meant dying, he'd make the sacrifice for their sake. Judging by the terrible pain in his head, he suspected that the accessing of his memories must have the same 'brain burnout' effect that he and Atticus has been so desperately trying to avoid while they were sharing the same body. At the rate things were going, it might not even be his illness that would do him in...

End Of Chapter

A/N: A bunch of new preview images have come out for the Scooby Crossover and one of them showed a certain somebody and Courage being thoroughly annoyed with him. Yep, Computer's confirmed to be in the movie! No word on who is voicing him though. I will legit be over the moon if they actually got his original VA back. Boy, I can't believe Computer's coming out of retirement just to roast Scooby Doo to his face. LOL