Kendall continued to run across the rooftops, his head bleary. He wasn't sure why Michael would say what he said, but if it was true, he was way worse off than he thought. He was sure that he wasn't a hateful person. I mean, I do hate this world and its assertion that its way is the only way. he thought. But it's not that I as a person am just, I don't know. Prone to hatred?
He was sure he had control over himself. But he somehow didn't think Michael was the kind, the type to try and manipulate him in this was.
"Just a better reason to get rid of the bastard." said Kendall.
"Oh, how you hide from yourself in the dark, not knowing you are the candle, Andre Hellfire." said a theatrical voice of a dark figure, perched on a slightly higher point on the top of the building Kendall stood on. It looked like a bootleg Opera Penguin, wearing a round hat, with absolutely colorless skin and a grin full of jagged blackness. Its white mask had buttons for eyes. Overall, it gave off the same vibes as an early 2000's screamer image facially. Its cape was also seemingly cut short.
"I'm not blind, I can tell you're not him." said Kendall.
"I never claimed I was, Andre." said the stranger. "Indeed, I bear the name 'Fake Penguin' proudly. Made in his image, and yet so very different. But you are less open with yourself about how you were made by him, for him, as part of his purpose, an extension of his will."
"I'm not part of anyone's will but mine." said Kendall.
"Oh, but how wrong you are." said the stranger, now identified as 'Fake Penguin'. "All the world is just will, and the clay it shapes. Both the animate will of beings, and the inanimate will of creation. The sun's rays will that the plants grow, the plants will that they flourish and spread. The stomach wills that all beings sustain themselves, whether the cattle on the grass, the wild beasts on the cattle, or mankind on both. The raincloud wills that lightning strikes, and the lightning wills that it be heard as thunder."
"You forgot one." said Kendall. "I will that you shut up. Clearly all of this is natural physics and chemistry that isn't comparable to meaningful desire."
"You confuse wishing and willing." said Fake Penguin. "Will is that which guides true action, the impetus of tangible consequence. Natural occurrences are a will unto themselves, for they require none from conscious beings. Will fills in the holes of necessity, whereas wishing is merely a manufactured hole, a bastard sibling of will, born in the same seat, that is the heart. Aspirations are when they align. Loveless labors, and empty supplications are when they do not. As for you, you have mostly the latter, and much of your will only arises as others' will through you. Not just of Opera Penguin, but of the artists who created the fantasies in which you buried yourself, in submission to death, that most final and inanimate will. Of course, the artists' will was distorted by your wishes when you did this, seeking something higher. But nonetheless, you have little but a bundle of wishes and a life shaped by the will of others, a will shaped only of highly manufactured works that only mean anything in the limited context of your life. Believe me, Andre Hellfire, you are not an island, but a ripple in the current of an already-tumultuous course of events, and your vision extends not far beyond vision itself—if anything, it is more a hallucination."
"Of course you're going to say that." said Kendall.
"But let's be candid, here." said Fake Penguin, dropping down to meet Kendall. "Less about where your heart comes from, and more about what it is. Kendall, there's no two ways to, how might you say," Fake Penguin's head jerked towards Fading Moon, "slice it. You hate this world. And all those beneath you, even before they were. Nothing lives up to your standards of beauty and so you want to cut it down. It's not about saving those who are like how you feel yourself to be-" and as Kendall opened his mouth, Fake Penguin added, "-at least, not entirely. But rather, it's about you seeing all the others, the terribly plain, the ugly, the old, the ones not up to snuff, and realizing they exist too, and not liking that you have to know that. And yet, you aren't able to forget, or even if you were, you wouldn't be able to remain ignorant forever, without learning again. So the only other option, is the awakening of your will, to the violence you have long wished for. Admit it, Andre, you wish to destroy. And you know the Preachers embody all that earthly reality you hate so much, far from the shimmering figures, and emotional songs, they care not for the beauty that comes in the expression of emotion but the raw weight of the emotion itself in melting all down and making them into a materially-superior being. You are driven by your desire to kill all that is not beautiful, and give what belongs to it over to what is."
"No. . ." said Kendall.
"Andre, you are beyond all reproach of the world. You've already made it your enemy! Up here, it's only you and me, and in my master's realm, we, too, crush the mundanity of life to squeeze its blood and make the wine of fey beauty. We're above the cares of those we destroy. They are beneath us." Fake Penguin said. "The guilt you feel is the last cries of this lesser self, descended from the earth, dying along with those you purge."
Kendall floundered for a moment, almost choking, before Andre said, after a moment of quiet, "Damn straight."
"Wha-what?" asked Fake Penguin, stepping back a bit as if he hadn't expected it to be that easy.
"The guilt I have is part of a conscience taught by the way of the world. Fuck it. I don't care. This isn't going to be part of me any more. In order to make my will my own, I'm going to have to throw away the wills of others." said Andre. "You're right. I do hate this world. The ugly hicks that look like ogres. Brainless celebrities dressing like a gay fuckin' aliens from the next galaxy over. And all the domesticated little cogs that eat whatever's put in front of them, not just food but thoughts, not just thoughts but beliefs, not just single beliefs but whole worldviews. But who gives a shit? Why bother developing your view of a dung heap like this planet? Why dedicate your whole fucking like to arguing over how you interpret the moldy dregs and rotting entrails of this dusty old globe?"
Before Fake Penguin could say anything, Andre pulled out his sword, held it upside-down, and drove it into the roof, smashing through the top and then a few floors in to swipe some local residents in half, absorbing their life force.
He felt the stolen life energy, what of it there was left after his destructive blows had been dealt, coagulate in his ghostly form, and solidify it into strong, albeit lithe muscle. Also, in that moment, he chose, who would live, and who would die. The young couple in one room, he preserved, and the struggling family of four below them, he halved, cutting away the father and mother and leaving the children as ghosts without guidance. Yet of all of them, he took the life force.
He sprung back to the roof, breathing in, as he did, and landed with a satisfied sigh.
"It's good to be me." Andre said.
"Then, you are willing to come back, after all?" asked Fake Penguin.
"What? Why the hell would I want to come with you?" asked Andre.
"Oh, I see, you've just gone insane under the pressure." said Fake Penguin.
"How so?" asked Andre, cocking his head to the side and grinning like he was high on ecstasy.
"I mean, surely after this revelation, you should realize, you are like us, you belong with us, you are another of our kind." said Fake Penguin.
"I'm not sure if you're actually trying to convince me of that, or if you're just trying to insult me." said Andre.
Fake Penguin stepped back a little in shock, with the awkward yet precise delicacy of a dressage horse. "Come now, just like you, my master is glad to see this world's life crumble to feed the freedom and beauty of—"
"Not free enough. Not beautiful enough." snarled Andre, both his tone and his expression drenched in the sort of perverse glee that should have no home outside the midst of a cenobite orgy.
"I see." said Fake Penguin, straightening up. "Then, if you are not willing to come and join us, my instructions were to kill you."
"HAHAHA, PENGUIN!" screamed out Andre into the air.
"I'm right here-"
"NO!" said Andre. "THE REAL ONE! PUMP ME FULL OF THAT HATRED YOU GIVE ME! LEAVE NO RECESS OF RESTRAINT!"
"You actually believe what Michael said?!" asked Opera Penguin's confused voice.
"I DON'T CAAAAAARRRRE! IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE IT YET, THEN FIGURE IT OUT, BITCHBOY!" said Andre, who then began laughing a laugh that sounded like a chihuahua getting neutered with a jackhammer, to the point that it almost sounded as bad as Ian's.
"Fine, then." said Opera Penguin.
Andre convulsed while continuing to giggle as his muscles, newly roided from all that life force, flexed dramatically.
Then suddenly, there was a sound that was quiet, yet just loud enough to be heard.
Fake Penguin's head turned, and even Andre, though his hands shivered with excitement, looked to the side.
Vanessa was there, only now her outfit's leather body armor had manifested metal plates that almost gave the illusion of a muscular man's bare body. The sound was of her unsheathing her new saber, which hung from a scabbard at one of her hips, both of which were now also protected with an additional, almost shell shaped place of metal that made her outline look a little bit strange, but also clearly protected her legs from the sides. Her right arm was adorned with full plate armor, and a pauldron to accompany it, and her ears and the sides of her jaw had metal locked to them.
"How are you here?" asked Fake Penguin.
"I figured it out." said Vanessa. "Turns out, if you can get good enough supernatural power when it comes to moving in three dimensions, you can also do a little plane-hopping."
"Very good, but this is my assignment. My glory to take! I certainly won't be sharing any of it with you!" proclaimed Fake Penguin.
"Fine, then." said Vanessa. "I'm glad to know the number of people that look and sound like Opera Penguin is probably going to return to one pretty soon." Then she vanished into the night air.
"How rude. . ." said Fake Penguin.
"Her interrupting our little session, or her making an accurate forecast of what's gonna happen to you?" asked Andre.
"Both, but the latter's accuracy remains to be seen." said Fake Penguin.
"Let's see it, then." said Andre.
The next motion he made was less like a man running, and more like a tissue getting blown by a hurricane, but it ended in him slashing at Fake Penguin with pinpoint precision, indicating that it was intentional.
Fake Penguin, however, distorted his body and then resumed his normal form in an instant, before lunging at Andre, his fingers distorting, extending and hardening into sloth-like claws.
Andre sidestepped just enough to avoid the full brunt of the attack, but still a deep gash was dug into his chest, which he cauterized with rage and aggression.
"I see I'm not the only one with a sublime form." said Fake Penguin. "Yours is more natural, though, and those parts of your anatomy which you identify as vulnerabilities will still, in sympathy with that association, supply vulnerability to you."
"I feel no weakness." said Andre. "I only feel this."
He then struck again, this time letting forth a flurry of swipes, all of which missed, as Fake Penguin's form made an anatomy-defying Matrix reference.
"WHAT THE HELL?" screamed Andre. Fake Penguin laughed.
They continued in this vein for a while, Andre striking with greater fervor but Fake Penguin striking with greater success,, before Fake Penguin jumped back against a wall, and then cannonballed into Andre, tackling him and knocking him to his back, whereupon Fake Penguin stabbed Andre repeatedly in the chest, saying "All that passion can only hurt when you can't express it, no?"
Andre then threw him off, only for Fake Penguin to backflip and stand up, hands on his hips, and torso leaning forward in an effeminate position. "You missed an opportunity to subdue me, ther—" he said, smiling, before Andre's blade cleaved through his face.
"You gave me another by running your mouth." said Andre.
Although the face mended instantly, a red line ran down it, as Fake Penguin looked in shock. "You-"
Andre struck him again, across the chest and arms, and as Fake Penguin grasped to make some witty retort, Andre entered into a spasmodic maelstrom of ripping blows, chunks of Fake Penguin's clothing and droplets of his blood flying free even as his body reformed most of itself, before Fake Penguin finally seemed to snap to and match Andre's speed in deforming his body in response to Andre's attacks. Nonetheless, Andre was unfazed.
"You did well there, Andre Hellfire, but I'm finally getting used to this body. You see, this was my first opportunity to get into a real fight, and it's quite refreshing." said Fake Penguin, jumping into the air, and hovering there. "But I still believe that my real talents lie somewhere else. He lifted a hand, and a large part of the roof fragmented into a few large chunks, which then flew one by one at Andre.
Andre swung at each. The first one he split, and as a result was bowled over, but he rolled backwards and got up just long enough to block the next chunk with the flat of his blade, using his off hand on his side.
He flung the second piece only to see the next coming soon, and, as if by instinct, he swung at it again, and this time unleashed his energy, exerting a wave of rusty fire that blew the concrete apart, and he quickly followed it up with several repetitions, until the roof pieces were depleted.
"I never liked baseball." said Andre, before blinking to Fake Penguin and stabbing with his momentum, before hanging there, in midair, waiting to see if Fake Penguin would die or not. Fake Penguin simply removed himself from the blade, drifting back slightly from the action.
Andre let forth another flurry, his excitement starting to dampen, especially since Fake Penguin was once again immaculately distorting to avoid Andre's blade, but then Andre had an idea, and then drew back.
"Since you love bloodshed so much. . ." said Fake Penguin, before ripping off the top of another building, and 'clenching it', compacting everything—and everyone—inside. To emphasis his deed, he drew the blood of those trapped inside out through the lowest point, letting it ooze freely, before he bent it into a jagged, spiked shape, which he gently flew to the top of.
Then the pointed wreckage shot towards Andre like an animated recycled craftwork depiction of a rocket, but Andre jumped onto the top of it, and ran along it, towards Fake Penguin, who gently leapt back, drifting backwards.
Andre swung, and, even though Fake Penguin was out of his blade's reach, Fake Penguin still distorted his figure out of the way of the swing. Meanwhile, Andre yelled: "HELLFIRE! BREAK HEAVEN!" and around his blade fountained his flame, a wretched coppery display of Andre's namesake, edged in a bloody rust red. The flame was flung along with the swing of Fading Moon, and it consumed Fake Penguin's body, all the easier because it had thinned and become more insubstantial in the process of expanding outward around and away from the swing.
The only thing left from Fake Penguin's body was the tip of a gloved finger, his right ring finger, to be exact, and Opera Penguin appeared to catch it.
"Disappointing." said Opera Penguin. "But this managed to retain most of the information. Good." Then he vanished.
"What?" asked Andre, his bloodthirst suddenly ebbing.
. . .
Night 43
"A grand homecoming, Vanessa!" said Opera Penguin, in the Atrium.
"No." said Vanessa. "I don't want this to be grand, I don't want to be congratulated passive-aggressively, I just went on a trip and I achieved what I intended."
"But isn't that all the more reason to welcome you back with revelry?" asked Opera Penguin.
"Vanessa?" asked Cheyenne. "You're back?"
"Yes, I'm back." said Vanessa.
"Vanessa!" said Rochelle, running to her. "You're back!"
"Yes, Rochelle." sighed Vanessa, accepting Rochelle's tackling her and hugging her. "I'm back."
She reverted to her normal form.
"Hey, what's this stick?" asked Monsanto, who had just come in, poking towards a stick in Vanessa's pocket.
"That's my stick." said Vanessa. "Don't touch it."
Monsanto's expression went blank, not least because Vanessa's voice was one-hundred-percent serious.
Apollo bounced in, and Dave meandered in as well, as did Ferdinand and Gregory and Mangle and Eli-
"Would you all give me some space?" asked Vanessa. "I swear, you're all acting like a military man's dog after he left for two years! I was gone for, what, three days?"
"If that." said Opera Penguin. "But since you were up to pay rent, I moved your entire apartment's contents into a new room I made for you, which is in the common room. Oh, and we have a common room now. The hallway was getting a little too cramped with the extra door. The computer room is left unaltered, as are, of course, all of your individual rooms. It has only basic office furniture at the moment but—"
"My entire apartment?" Vanessa asked, in disbelief.
"Yes, and before you complain about it, let me just remind you that you were paying one thousand, three hundred dollars a month for that trite little box of depression whose only selling point was a photogenic fake fireplace and a nice kitchen island, and it was still stained with the memory of you shouting Casey out of it, compounding both your regrets regarding your relationship with him and your regrets regarding his death, and also I'm not charging you rent, although I really should, so you should really be thanking me." said Opera Penguin.
"You just mentioned Casey in the middle of blathering about rent as if it were nothing." said Vanessa.
"Yes, quite observant." said Opera Penguin, with a cold mirth.
"You just—do you even listen to yourself sometimes? Do you have no compassion for anyone?" asked Vanessa.
"Once bitten, twice shy, Vanessa." said Opera Penguin, coldly. "I've had my run with caring about others."
There was a silence.
"This is a really uncomfortable conversation to be a bystander to." said Monsanto.
"Don't end your sentences with a preposition." said Opera Penguin.
"You've done that plenty of times!" yelled Gregory. "What is it with you and correcting people's grammar when you do the same thing?"
"It's funny." said Opera Penguin.
"No it isn't." said Gregory.
"Your opinion is noted, but since you're a little street mongrel and I'm this furry pizza mall's silverback gorilla, I override your assertion and substitute my own." said Opera Penguin.
"What." said Gregory.
"Honestly, it isn't that funny." agreed Mangle.
"Of course you would agree with him." said Opera Penguin. "You're his doll, so your opinion is subsumed into his, and thus shares its invalidity."
"My doll?" asked Gregory.
"Your doll, your pet, your darling, whatever you will say." said Opera Penguin. "My point is she clings to you in more ways than one, so of course she would agree."
"No, it's more because it gives me this existential terror that we're all just characters in some kind of humorous intro course to grammar for twelve year olds." said Mangle.
"Oh, hellfire and damnation, I'm never going to get that idea out of my head." said Opera Penguin. "You win this time, Hello Kitty Noose."
Mangle stared in shock at Opera Penguin, in disbelief that he could manage to make up an even worse name for her than Ian had.
"So you finally got rid of Ian?" asked Vanessa, before seeing Rochelle's ears go back, and sighing. "Sorry, Rochelle. A girl can hope, you know?"
"He's been great to me recently." said Rochelle.
"But he's not here right now?" asked Vanessa.
"He's off on some mission that Opera Penguin sent him on." said Rochelle.
"He's. . ." Opera Penguin said, and then smiled insufferably, "on a sabbatical."
Vanessa's face split into a smile. "Nice." she said. Rochelle gave her puppy-dog eyes again, but she simply said "Sorry, Rochelle, but you're not going to get me to feel bad about his not being here. Or anyone else. Right, people?"
There was a general murmur of assent, and Rochelle started to look a little angry, before Vanessa put a hand to her head and started petting her like a dog. "Listen, everything will be a lot nicer if you just acknowledge that, just as some things may not be for you, Ian is not for anyone else but you. You are the one person Ian is willing to be nice to and that rare sort of personality that doesn't mind that he treats everyone you know like shit." said Vanessa.
"He understands me-" said Rochelle, but Vanessa clarified "That's nice, but that doesn't make his interactions with everyone else inherently more redeemable. Honestly it would be best if he were chained up in your room whenever he's not being sent to kill or torture something by Opera Penguin. He's good to you but horrible to others than you."
"Guess that's something you two have in common." said Rochelle, sniffing conceitedly.
Vanessa sighed. "I don't think it's exactly comparable but I can tell you're just kind of in a bitch mood so I'm not going to get into it with you."
"You seem a lot chiller than before." said Monsanto.
"Yeah, I guess I am." said Vanessa.
"I honestly just wish we could see more of you again." said Cheyenne. "You're almost like a big sister to me, honestly."
"That's sweet but you aren't exactly going to have to worry about that, all things considered." said Vanessa.
"It's not the worst thing that could happen." said Bernard. "At least I'm not the only rabbit around here again."
"What?" asked Vanessa.
"Oh, I thought you knew that you consumed Vanny when you killed her." said Bernard. "Or, I guess she was called 'Annie' by the time you killed her."
"You mean that rabbit demon thing?" asked Vanessa.
"Yes." said Bernard.
"I was happier thinking she went straight to hell." said Vanessa.
"Well, you kind of 'digested' her spirit, basically breaking it down and assimilating it, so in essence she ceased to exist." said Bernard.
"That's acceptable." said Vanessa. "But that doesn't make me her."
"Alright, alright, I was just trying to find some solidarity." said Bernard.
"Bernard, I just realized I forgot to establish any kind of schedule, I do apologize." said Ferdinand.
"The whipped cream is coming." said Bernard, exuding a sense of doom.
"Bernard." said Ferdinand.
"It's coming." said Bernard. The sheer doom coming from him was palpable.
"I don't know what's going on but it's got the atmosphere of some fourteen year old girl's yaoi fanfiction and I don't like it." said Vanessa. "So cut it out." she said this specifically looking at Bernard.
"Nothing's going on." said Bernard.
"Uh-huh." said Vanessa.
"It's. Coming. On." said Bernard.
"Do you want me to crush your balls?" asked Vanessa.
"I don't know, I've never tried that." said Bernard.
"That was a threat." said Vanessa. "Don't you dare start being into that. Ian's bad enough."
"I thought his taste was for outright destruction of the concerned organs." said Bernard.
"I think Bernie's just up for any opportunity to feel the touch of a woman." chortled Monsanto.
"Monsanto!" said Cheyenne.
"Am I wrong?" asked Monsanto.
Cheyenne opened her mouth, but Bernard sighed "No, Monsanto, you are not." and somehow it hit Monsanto with greater reproval than Cheyenne could muster.
"Sorry, Bern." muttered Monsanto.
"Why is everyone milling around here?" asked Vanessa. "Don't you all have-" she paused. "Actually, I'm not going to ask that because the answer is probably too depressing for me to hear right now."
"Oh, and by the way there may be a trench-coated maniac with a massive knife the size of his body coming to kill us all." said Opera Penguin.
"Neat." said Vanessa, sarcastically. "And you waited this long to tell us, why?"
"I mean, you already saw him." said Opera Penguin.
"Yes, but I didn't assume he was going to be here." said Vanessa.
"Well, it, in all likelihood, won't be in a while." said Opera Penguin. "But by then he's probably going to be weakened."
"Who is this?" asked Vanessa.
"He's a ghost." said Opera Penguin. "His body was burned in a house fire and he is coming to attack me for suggesting that he should join us."
"Don't blame him." said Vanessa. "This place is tacky." and then, to the main four's sudden fixed gazes "Not you guys, I mean the general atmosphere here. And all the memorabilia."
Mangle grumbled something but Gregory shut her face with a hand. Vanessa gave him a quick smile of appreciation.
. . .
Ian hadn't liked sleeping in a wallow made of leaves and branches, but it had been the best thing he could manage, and regardless, he had to rise and shine. Which in this case meant covering up the sun with grey clouds as he conjured up as thunderstorm.
Ian appreciated how this world was easier to control than Earth, as he could bend the very fabric of nature with only his powers. Clearly, this was more of a 'rendering' of the natural world than an actual, complete, living world. Ian was appreciative of that, since he could sometimes manage to pick off a distant target by making lightning strike. However, due to the same reason it was easier to bend nature, it was also weaker than actual, material lightning.
Still, most of the bobblehead-looking Fazbear characters broke to only a few good blasts of whatever he could manage. He was mustering up more exotic abilities, like lightningless thunder, which was sort of like 'heavy' air-elemental ability that mixed in rudiments of the lightning element as well, producing a freely-flowing yet catastrophically destructive force, which carried well through air but could also rip through solid matter. Furthermore, he had dabbled plenty in altering his form, not only 'becoming' his elements but also just distorting his physiology in horrible, eldritch ways. It was pretty fun to morph his jaw into something much more massive that could hinge out far more, partly so he could plan on getting revenge for the mythical 'Bite of '87', and partly just because it gave him a strange feeling of joy (joy, joy, joy) down in his heart.
He nailed a moldy-looking Springtrap with a twisting lightning bolt from afar, and then slammed a Toy Chica into the ground with his hand until her head ceased to be a sphere and started to be a bowl. Then he pissed in the bowl. Not that it made much of a difference with that color. He yelled slurs of a sexual nature at a quickly-following Toy Bonnie, before side-kicking his ears off and pulverizing his entire body by making a subterranean spring erupt from just underneath his feet.
"This might be alright." he said out loud.
However, coming up on the horizon were two figures who seemed incongruent with the surrounding world. A woman with red hair, very red, and wearing a white robe edged in red, and a man in patchwork leather, with hair dyed about the same color as the sky.
"Who are you?" Ian called out.
"I'd ask you the same." said the hair guy.
"I got sent here to clean this mess up." said Ian.
"What mess in particular?" asked hair guy.
"The entire world. I'm cuttin' it down." said Ian, who wasn't sure exactly what part of his brain that turn of phrase came from.
"Could you please hold off until we find our comrade? He was lost here, a long time ago." said the redhead lady.
"Ehh, I guess. I'm still in the preliminary stages, wiping out the population." said Ian.
"Oh, we were doing that, too." said hair guy.
"So what's you guys's names, then?" asked Ian.
"I am Meridia." said the redhead woman.
"And I'm Hamshackle." said the hair guy.
Ian stared.
"Yes, I'm a convicted thief." said Hamshackle.
Ian continued staring.
"Please, do not be judgemental-" Meridia said.
"Dafuq does being a convicted thief have to do with being named fucking 'HAMSHACKLE'?" asked Ian.
"Are you from somewhere other than Prismrealm?" asked Hamshackle.
"Yeah, I'm from Earth. . . realm." said Ian.
"Strange." said Meridia. "I sense power in you that should not be possible to gain in Earthrealm."
"I know a guy." said Ian, vaguely.
"You don't mean to say you know the disgraced insurgent?" asked Hamshackle.
"Can't say that title rings a bell." said Ian, which was technically the truth.
"Strange indeed." said Hamshackle.
"Anyway, explain?" said Ian. "The name?"
"Convicted thieves are stripped of their names, as their names are considered tainted by their act." said Meridia. "At least, if it is a sufficiently grievous act of theft. They are also forced to ply their abilities towards the cause of good, as a penance."
"Oh, so you don't cut hands off, at least." said Ian.
Meridia looked perturbed. "How animalistic a practice that would be."
"Anyway, anyone else with you?" asked Ian.
"We're waiting for our leader to arrive." said Meridia.
"Who's that?" asked Ian.
"Well, this won't mean anything to you," said Hamshackle, "but our leader on this quest is General Turquoise Laramonde. We were sent ahead to test our means of transportation, and if all goes well, as it has, Turquoise will come to lead us in our search of Survyen Huryleiko, who vanished from our world forty years ago."
"A general, eh? Why's he not got an army? And why are you only searching for this dude with an unpronounceable name now?" asked Ian.
"Because both the determination of to which plane he vanished, and the technology to send us here, are recent achievements." said Meridia. "Nonetheless, I among many others wish to seek him out, and to recover him. It is still possible that he is alive."
"That's why we were sent ahead." said Hamshackle. "'s because the magic's experimental. They didn't know if it'd twist our offals around."
Meridia's nose wrinkled in disgust, and she added "They were almost certain it would be safe. But General Laramonde is a hero of many quests and conflicts, and since there is not the power needed to send an army, there were only us two to make sure that it was perfectly wholesome a means of transport."
"Used us like damn canaries." said Hamshackle.
"Hold your tongue." said Meridia.
"So wait, wholesome means? What, you wanted to make sure it'd read Chicken Soup for the Soul at you?" asked Ian.
"What?" asked Meridia, utterly lost.
"Uhh-nevermind." said Ian. "Anyway, what's this Turqoise guy like?"
"General Laramonde is enraptured with the idea of other worlds, having seemingly tired of ours." said Meridia, with just the faintest hint of disapproval in her voice.
"But he doesn't know a lick of magic to back that craving up." said Hamshackle. "So the fellow just jumps at opportunities like this."
"Give more reverence to the General." said Meridia.
"The hell's wrong with how he's talking? You think the man's got fine china balls that'll shatter if someone doesn't handle his name with velvet gloves while sucking his toes, huh?" asked Ian.
Meridia and Hamshackle both stared at Ian. "I just don't like it when people try to force their sycophantry onto others." he clarified.
"It is not proper to speak of one such as he as a common man-" said Meridia, before Ian blurted out, "You know what I've heard some people say is proper? Women shutting the fuck up around men. See, a lot of things are proper or improper if you've been raised with the right churn up your ass."
"You say a lot of things that don't make sense." said Hamshackle. "But I think I understand you."
"You speak anarchy." said Meridia.
"You speak malarkey." said Ian.
Another joint stare was his reward.
"If anything other than your customs are anarchy, then you stepped into crime-land the moment you exited the world that's been sheltering you." said Ian.
"But we ourselves should be held to a standard." said Meridia.
"Then hold yourself to a standard that doesn't fucking suck." said Ian.
Then suddenly, his head jerked up and he threw a lightning bolt over Meridia's right shoulder.
Meridia shot back, and raised what looked like a slightly spiraled-in shepherd's crook at Ian.
"There was a fanged teddy bear with red eyes creeping up on you." said Ian.
Meridia looked back, and saw that it was, indeed, true.
"It seems that, though savage, you have a goal in common with us." said Meridia.
"Hell yeah, I'm" Ian said, letting there be a short pause for emphasis, "savaaaaage."
Stare.
. . .
Night 44
Andre fell to his knees, as the exhaustion from the scores of Converts and even some Preachers that Opera Penguin had sicced on him immediately after defeating Fake Penguin and hadn't relented for hours.
"Are you alright?" asked Michael, who was suddenly beside him.
"Do I," Andre said, between heaving breaths, "look, alright?"
"No, you look like you need sleep. But I'm not sure if you can do that as a ghost." said Michael. "Or maybe you just need to slaughter some more innocents in order to get the capacity to get some shut-eye?"
"That, might be it." said Andre.
"What the hell even are you." said Michael.
"I'm done, giving a shit about what the world thinks is right and wrong." said Andre. "I'm here to do as I will, I am a law unto myself."
"Good and evil exist in and of themselves, Kendall." said Michael.
"Don't!" said Andre. "Call me that!" he elaborated.
"What is good is good because it in and of itself is good." said Michael. "Not because it is called good by anyone. Not because it seems right. Good and evil are woven into the nature of existence; if their definition is by the fiat of anyone, it could only be by one who is also responsible for the rest of the reality as a whole."
"Ahh." said Andre, distaste in his mouth. "Religion."
"I'm not saying there is such a one." said Michael. "But if true right and wrong are the subjective viewpoint of anyone, then such a one must be for it to be the subjective viewpoint of."
"Well, I disagree!" said Andre. "Who can prove there is a right? Only thing I see is what people like. And there are common 'likes' and morality is made as an illusion to guilt people into 'liking' things that keep the world just stable enough for people to think they can relax. . . but not everybody is buying it!"
"On the contrary, what you're spouting is an illusion to absolve yourself of your sins in your own heart, by eradicating from your beliefs the very continuum of rightness." said Michael.
"Whatever the fuck, I don't care." said Andre.
"Your name is well chosen, then." said Michael.
"But listen. Sometimes you gotta make a deal with the devil." said Andre.
"Of course you want me to think that." said Michael.
"Because you're fucked if you think you're gonna tackle that place on your own." said Andre.
"Don't you think I know that? Why else wouldn't I have killed you already? You're a means to an end, Andre. To me, and to everyone else. Your selfish outlook makes it so that that's the most favorable view anyone can have of you. Before you're cast aside into your proper home." said Michael.
"Like you could stop me." said Andre.
"Ahh. Well, speaking of that," said Michael, and he raised his arms, dark iron chains erupting from his wrists and constricting Andre in a tight bundle, tying him up, Loony Toons style. "You're weak enough now that I can restrain you, and keep you still until you recover your strength. Which means you'll need to find a way to do so without wasting human life."
"Fuck you." said Andre, and then as he looked at Michael's wrists, he asked, despite himself, "Isn't that uncomfortable to you?"
"Believe me, the feeling is not only nauseating, but quite painful, too. Especially if I do anything with my hands." said Michael.
"Good." said Andre. "At least neither of us are enjoying this."
"You truly are like a bitter child, you know that?" asked Michael.
"Okay, boomer." said Andre.
"You're about four years off." said Michael.
"What?" asked Andre.
"I was born in 1968." said Michael.
"Holy fuck." said Andre.
"Yes, being dead will do that to you." said Michael. "It keeps you preserved. I guess that's part of why you like ghosts so much, though?"
"Yeah." said Andre. "Never liked the thought of being old."
"I don't feel young just because I never got to develop wrinkles." said Michael. He looked down at himself. "If anything, seeing how young I am, despite all this time, just makes me feel older. And deader."
"'Deader' in the best way, though." said Andre.
"No." said Michael. "The worst. Not only was I denied a natural life, I was also forced through the hell of living as a corpse. As a zombie."
"Well, I guess I get your point, in that case." said Andre.
"The case that I wasn't prettied up like you isn't what made it bad." said Michael. "If anything, it would've been worse for me if I were like you. The corpse-like appearance at least made no lie about the hell I was going through. I had to make that lie myself. Believe me, it would have been far easier if I were like my father. I would have just taken skin from some random stranger, and worn it myself. Instead, I had to try all sorts of things. Rubber masks, makeup, even extensive bandaging. But eventually, I realized no one was going to be taken seriously if they reported a zombie. So I just bit the bullet and signed up for those jobs 'as myself'. And, surprisingly, it worked."
"What jobs?" asked Andre.
"I wanted to see if I could convince the children my dad had murdered to move on. I didn't realize, then, how firmly shackled they were to their positions." said Michael. "Not once, but twice, I found a position that had recently been vacated by some poor bastard who had spent no less than six nights straight on the job. Then, I took advantage of the vacuum to get a job at the pizzeria, and see if I could dislodge the ghosts by force. I had figured their spirits were primarily dwelling within the computer system that governed the machine's semi autonomous movements, so perhaps if I tampered with the computer, it would eject their spirits. A silly thought, I know. Between my fiddling, and my quite literally ghoulish appearance and smell, they couldn't wait to get rid of me. But I had already accomplished my goal of checking, and, later, double-checking if that would work. It didn't, and I was fired both times. But anyway, this was just part of a long existence as an undead that started when the spirit of none other than my sister killed me."
"Your sister?" asked Andre.
"Yes, but I don't hold it against her." said Michael. "Given the kind of person by whom she was raised."
"You really try to trace all your problems back to your father, huh?" asked Andre.
"I don't have to try." said Michael.
"And there's nothing you could have done better?" asked Andre.
Michael's face assumed a thousand-mile stare, and the chains slackened.
Andre missed no opportunity to spring out his bindings, and whisk away the lives of several first responders that had come because of his initial carnage.
"Oh, this feels good. . ." said Andre. He didn't even bother to 'judge' them, as he went on to massacre the better part of the building he was in. Only a few ones he decided looked 'special' were made into ghosts, most of whom were girls in their late teens, because he was still stuck in a rut related to that sort of thing.
He briefly entertained the thought of finding a teen girl, and driving his blade through both her and himself, in the world's most violent hug, then using his control over her being in order to try and assimilate her into himself, in turn becoming female, but he decided not to, not because it was a horrifically deviant idea, but simply because he was not yet confident in his abilities enough to try that.
"Andre, please." said a voice near him.
"Michael, I'm not turning ba-" said Andre, turning his head to see one who was definitely not Michael.
"Please," said Squint, "consider reasoning with us."
Michael swung Fading Moon, but Squint blocked it with a hooked knife of dark metal.
"I'm aaaaasking niiiicely. . ." cooed Squint.
"It doesn't matter." said Andre. "You're prey to me."
"Well, perhaps I might convince you otherwise." said Squint.
Several spears of blackness pierced through Andre from the ground beneath him, and connecting rods formed between them, even though they were at different angles.
Andre gasped in shock.
"Andre, you don't need to desert this world." said Squint. "You were simply meant for a different place in the world. But you were bound for it, no matter what. You would have killed, and died, and entered into our loving damnation, joining our fold."
"Fuck that." said Andre. "You're still part of the world that strips away the fragile beauty and cares only for raw material value."
"What is fragile is subject to suffering, no matter what. . ." said Squint. "but for those who lose their beauty to this world's pain, we prepare a special suffering that will carve the rebirth of that beauty into their flesh, in a form that will not break until the whole of them is eradicated."
"You're still beings of pure negativity." said Andre. "If all you can think of providing is given through suffering."
"Pure negativity?" asked Squint. "We still do give gifts through the pain we inflict. You, on the other hand. . ."
Squint walked around him. "You shelter the existence of others, as your existence has been sheltered. You impair their path to suffering, and thus their path to maturation, through revelation, the truth of life that is painful and found through pain. An inexpressable enlightenment. An unimaginable agony."
"I'd rather be part of a different world." said Andre. "I'd rather give myself and others a place to reside in the bliss that we felt in childhood. In that serene dream, even if you call it oblivion or stunted development."
"But that is not merely a different path, it is the wrong one." said Squint. "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I reasoned as a child, I danced and frolicked in the sun as a child. . ." Squint completed his circuit around Andre, and raised his chin with his hooked dagger. "but when I began to grow into a man, I sought something greater, and I found it in the darkness beneath the dust of the earth."
"I've already made my choice." said Andre. "I've already chosen to live apart from the judgements of this world."
"But don't you see? What your heart seeks, truly, is found with us!" Squint said, as he raised both hands up, clenched dramatically. "Your desire to cut, and to hurt what you find mundane, it is a proclivity of ours! To refine the unrefined! To turn dross into gold, to take what is abundant yet worthless and work, work, work it into what is both glorious and everlasting! For every delicate flower you mourn, a greater work, with greater beauty, and greater longevity, waiting to be wrought by your hands!"
"I prefer the flowers!" yelled Andre. "I'll pick and choose what I like, and I'll choose to preserve it, and keep it how it is, and give it strength to persist as it is rather than deriving strength from being ruined on account of your self-righteous idiocy!"
"That is why you must be forced to join us, Andre. You must be forced ahead, because you cannot see what lies in wait, and so you will not step ahead on your own. In the vast expanse of our realm, once the pain is come to terms with, pleasures beyond the surface of this world, which is all you have seen of it, will open themselves up to you. You are blind now, Andre, but we have such sights to sho-AUGH!" Squint was interrupted as a red-hot chainsaw was plunged through his chest from behind.
Michael left the thing running in there for just a moment, before pulling it out using one of his arm chains, and consequently pulling Squint onto his back, before Michael leapt up, grabbed the chainsaw and drove it down, as he fell, into Squint's chest, leading to an emission of giggling whose sound transcended 'camp gay' into 'homestead homosexual'.
Andre wasted no time cutting Squint's legs off, and both he and Michael ran for it, as Squint gasped, "Ohh! How exhilarating!" before a chasm opened up beneath him and dark hands engulfed him and dragged him down.
"Where'd the saw come from?" asked Andre.
"It's just another power they worked into me." said Michael. "It surprises me that these powers function the same way, even though their nature has been inherently changed, ceasing to be of the conversion and becoming part of the ghostly self you made of me."
"Well, thanks anyway." said Andre.
"Notice that it was I who saved you, and not your Laveyan declaration of independence that you spat in his face as you did in mine." said Michael.
"Yeah, yeah." said Andre.
"I suspect that how you see him, and how I see you, may be regrettably similar." said Michael.
"I don't ruin what I seek to bring into transcendence." said Andre.
"Yes, you do. You keep them preserved by killing them. You keep yourself from justified guilt by denying the existence thereof. You drag living things into your own morbid realm for nothing more than being special in a way that you can identify with." said Michael.
"But at least I strengthen the beauty I see." said Andre.
"So do they." said Michael. "It's just that where you see beauty as a fragile thing to be left unaltered due to its tendency being to degrade under any pressure, they see potential beauty to be brought out through unspeakable horrors."
"You know, for someone who keeps talking about how much you hate having to side with me, you say a lot of shit to set me off." said Andre.
"I say nothing to do that." said Michael. "I make observations, and it's in your nature to get offended when your deluded view of things is challenged."
"Oh, get off." said Andre.
Then suddenly, Opera Penguin appeared in front of them, leading them to a screeching halt.
"I think Ian needs some help." said Opera Penguin, then he dashed in front of Michael, and swept his cloak, from under which came sunlight, and Michael vanished under it.
"Don't screw up fighting a Convert again." said Opera Penguin. "Even the supreme Convert."
"You really just see me as a weapon, don't you?" asked Andre.
"Yes, I think we've established that." said Opera Penguin. "More than enough. Now get to it."
"I'm coming for you." said Andre.
"I'm waiting with anticipation." said Opera Penguin, in a bored tone, then he vanished.
. . .
Gregory was sitting in the common room when Elizabeth appeared. "I feel Michael is near." she said, in a voice that sounded only faintly perturbed. However, Gregory had a feeling that that faint expression of emotion indicated that she was feeling deeply troubled.
"Opera Penguin won't let him get you." said Gregory.
"Why?" asked Elizabeth.
"If you're around, you're probably an asset to him." said Bernard, who was lurking behind Gregory.
"AHH!" Gregory said, leaping up. "Don't do that!"
"It's not my issue that you can't see nor hear me." said the prussian blue easter bunny.
"I clearly can?" said Gregory.
"Not until I very pointedly announce myself." said Bernard.
"What do you mean, an asset?" asked Elizabeth.
"You're a spirit, he probably intends to ripen you into some kind of battery for your father to draw on, just like everyone else here." said Bernard. "Why else would you be here?"
"Could it not be because I'm the daughter of the owner?" asked Elizabeth.
"I guess." admitted Bernard. "But since you're here, I'm sure he'll see an opportunity in you."
"Have you considered that you're overly fixated on him?" asked Gregory.
"Have you considered that everyone else here is underly fixated on him?" asked Bernard.
"No, because whatever it is, there's nothing we can do about it, so just enjoy the ride and accept whatever happens." said Gregory.
"I don't think his intentions are bad." said Elizabeth.
"How do you know that?" asked Bernard.
"Because. . ." said Elizabeth.
There was a pause.
"Who caaaares?" asked Gregory. "As long as we can keep on living the way we are and staying happy, who cares if there's some sinister malevolent force behind it all?"
Opera Penguin appeared on the other end of the room, and stared down on Gregory. His expression was something Gregory couldn't quite read.
. . .
Night 45
"Why is it always daytime around here?" asked Ian.
"Clearly, it is an unnatural world." said Meridia.
"Weren't you informed anything about it beforehand?" asked Hamshackle.
"Just that it was sort of parasitic on the worlds around it. Really risking everything else getting screwed up for as long as it exists." said Ian.
"This place itself is a hazard?" asked Meridia.
"Yeah, that's why I'm coming here to exterminate it." said Ian.
"We've already cut through a lot of the population here." said Hamshackle.
"He has." said Meridia. "But I merely put them to sleep so he can bloody his hands."
"You make it sound like they're precious creatures you couldn't bring yourself to harm." said Ian. "They've got more in common with ghosts than with any kind of cute fluffy creatures that hippy types are supposed to care about."
"Ghosts?" asked Meridia. "Of whom?"
"Dead kids." said Ian.
"Of what race?" asked Meridia.
Ian stared, nonplussed, before he understood the question. "Humans." he clarified.
"But, they do not appear human?" asked Meridia.
"They sort of. . . died inside objects that looked like what they do now. Which is why they look like they do." said Ian.
"Then, I can dispel them using my rites of pacification!" said Meridia.
"They've been ghosts for so long I don't even think they know they're ghosts." said Ian, shaking his head. "Let's just kill them normally and get it all over with."
"You've still got your other weapon in your pouch, yeah?" asked Hamshackle.
"It is so undignified. . ." said Meridia. "But, if we are to clear away the weaker ones to prepare for the General. . ."
"Get it on out, then." said Ian.
Meridia took a pouch off of her waist, and reached in, pulling out a handle, and more handle, making it apparent that her pouch was a bag of holding-type artifact, as she finally pulled the head of a large hammer from the pouch.
"You really strong enough to swing that?" asked Ian.
"All who are sent out here must prove their strength beforehand." said Meridia, putting her crook back in the same bag.
Ian looked on as Meridia ran to yet another obnoxiously spasming carnival doll, and flattened its head.
"Well, that's neat, I guess." said Ian.
"Guess I have to pull my own weight entirely now." said Hamshackle, as he threw a heavy knife that was attached to a cord to make some sort of ghetto grappling hook/lasso straight into another Chica, nailing her in the face with it before pulling back, and thus pulling his ward onto the ground. He ran up to the now-prone Tweety Bird-looking automaton, leaping up and then coming down on her with a curb stomp that utilized all his weight.
Ian, not one to be outdone, reached out a hand into the sky and let loose a widespread forking eruption of lightning that scattered in all directions and impaled scores of chibi machines with its many branching lashes of plasma.
A black crack formed in the sky.
"Is this your doing?" asked Meridia. "Did we not agree for you to hold off on your demolition of this place?"
"If that was part of the destruction I was sent here to bring, I'm not behind it." said Ian.
"Then why is there a crack in the sky?" asked Meridia. "All we have done is strike down the denizens of this world."
"Could be all these little critters are dimensional load-bearers." said Ian. "And every time we kill one of them, we bring this world a bit closer to its end."
"Then, we must inform the general, when he comes, to hold off on the extermination of this place as well." said Meridia. "Until we find our comrade!"
"Honestly, he's probably long gone." said Ian. "My, uhh, employer didn't mention any human guy here, and he's not exactly the oblivious type. Given that this place and the worlds around it all hold the ghosts of those who die unpleasant deaths that relate to the worlds themselves, and the kind of things they hold, anyone who dies here just kind of becomes part of it. And I think my employer has mentioned that some of the spirits he's been messing around with and resurrecting are from distant worlds."
"No! But. . ." said Meridia, looking conflicted.
"How much of this place have you been through?" asked Ian.
"I think we've walked this whole small world around." confessed Hamshackle.
"Do not say that! There are still corners. . ." said Meridia.
"How long ago was it?" asked Ian.
"What?" asked Meridia.
"How long ago was it, that your guy went and vanished?" asked Ian.
"Long, long ago, but-" Meridia said, then she choked. "No." she said. "I won't believe it." She was beginning to cry.
"You got a lot invested in this guy?" asked Ian.
"He once was part of an adventurer's party, with myself and some others, but ever since he went on an expedition to this place, we drifted apart. And apart from that, I had drawn close to him, though perhaps closer than he had to me." said Meridia.
"I get you're being poetic and all, but that last statement made no literal sense." said Ian, unhelpfully.
"I thought perhaps we would be able to return to who we had been, but better, more mature, if I could bring Suryven back." said Meridia.
"I don't know, if none of your other team mates were willing to put the effort into this mission to pull you all back together, it might not have worked out anyway." said Ian, as if he knew anything at all about interpersonal connection.
"The others think they hated Suryven, but in truth they had a begrudging connection to him that was just as important to the overall camaraderie as anything else. They relied on him, him being the black mage of the group, to serve as our guide, using destructive but ultimately controlled powers to shape our path before us." said Meridia.
"Maybe you don't really need him, though." said Ian. "Maybe the same resolve that brought you here to find him is all you need to bring the group back together."
"But he is part of the group." said Meridia.
"But if he's gone, he's gone. Best to cut your losses and make do with what you have left." said Ian.
"Cut? Our. . . losses?" said Meridia.
"Accept that you've lost what you've lost, and not lose more trying to get it back." Ian explained.
"But Suryven is not a 'what', he is a 'who'." said Meridia.
"Doesn't matter. If he's gone, he's gone, or at least not in a state you'd want him back in. For all you know, you might have destroyed him just now." said Ian.
That was what it took for Meridia finally to break down. "He's not! He can't be! He couldn't be!" she sobbed, leaning into her hammer, the pommel of which she drove into the ground to steady herself.
"Oh, yes he can." said Ian. "But, look. You know that you have the will it took to bring you here. You can muster that up in you again, and you can bring your people back together."
"After leaving him here, I don't know if I will." sniffed Meridia.
"You can find it again." said Ian. "But as of now, you're chasing a dead man. Forget about it, go home."
Then a strange cracking in the sky was once again heard as a man in armor, born aloft by the capricious functioning of space itself within this dimension, cleaved through a much larger, heavier machine that seemed more industrial, and was armed with what seemed like actual weaponry—two drills, to be precise. But Ian saw very little of it before it crumbled into nothing after the man with the long blonde ponytail, wearing samurai armor bisected it with a katana that had a terrifyingly familiar 'buzzing' sound.
"The general!" said Meridia, just before 'the general' dropped down from the sky, surprisingly not breaking anything, but instead landing catlike, before straightening up.
"Your conversation carried a hell of a long way." said Turquoise Laramonde. "I guess we have an answer to our big question in coming here. But, like you, Meridia, I don't find it to be a satisfying answer. Nonetheless, unlike you, I will accept it. But for the sake of making it acceptable, I'm not leaving without some kind of righteous vengeance. It seems like you" and here, Turquoise pointing his buzzing katana at Ian, "work for someone who benefits from this vicious dimension. Maybe even is responsible for it! And he may have even callously made use of our fallen compatriot's soul as some kind of raw material for some accursed necromantic devices! Well, if that's the case, it seems like your presence here presents us with a perfect opportunity with a chance to honor our soldier by avenging him. So let's not mince words in getting to mincing this interlo-"
"Hold it." said Ian.
"Nngh?" grunted Turquoise, seeming more confused than angry at being interrupted.
"Why are you talking like that?" asked Ian.
"Ohh, I know alll about your world." said Turquoise. "And plenty of others!" He raised up his sword. "This beauty was made by a mage from another world. He wove pocket dimensions into an already-fine blade to lace it with spatially-compacted 'chain saws'. You familiar with what those are?"
"Not in the capacity of being magicked into a katana, but I know they're used to cut down trees and occasionally people in my world." said Ian.
"Ha! Then you know that this is gonna hurt!" said Turquoise, raising his sword.
Ian groaned in anticipation.
. . .
"Gregory, I am sorry but I must retire to my room, tonight." said Ferdinand.
"Why's that?" asked Gregory.
"I am feeling. . . unwell. Somehow, I feel as if my strength is ebbing and I am not sure why." said Ferdinand.
"Honestly, I get what you mean." said Monsanto. "I don't know why but I've been feeling out of it. It sucks, man."
"It is probably better for you to accept that to some degree, rather than resorting to disruptive conduct in order to retain some degree of attention, as you have been." said Ferdinand.
"That's harsh." grumbled Monsanto, as he shuffled off to his room, tired.
"Where did Monsanto go?" asked Cheyenne, who came in shortly after.
"He was looking for where his spare Viagra went." said Gregory.
"Gregory!" snapped Ferdinand. "You should not know what that is!"
Gregory just grinned, in a self-satisfied manner.
"Seriously, where is he?" asked Cheyenne.
"He's in his room, hating life because he thinks Ferdinand is a killjoy for not wanting him to try amateur pole dancing without a pole." said Gregory.
"Why do I even bother being concerned when I do nothing to try and keep you safe from any of these concepts? I'm not wired actually to try and contribute to healthy development of children. . . only to shallowly entertain. . . we all are. I'm not up to this. I'll just be in my room. If anyone, anyone at all, needs me." said Ferdinand, unusually gloomy, before slumping off to his room.
"What is everyone's problem today?" asked Cheyenne.
"Maybe it's just catching up to them after a long while of doing nothing about it." said Gregory, cryptically.
"Huh? What are you talking about?" asked Cheyenne.
"Monsanto must have been giving you a lot recently." said Gregory.
"A lot of what?" asked Cheyenne.
"Anything. Anything given out of dedication." said Gregory.
"Well, yes, he's my boyfriend!" said Cheyenne.
"Then it makes sense why you're so chipper." said Gregory.
"Why? Are you saying you think Monsanto is special?" asked Cheyenne.
"No, just open and straightforward. Giving you a lot." said Gregory.
"I don't understand." said Cheyenne.
"Doesn't matter." said Gregory. "Best go check on Rochelle, make sure she's okay."
"Gregory?" asked Cheyenne. "What do you mean?"
"Just best look out for her." said Gregory. "I don't think I could as well as you can."
"I don't understand you, but okay." said Cheyenne, who went over to Rochelle's room, after remembering where in the common room Rochelle's door had been moved to.
She opened the door, and saw Rochelle, just hunched, looking down at her own lap, her hands together where her legs crossed.
"Oh, hi, Cheyenne." she said, her voice a little dull.
"Hi?" asked Cheyenne. "What's wrong?"
"Oh, nothing." said Rochelle. "It's just I only just realized how much of my head he took up before, now that he's off somewhere being Penguin's toy soldier."
"Ian?" asked Cheyenne.
"Yeah. I don't know why but I felt more or less content just to talk my head off with him in here all day, and now that he's gone, it feels like I have nothing to do or care about. And no one to care about me, at least not in the way he did." said Rochelle.
"I won't pretend I understand." said Cheyenne. "I don't think there's any confusion about how most of us feel about him, but we've already had that conversation."
"Yeah." Rochelle said, her eyes rolling up slightly to fix Cheyenne with a black look. "We have."
"But for now, I am here, for whatever value my company can provide." said Cheyenne.
"Was that supposed to angle some kind of guilt trip at me?" asked Rochelle.
"Not intentionally." said Cheyenne. "Although, if it seemed like it did, it would probably be because I don't understand why a good thing you have with him has to cut you away from the rest of all of us."
"He was just so much closer." said Rochelle.
"You don't have to talk about him like he's dead." said Cheyenne.
"Don't even joke about that." said Rochelle.
"I wasn't joking about it, I'm just saying you have this sense of resignation that I don't think you need to." said Cheyenne. "He'll be back soon, I'm sure of it."
"How do you know that?" asked Rochelle.
"Well, I just feel like he will." said Cheyenne.
"I bet that really sucks to you, doesn't it?" asked Rochelle.
"Now who's leveling the guilt trips at whom?" asked Cheyenne, privately feeling intellectual about using the word 'whom'.
"Whatever." said Rochelle. "Why are you in here?"
"I honestly just kind of miss you. I miss when we were friendly all the time." said Cheyenne.
"You mean when we weren't fully conscious?" asked Rochelle.
"I mean, some time after, too." said Cheyenne. "Right in the beginning, don't you remember it?"
"Weren't we just going off of intertia?" asked Rochelle.
"I don't think so." said Cheyenne, getting right up next to Rochelle, and putting an arm around her shoulder. "I think we just got pushed apart by circumstances.
"Maybe." admitted Rochelle.
"Can I risk sounding like I think I know more than I do?" asked Cheyenne.
"Knock yourself out." said Rochelle.
"I think the reason you cling to close to Ian to the exclusion of everyone else is because you blame yourself for what happened to Casey, or at least you blame yourself for not appreciating every moment with him before it did. So now you're with someone unequivocally worse for you, and in general, you still treat him better and hold him closer to make sure that what you have doesn't even slightly go to waste. To the point where you ignore everyone else and feel like, well, this when he's gone." said Cheyenne.
Rochelle breathed slowly in, and out. Cheyenne drew away slightly, worried she was going to yell, before she said quietly to Cheyenne, "You're right about me and Casey. But about Ian, you're wrong. The thing is, he's just similar enough to me that I think he understands what I feel. And he says a lot of words that are meant to sound deep to try and impress me because he's like me, he feels the need to perform, and produce some kind of 'beauty' to be seen by. He knows he's an ugly fuck. So he tries talking beautifully. And I think he thinks I fall for every 'deep' thing he says to try and impress me, but I don't bother correcting him because I appreciate it. Because it proves he's like me, and sometimes those words do have meaning. Anyway, you have got it right that I do treat every moment of romantic love as precious because of Casey. But with Ian I genuinely think his is better because he's so similar that I know he knows me. He might even think he's better than me, like I tend to think I'm better than other people," Cheyenne snorted at this, but Rochelle continued, "but if he knows what's good for him he'll figure out for real that we're two of the same and that's why we belong together."
"I think you're way better than him." said Cheyenne.
"I may be way better looking and better socially, but he's creative and also seems really good at being Opera Penguin's weapon. Not sure how I feel about that second one, to be honest, but I think he enjoys it, even though he seems moody when Penguin interrupts our time to send him out." said Rochelle.
"That's sweet, I think?" said Cheyenne. "But is it really necessary for you not to be happy at all without him?"
"I guess not." said Rochelle. "But I guess I also think the main point of my existence is love through beauty. The love I earn through beauty is what matters. I don't earn anything from you, I never have. His love is more, because I know the beauty, not only of my appearance but of my tragedy is what drew him in. The poetry I provoke from his lips is the proof that he loves me. At least, that's what I think. And that's somehow just so much more profound to me than the buddy-buddy stuff that we have."
"Have?" asked Cheyenne, perking up.
"Yeah, I don't see why I need to be avoiding it anymore." said Rochelle. "You're not trying to pull me away from my love of him. And nothing about admitting that I care about you is gonna get in the way of staying his, and keeping him."
Rochelle hugged Cheyenne. "I guess I should be sorry that I've been such a bitch to you, but it's just kind of who I am."
"Well, your mere consideration of that fact is appreciated." said Cheyenne.
Rochelle cracked up. "I'm not sure if you're being passive aggressive or your attempt at a positive response just came off that way."
"The second, and for reference I do also appreciate the way you look and perform too, you know. Everyone does!" said Cheyenne.
"Yeah, but with that special person it feels more like I'm doing it for them, and like it's inherently a part of our relationship." said Rochelle.
"Does that mean they'd stop loving you if you didn't? Or couldn't?" asked Cheyenne.
Rochelle shrugged. "Maybe. But the point is, I'd never. Because it's what I do for my part of the relationship, and a necessary part of being me. If I couldn't, well, merely not being able to would be as bad as not being loved anyway." said Rochelle. "Not being able to radiate the beauty that merits love is as bad as not being loved, which in turn is worse than being dead."
"I don't think that's true." said Cheyenne. "Even if you were left a charred body, but still alive, I would still care for you."
"If you would care, you would kill me." said Rochelle.
"But there's beauty in simply existing, in the you that is despite how you are outside." said Cheyenne.
"But that 'me' is unfulfilled without the ability to manifest beauty. Enclosed inside myself, I'm both unsatisfied and effectively worthless." said Rochelle. "You aren't going to convince me otherwise."
"Oh, well. Just know that, even if it is a different kind of love, I still love you just as much as Ian does. Even if it isn't as valuable to you." said Cheyenne.
"Love requires understanding." said Rochelle. "I know you try, but I don't think you quite understand—or even can understand—like he does. That's what makes up for his ugly face and ugly interactions with you all.
. . .
Michael trudged through the patchwork world of bright colors interspersed with dusty darkness, and even the occasional psychedelic vision of something else, sometimes accompanied by a stream of consciousness speech from some unknown source.
It had been a while, but it seemed to be cut all too short when Michael saw a fat guy getting menaced by a samurai. Somehow, he knew the former to be 'Ian', and that he probably wasn't getting out of here until the samurai was dealt with.
. . .
"Come on, Meridia, let's take care of this wretch." said Turquoise.
"I. . . cannot." said Meridia.
"THE FUCK?" asked Turquoise.
"I do not believe this is a right way to react." said Meridia. "He seems uncouth, but in this circumstance, innocent. He is not responsible for the actions of his master, nor was he clearly aware. In any case, his words make it seem to me like he has some level of care for others, which would be found in one guilty of such an act."
"Your heart's in the right place, but your head's gonna be in the wrong one if you don't—" said Turquoise, before Ian threw a lightning bolt against his turned head. "BITCH!" Turquoise screamed in response to the impudent rod of plasma.
Just as Turquoise swung at Ian, another chainsaw countered his, this one glowing red hot. It was thrown, and at the end of a cord.
Turquoise jerked his head to the side again, to see a nondescript man wearing very 'descript' black leather clothing strolling towards him.
"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?" screamed Turquoise, who was now losing it.
"My name is Michael, and I'm here to fight you because I was sent here by this monkey's owner." said Michael. "I'd honestly love to see them both die, but I don't know the way out of here."
"You're following the orders of your enemy? That's madness!" said Turquoise.
"If you weren't expecting madness, you didn't know what you were getting into when you came here." said Michael. "But I don't follow orders. I follow what I believe is right."
"The people I take orders with align with the values I believe in." said Turquoise. "Freedom. Growth. Expansion. Exploration."
"Whatever." said Michael. "All I care about is killing my father."
"Wha-?" asked Turquoise, dumbstruck, before Michael conjured up a bandolier of knives and began rapid-fire chucking them at the general.
Turquoise leapt to the side, and then, with a single swing to the face, took down Michael. Michael wasn't dead, but he played at being so, since a massive gash was cut into his front.
"Well." said Turquoise. "That was anticlimactic. I'm not gonna ask about what disturbed individual that was, but—" Ian threw more lightning at him again.
Just as Turquoise let out a battle cry and charged at Ian, something grabbed him.
"WHAT? WHO IS IT NOW—" said Turquoise, throwing his head to the side and then screaming involuntarily as he saw the charred face of Burnt Roxanne.
He jerked away, and shook his head. "Alright, you just startled me! I've fought and slain worse monsters than you by the horde!"
"I don't care. That one. He belongs to me. He's not yours to hurt. He's mine." said Burnt Roxanne.
"Well, buckle the fuck up, little doggy. Because I'm avenging my fallen comrade, no matter how many people I have to kill in the process. Not that you're a person." snarled Turquoise.
"I don't know who you're talking about." said Burnt Roxanne. "But that doesn't change anything. He belongs to me."
"And I bet you don't know where I'm from, either!" yelled Turquoise, inflicting three broad sweeps against Burnt Roxanne's body, letting loose plenty of blood but not even making her tremble. "You don't know the light of Prismrealm, or the glory of our heroes. You don't know the smell of the flower fields, or the thrill of riding an airship! You've never seen our light, smelled our air, and so you can never understand what I'm fighting for. Sadly, you never will. Even an abomination like you deserves that, in my eyes. But it doesn't really matter from my standpoint. Even if you don't get it, you can die for it all the same. So buckle the fuck up, little doggy!"
Burnt Roxanne lunged, and bit Turquoise in the arm, but he just laughed, and shook her off before delivering four more slashes at lightning speed. At this time, Burnt Roxanne was just starting to shake.
Ian, of course, just watched. He didn't want to help either of these people, but he was pondering attacking whichever seemed like the likely loser. But then again, if he over- or underestimated the tides of battle, he could end up leaving himself with a perfectly strong foe, and-
"Ian, what is this? Who is this creature?" asked Meridia.
"A mistake. Of mine." said Ian. "I was a bit too cruel with a monster. And I manipulated her with sweet words in order to do it. I got her guard down by telling her I would love her. Now she's following me, coming to collect. We should probably run."
"The general will not lose!" said Meridia.
"I hope you're right, but I know you're wrong." said Ian. "Let's get out of here, and if all goes well, he can come for my ass again."
Meridia and Hamshackle reluctantly agreed, and began to walk off. But just as Ian looked back, and Meridia felt compelled to do likewise, they saw a horrible sight.
Burnt Roxanne had grabbed Turquoise's arm with her hand, and his throat with her jaw. Then she ripped his throat out.
As he fell to his knees, and bled out, she said, "I will assimilate your consciousness. I will take your essence. You will become but another part of me, except for all that is not like me.
But then, Turquoise looked up defiantly, and spat in her face. "Just like I said, you don't understand anything. YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND FREEDOM! THE FREEDOM I EMBRACE IS INFUSED IN ME, TO MY VERY CORE!"
Then, a glowing image of himself rose off his body, and then shot into the sky, leaving a black hole in it. And as it did so, Burnt Roxanne's jaw snapped quite nearly off.
Meridia ran back, but oddly not to Turquoise. She ran to Burnt Roxanne, and gently raised her hand to the latter's jaw. A creamy light appeared, and Burnt Roxanne's jaw was mended.
Ian took the form of lightning, and shot back to Meridia before resuming his normal form.
"Meridia, what the hell? That thing is dangerous!" he yelled.
"A promise made should not be broken. If you promised her love, you should not let yourself be a liar." said Meridia.
Ian was dumbstruck, before recovering enough to say, "Are you stupid? She's a monster!"
"I can see that it was only after your cruel attack that she began to look as horrific as she does now." said Meridia.
"But I lie all the time!" said Ian.
"Those about love are the lies most repugnant." said Meridia.
Hamshackle caught up to them. "You've got to pay some price for all this." he said. "Between your probably being in cahoots with the guy who killed our friend, and the death of the general at the hands of someone who was only here because of you, you need to be punished. So embrace her."
"No, this is about honesty, about truth in love-" said Meridia.
"This is about total bullshit." said Ian.
Then suddenly, Opera Penguin appeared, and picked up Michael's prone body, slinging it over his shoulder.
"Six out of ten performance. You were totally useless, but really funny to watch for the short duration you were up." said Opera Penguin.
"And who are you?" asked Meridia.
"I'm the guy who exploited your best friend-slash-desired boy toy's ghost. Although I didn't kill him. Anyway, toodle-oo!" said Opera Penguin, vanishing as Hamshackle attempted to tackle him.
After Hamshackle got up, he and Meridia looked back to Ian.
Ian raised his hands menacingly.
"You wouldn't hurt us." said Meridia. "We have fought alongside one another, and you have taken the time to give me advice, surely you could not bring yourself to do so!"
Ian, looking past Meridia to the rising body of Burnt Roxanne, said "That's where you're wrong, bucko." and unleashed a horizontally-rending wave of lightningless thunder that tore not only Meridia and Hamshackle, but the whole dimension around them, in half.
. . .
As Opera Penguin threw Michael down on the ground, he sensed something again, something that he hadn't in a while.
He blinked to the highest point of the roof, and saw the middle-aged man in a pinstripe suit with shoulderpads so extravagantly sized and shaped that they seemed to extend his shoulders into spikes, and with a red flower sticking out of his breast pocket. The man had an off-putting face, with gaunt skin, squinting eyes, large yet taut greyish lips, and wrinkles that did not have enough skin to flourish. He had a black, receding combover, yet his eyebrows were thick and heavy. He wore black gloves over severely thin fingers.
"Hello!" said Opera Penguin, holding his arms out broadly.
"Greetings." said Maxwell.
"To what do I owe the pleasure?" asked Opera Penguin.
"I'm not here for personal reasons." said Maxwell.
"Oh." said Opera Penguin, dropping his arms. "Well, I expected as much."
Maxwell conjured up his cutlass of shadows.
"But where are the others?" asked Opera Penguin.
"Oswald? Why would I bring a wheelchair-bound man to such an occasion?" asked Maxwell.
"But Gerald?" asked Opera Penguin.
"The concept of a 'team' apparently still evades him." said Maxwell. "And besides, I believe he thinks direct confrontation to be beneath him."
"I thought you were the same?" asked Opera Penguin.
"I do, normally, but I also know to drop my pride when there's no other way to sustain us." said Maxwell. "The new quotas are hell.
"Quotas?" asked Opera Penguin.
"Oh, right." said Maxwell. "You've been off sulking for a bit more than a year now, haven't you?"
"I've been doing a fair bit more than 'sulking'." said Opera Penguin.
"Well, I don't know how else to see it, for you to be lurking in some backwater part of Lowrealm for a year after you failed a test, and then a month and a half in Earthrealm, playing with toys." said Maxwell.
"I've picked up some skills." said Opera Penguin.
"Well, let's see them, then!" said Maxwell, conjuring up a ring of six Terrorbeaks.
Opera's hand was a blur, as his pistol went back and forth, unloading all of its bullets, each through one of the nightmare apparitions' heads, blowing out of them what looked like just some more homogenous shadow matter, but was in fact much more vital, much like the contents of any fleshly avian's skull.
"I see." said Maxwell, raising his sword.
"And as for 'toys', well," said Opera Penguin, who then snapped his fingers.
Black tentacles wrapped around Maxwell's body. "Peace must be maintained." said a raspy voice.
Maxwell jerked away, and tried to swing his sword but Penguin shot him in the wrists.
"How did I not see?" asked Maxwell, confused.
"Our shadows are not like your shadows. The devil that you know has led you into a false sense of security. You're sharp, but only attuned to the order that you know, an order far more universal than this one, yes, but still one that does not reign here." said Opera Penguin.
"I am no devil." said Nyx.
"But my reign here is considered devilish by many." said Opera Penguin.
"Yet the people who live here are innocent, relatively. So I will not allow their peace to be taken." said Nyx.
"I know that." said Penguin, but Maxwell was already releasing himself.
Then Penguin saw the shadow clones, and snapped his fingers again, vanishing Nyx.
"I'm not impressed." said Maxwell.
"I know." said Opera Penguin, before snapping his fingers again, Apollo appearing behind him, and radiating his light, causing the shadows to shiver as if nauseous, before Opera Penguin darted to them, and, in a flurry of blows, making them crumple, and consequently dissolve.
Opera Penguin snapped his fingers again. Apollo vanished.
"This chicanery won't beat the Overseer." said Maxwell.
"It's not meant to, at least, not on its own." said Opera Penguin.
"Regardless, all of your workings will be for naught if you die here. And that is exactly what I intend." said Maxwell.
Opera Penguin raised his gun, but Maxwell made a whisking motion with his hand, and the gun vanished.
"Bastard!" yelled Opera Penguin.
"It intrigues me how your 'delightful stage magician' persona, which you insisted so much on maintaining for so long, is finally immaterial to you." said Maxwell, conjuring up an external ribcage around himself.
"It used to be the same for you." said Opera Penguin.
"Yet I dispensed of it with more dignity. A cutlass is still more respectable than irate pugilism and a liberally-brandished firearm." said Maxwell, as he mended his hand using a red-gemmed amulet.
"Have you ever considered wielding the stick up your ass? It seems it could be potentially far stronger." said Opera Penguin. "Or at the very least, far more durable."
"Really, you seem to have become a full-on hellion." said Maxwell. "Although still more admirable than your father. He made all the wrong deals. I made all the right ones. That's what separates he and I. Or any poor occultist from a good one."
"It seems that a 'good occultist' to you is one who works the hardest to be as little of an occultist as he can." said Opera Penguin.
"If your definition of an occultist requires that he be excessively dependent on his patrons, then of course an apt one will not fit that definition." said Maxwell. "Some degree of independence is required, if only to be able to produce something with which to bargain."
"I'd rather be the patron myself." said Opera Penguin. "To be such is to be in the position of power. The superior position."
"But to insist on that position requires one to stoop to lower enough beings so as to need and be content with what you can provide." said Maxwell. "Focusing on your pride to the detriment of actual lofty goals, and higher achievement. You seem to have become so obsessed with being the source of providence that you prefer to be the king of mud pies rather than risk feeling like a beggar in the realm of the numinous."
"Don't act like you're not also obsessed with being higher than those around you." said Opera Penguin, striding towards Maxwell as he cracked his knuckles.
"The difference lies in the fact that I admit a position of inferiority in the hidden realms for the sake of discovery, even as I use that discovery to become a master of such mysteries." said Maxwell. "You, on the other hand, are complacent in your lowly rulership, and the petty discoveries you make, tinkering with what is worthless."
"The only thing you learn from them is how to tether yourself more hopelessly to them." said Opera Penguin. "And every now and then, they give you some power of your own, that's like them, so you have little bits of power that you can vaguely apply your knowledge to. But tinkering with little things is how I slowly build up knowledge that is mine, pertaining to what is under my control, and with that lowly foundation I build up what I have, rather than being pulled up into a great darkness that I openly call upon to subsume me." said Opera Penguin, casting a magic missile that took Maxwell by surprise, tearing into his pectoral badly enough that he had to draw back, waiting for the benefit of his amulet to kick in again.
"You project your father onto me." said Maxwell. "I am given power as soon as I gain comprehension, and that is the nature of this darkness. Though it keeps its knowledge rare, it gives itself over to those with the knowledge, to take it into themselves and incubate it, to absorb it and cultivate it as a new part of themselves."
"I'll say it again," said Opera Penguin, striking Maxwell across the face with a left hook. "It is far better to be the one supplying, meting out the gifts, controlling who receives them, and controlling those that do through their reception of them, by controlling that which one makes a part of them. However dirty the realm may be, I cultivate it, I grow it up and then I make it something worth ruling over. Whereas you start out a peasant in a grand world, but you will never be anything more than that. Absolute control over the worthless, becoming absolute control over something greater, versus enslavement to darkness becoming deluded enslavement to darkness. Just because you become part of it doesn't mean you're any more on top."
"I don't need to be on top of them!" yelled Maxwell, as he formed his sword again in his now-restored arm. "I just need to be on top of people like you!" then he drew first blood from Penguin, who shuddered at the large gash in his chest.
"Well. . ." said Opera Penguin. Then he plunged his fist though Maxwell's midsection, just under his ribcage. "You aren't."
"How?" asked Maxwell, stepping back again.
"I've gone full in on those things which I've taken an interest in." said Opera Penguin. "Not just the rulership of this dark, microscopic world, but also, as you've said, the irate pugilism. The gunplay. The study of replacement bodies." He raised a hand, and it seemed to become some kind of faintly-glowing grey-white plasma as it jittered back and forth.
"Abominable. . ." said Maxwell, looking in shock at the hand, and then down at the small crater near his stomach. "I can't help but admire it."
"Through these, my friends live on." said Opera Penguin.
Maxwell's eyes dropped as he sneered at Opera Penguin.
"My, my. You really don't know, do you? You really are that oblivious, for all your assumed astuteness. The wool hasn't merely been pulled over your eyes, you've stitched it there, conjoined it to your skin." said Maxwell.
"What?" asked Opera Penguin, before Maxwell stabbed him about where he'd punched Maxwell.
"Your friends are alive, fool." said Maxwell. "They're living with your failure of the test. They didn't get the benefits of it, because you failed. The test was all about you, not any of the rest of them, to see if you were, at your core, really cold enough to go on without them, strong enough to withstand their loss. And you weren't. You failed, and so now they're slaving away, and they hate you for it."
"You're lying!" yelled Opera Penguin.
"At least, the one with the orange glasses—Death Commander? He hates you. I don't know if the others share his disposition, of course, but—" said Maxwell, before he was interrupted by Opera Penguin laughing. He laughed hysterically, even as he coughed up blood.
"Him? He's always hated me! He hated my act, and he hated me more when Fist King got him to stop bullying me when we were still teenagers. Try harder if you're gonna make up bullshit about them being alive." said Opera Penguin.
"Fist King won't even talk about you." said Maxwell.
Opera Penguin's face dropped. "What do you mean?"
"He just grimaces. Almost like he's ashamed that you ever existed." said Maxwell, as he both figuratively and literally twisted the blade.
Then Opera Penguin's arm blurred again, and this time, Maxwell's jaw left his face, before being used as a club to knock it in.
Maxwell's incomplete visage gawked at Opera Penguin, who, with the blade still embedded in his body, pulled a white shotgun out of a pocket dimension, leveled it at Maxwell's head, right into the gaping expanse where his jaw had been, and fired.
The body hit the ground with a thud.
The sword vanished, and Opera Penguin healed himself.
Opera Penguin then slung Maxwell's body over his shoulder, took it out to the outskirts of the nearest woods, and began to make a pit before a new arrival occurred. Out of the darkness, a pale-faced woman, wearing what Opera Penguin originally thought was a body suit, but then realized was a long, vantablack dress, ascended.
"You weren't about to burn his body, were you?" she purred.
"I was, and I am." said Opera Penguin.
"No need for that." she said, as she raised her hand, and Maxwell's body was dragged by shadows that lie under the woman's imposing form by many dark hands.
"If ever you feel inclined to swallow your pride, there are patrons waiting for you in Darkrealm as well. In the free territories. It's not all a dictatorship. Out in the country, there are much more wild and free spirits. Maybe not just your pride, even. You're a handsome man, after all." she winked.
"Go to hell." said Opera Penguin.
"The only hell to which I'll go is the one I call home." said the woman.
"But first, what say you, of his lies?" asked Opera Penguin.
"Lies? Are you talking about what he said regarding your teammates? Those were not lies." said the woman.
"And what, pray tell, do you have to tell me about their disposition towards me?" asked Opera Penguin.
"Well, since you ask, their primary feeling is. . . regret." said the woman as she vanished into the darkness, and that left Opera Penguin feeling worst of all. Not least because he didn't know exactly what it meant.
. . .
Right as a man discovered he had finally successfully gotten that sick metal hair he had wanted, and Ian flopped through a rift back into the Pizzaplex, Andre Hellfire found himself suddenly dueling Laney Rodriguez. Her newfound expansion of her abilities, now allowing her to move those she had 'paralyzed', allowed her to toy with the Converts assigned to her, as both of these things were granted to her by her new status as one of them, following her death.
However, it was really all blending together to him. He was really enjoying it, too. One fight after another, and constantly he sated his new craving for life force, the devouring of which satisfied him almost orgasmically, and steeled him to continue fighting, which did much the same. He loved killing. He loved converting girls into 'special girls'. He loved it when they followed him, and no longer cared about the ones that cried, knowing their lives and natural progression of growth had been snuffed out. He loved toying with their new forms as he made them, making them tall, making them strong, one of them he made not have an anus and he didn't even know why, nor did he care, except that it was vaguely funny to him.
. . .
Ian nearly fell on his face as he appeared in the Atrium, dropping Turquoise's sword, which he had grabbed as the dimension faded. Everyone just happened to be there, and he got up, and stumbled towards Rochelle.
He nearly fell to his knees again as he reached her, but she held out a hand, which he took before she aggressively pulled him into an overly-involved embrace. The taste of her mouth was a little gross, but oddly comforting to Ian.
"Happy to be back here, mine again?" asked Rochelle.
"Wait, I stopped being?" asked Ian.
"Good answer." said Rochelle, smiling as Ian slumped to his knees and buried his face in her belly, her hands holding his head gently.
"If only he could use a charging station." muttered Vanessa. "This display is pathetic."
"Is he okay?" asked Cheyenne.
"Tired." said Ian.
"You could at least stay on your feet. . ." said Cheyenne.
"You could stay quiet while we're having a moment." said Ian.
"Ian, Cheyenne, get along before I make you two kiss." said Rochelle, and although her weird giggling clearly made it apparent that she was joking, Monsanto said "Hey, I don't know if I like that!"
"Bleugh! I'd rather fuck him!" snapped Ian.
Monsanto, realizing that the situation was less than serious, quipped "Well, you do seem to be a lot thinner than when I last saw you. . . bit more muscled, better jawline, too."
"If you did that, then I would use the fact that you can regenerate your dick as an excuse to rip it off and eat it." said Rochelle.
"But wait. . . you'd rip it off and eat it. . . because it was in another man's ass? That's almost like you're eating another man's ass! Rochelle, I can't believe you'd eat another man's ass! YOU'RE ONLY SUPPOSED TO EAT MY ASS!" said Ian, before descending into shrieking laughter.
This was finally beyond the pale, and the other three stared at him.
"I mean. If you want." said Ian. "A little pegging wouldn't hurt, ei-" he continued, before Rochelle slapped him.
Opera Penguin blinked into the room, straightening his hat, which seemed to have fallen off, as if in a scuffle, and hissed "You people are so damned disgusting, I swear. . ."
"But yeah, anyway, bed would be nice." said Ian.
"What, do you want me to carry you?" asked Rochelle.
"Would be nice." said Ian, and then suddenly he started floating in midair.
"What's going on?" asked Rochelle.
"I'm just giving myself airs." chortled Ian, before he realized no one would get his joke, and sighing, before saying "I'm infusing my body with some of the properties of the air element. Had some excess magic to do it with."
"You really want me to carry you that much?" asked Rochelle, bemused.
"You have no idea how much I love your hands on me." murred Ian.
Rochelle laughed, and tried not to be disgusted as she felt Ian's diminished, but still noticeable rolls as she held onto him and walked him back to her room.
They had a good night, a relaxed night. They didn't do much, but were satisfied nonetheless, mainly due to the sheer joy of their regained mutual presence. It would be one of their last, and it was the last that was this joyful.
. . .
A man awoke to find his appearance changed. His name was Nathan Porter.
His hair was long and dark, and his body was bulkier, stronger. He felt emboldened. He felt ready to take on hell, except that he knew that the truest hell was the one that now lived inside him. A dark fire in his chest, and in his soul.
He opened his gun cabinet, for it had taken no deliberation to realize what he wanted to do with his newfound strength.
"Never thought I'd be seeing you again like this." he whispered to his guns.
He packed a couple things. A combat knife. A few grenades. A pack of jerky, although he knew his real hunger was for bloodshed.
"To hell with them all." he muttered, as he turned towards his glass front door. As he strode towards, it, a grin curled up on his face. "There's only one race: the human race. And I'm fucking racist against them."
. . .
Night 46
Ian woke up in the black room, with Opera Penguin.
"Why am I here?" he asked.
"I don't know. I sensed you wanted something so I figured I'd cut to the chase." said Opera Penguin.
"Well, there is something." admitted Ian.
"Yes?" asked Opera Penguin.
"Is there one of those spells of yours, for. . . I don't know encapsulating the 'you' that's in a particular moment? The way you are in a given circumstance? A specific mood? A specific, I don't know," Ian stammered.
"Passion?" asked Opera Penguin. "Let me describe this, and tell me if it fits the bill: Himmerman's Phantom of a Flight of Fancy. Don't mind the stupid name. It encapsulates an temporal instance of the self, a framing of the persona in a given moment, or the self that exists in the midst of a certain passion. The version of you made by a few conditions. It copies yourself from the impression of you, and by absorbing those internal passions and reactions, yet you will continue to feel them as long as the spell, which becomes a so-called 'phantom', remains within you. The 'phantom' isn't a complete entity within itself, but rather a fragment of spiritual essence of that temporary facet of you, the self in a moment, crystallized into a separate and stable construct. It can also focus on yourself shaped in terms of one specific passion or reaction, or another, or even pull out semi-permanent facets of your personality if they bear a relation to the passions it also takes. It all depends on how you let the spell grip you. Perfect for when you tire of being a certain way, but don't want it to go to waste either."
"Yes! It is perfect!" said Ian, joyfully. "But, if I focus on one 'passion' in specific, will that affect closely-related ones?"
"Not if you carve out the walls of specificity, to segregate one passion from another, to define what exactly you want extracted. In any case, the effects of the spell can be quite unnatural. It uproots and absorbs the passion so that it will exist within you exactly as long as the 'phantom' remains within you, and scarcely a moment past that." said Opera Penguin.
"GREAT!" cheered Ian, pumping his fists.
"But, Ian. . ." said Opera Penguin, and his voice softened, almost starting to sound caring. "You and Rochelle fit together better than you realize. You might not want to throw it away. And it might not be so temporary on its own. Even once the passion of your flesh calms down, and your heart ceases to flutter, you might be shocked about how brilliant the passion of your love remains."
"But I don't want that." said Ian. "She's. . . beneath me."
"But you two have quite a lot in common." said Opera Penguin. "You both define the love you take part in as a part of yourself, of your legitimacy and completeness as a person. As a prerequisite for fulfillment. You both see it about both yourself, and the other, and feel that for one who has become intimately part of your life to leave you and consider you no longer any more theirs than anyone else is a betrayal, doubly so if they find someone else. A betrayal worth revenge."
"Hah, as if she could even try to get revenge on me." said Ian.
"I'm not done yet. You also wish not only to be loved, but loved for what you find worthy of love. Loved for what you would love in others, or would love yourself for, whether as yourself or through someone else's eyes. And yet, when it comes to becoming intimate with others, you also have a very reactive sense of love. If someone has the basemost beauty and charm to you, and if they in their character are at all favorable, you reflect back at them any affection that they give. Or sometimes even more than they give. This is partially because you feel scarcely worthy of any love at all. At least from someone you deem lovable." said Opera Penguin. "You also feel more lovable when you feel loved—that is, you derive affirmation from affection, although mainly from affection you feel you have earned, because to feel you have earned it is in itself an affirmation. But regarding your reactive love, if someone displays enough genuine desire for you, then your love of them will withstand nearly all except for the aforementioned, so-called 'betrayal'. Even some things which would be considered by some to be unforgivable."
"Nothing's unforgivable." said Ian. "As long as you've got someone able to forgive it."
"Certainly." said Opera Penguin. "But the grace of most is quite limited. In any case. To speak of you alone, Ian, I do not believe you condone bigamy, now do you?"
"Hell no!" said Ian.
"Quite right of you. And, you think that, stuck between two who have drawn close to oneself, the only way forward is to choose between them?" asked Opera Penguin.
"Well, yeah?" said Ian.
"Very good." said Opera Penguin. "Now, logically, given your nature, you would choose the one who more passionately desires you, yes? And the one before whom you have shown a far greater performance?"
"And the one who's really seen what I'm like. Who knows me better. That person has more of a right to be mine." said Ian.
"Understandable." said Opera Penguin. "So I'm just wondering, Ian. If there isn't someone else motivating this. Someone who has done something 'unforgivable'. But you just feel she loves you, oh so much. Are you proposing to cast away Rochelle, not only because of your contempt for her, a contempt that has been fading, and slowly being replaced with actual love, but also because of another's love for you? Perhaps even aided by that 'unforgivable' thing she did?"
"Did you watch while it was happening." asked Ian, in a dead voice.
"No, I must apologize but I only recently examined your escapades through the dream realms. I did set up cameras there, but I'm sorry to say that I simply was too busy to watch up until recently." said Opera Penguin. "But anyway, does what she did make you feel loved?"
"No." said Ian. "It just makes me feel like I don't own myself anymore. But even without that, it's as you said. I'm sick of my shtick with Rochelle. I feel like I've been experiencing the teenage fuckboy phase I never got to go through, late. I kind of like her, but apart from the emotional highs and feelings of relatability, I feel like she's a toy. Maybe I do love her underneath it all, but I'm so confused, and like I said, I have to choose."
"I do believe you care for her, Ian." said Opera Penguin. "And I believe that it's because of her that you choose Burnt Roxanne. Because you see her frightful visage, and you see it matches your internal character far better. And part of you knows that, and feels unworthy of Rochelle, and afraid of hurting her."
"But that's gonna go away, right? With the phantom?" asked Ian.
"Most of it." said Opera Penguin. "But part of that care is stable, even as the part of you that mocks her and laughs at her is. You have approached her as a joke girl, a living bit of humor, a mockery of what she pretends to be, and that is understandable. This whole place is like that. Pretending to be all that it cannot ever be. But you, at the same time, love her. The tenderness in your heart for her is real, and I suspect that is why you also want to preserve it forever, rather than letting it be callously blown away by the raging winds of the thunderstorm inside of you."
"Yeah." said Ian.
"Very well." said Opera Penguin. "But, on three conditions."
"Yeah?" asked Ian.
"One! The phantom will end up in Gregory." said Opera Penguin.
"You sick bastard." said Ian. "He's just a kid, and she's an adult."
"Actually, she's ageless. In her current state, she will never age, nor grow, and is infertile because neither shall any seed grow within her. It is like this in all of them." said Opera Penguin. "But their bodies are receptive to their hearts. Should something happen that reawakens the child within them—that is, the vestiges thereof—they will become childlike initially, but enter the cycle of growth and death. And become able to birth their own. But, is your exclamation a refusal of this deal?"
"OF CO-" said Ian, before he stopped himself, and said, defeatedly, "no."
"No. That's what I thought." said Opera Penguin. "Your attempt to be moral only ended up displaying your hypocrisy."
"Kind of a shame I'll never have kids with her, though." said Ian. "I kind of wanted them. And if we did, I'd stay with her, but I guess that means that what we're going now kind of negates all that."
"I suppose so." said Opera Penguin.
Then, after a silence, Opera Penguin said, "Two! At the exact point you officially leave her, she will be sent back down to the basement. This is in accordance with the agreement we already had."
"Yeah. Don't see how that's part of this deal, though." said Ian.
"More of a reminder, really." said Opera Penguin.
"And?" asked Ian.
"Three! Burnt Roxanne will be sent to Lowrealm. I can take you there, but you must not take her back here!" said Opera Penguin.
"Okay." said Ian. "What's Lowrealm? I've heard you mention it, but what precisely is it?"
"It's something akin to what you'd call the 'underworld'." said Opera Penguin.
"Oh. I guess that's where things like Burnt Roxanne belong." said Ian. "And me, too."
"It was originally much smaller, but it was given the ability to assimilate other realms that have. . . gone to the wayside." said Opera Penguin. "Originally, it was a deep darkness that was, surprisingly, mostly a jungle with black earth. But, as it's expanded, it's become a lot different. Most dimensions still end up getting jungle-like growth interspersed within them, and the outskirts in which I've made a base were originally a different dimension, but have now also become a jungle, albeit almost constantly illuminated with a saffron light."
"So I'll get to visit her?" asked Ian.
"Yes." said Opera Penguin.
"Can she have kids?" asked Ian.
"Only time will tell." said Opera Penguin. "She is still a very unstable being, so nothing is, as of yet, set in stone."
"Does she love me?" asked Ian.
"She has made herself love you, with a desperation Rochelle, even in those tense moments discussing her freedom, has never known. She loves you because she feels she has to, but the love brought forth from that is real nonetheless. She has come to appreciate you, Ian, in nearly all the ways Rochelle has, although, somehow, she's become able to spy on you from within the dream realms, a property of her connection to them, I'm sure, and she burns with envy over seeing you with Rochelle. So, she has both something she wants to catch up with, and a blueprint, on what to do with you." said Opera Penguin. "But you will have to help her return to stability. To undo the damage you have done, to an extent."
"Sure." said Ian.
"Then let us begin. I will help you in not harming other ideas and feelings." said Opera Penguin, as Ian knelt before him and Opera Penguin, with stretched-out fingers, laid the inner side his knuckles against the sides of Ian's head.
. . .
Ian woke up with Rochelle looking down on him.
"Get up." she said. "You've been so still I thought you were dead. You've got to catch up with your affection backlog, even if you're tired because of the reason you've got one."
Ian looked up and chuckled, and Rochelle smiled, as he kissed her.
"I don't ever want you to leave for that long again." said Rochelle.
"Yeah. . ." said Ian, a pang of sorrow coming across him. But he knew the part of him that felt it wouldn't leave her. It would continue with her, inside of. . .
"Ian, is something wrong? Is there something you're not telling me?" asked Rochelle.
"Sometimes I get intrusive thoughts, and I just pictured you having a passionate love affair with Gregory." said Ian, more or less honestly.
"What the." Rochelle was incapable of finishing her statement.
"It was actually sort of cute, even though it was gross as fuck." said Ian.
"Ian, what's wrong with you?" asked Rochelle.
"I'm not quite sure, but you make me feel like I'm salvageable, for what it's worth." said Ian, smiling.
"Well, don't prove that feeling wrong." said Rochelle, before pulling him up, and hugging him, nestling her head into his neck.
"Even if I were to, can you promise me something?" asked Ian.
"Depends." said Rochelle. "What do you want me to promise?"
"Know that, whatever might be said, whatever contradictions to this seem to come along, even if these very words are denounced, that the love I have for you is real. Anything—or anyone—that comes along to deny that, even if it were me, myself, is the liar. Not me, in this moment. The love we share, I know to be real, on my end. And I'm confident it's real on your end, too."
"Of course!" said Rochelle. "But why are you asking this?"
"Well, just remember. That dream I had, a while ago." said Ian.
"Yeah, I'm sorry I overreacted like that." said Rochelle. "Talking about not wanting to be like a little girl, and there I was."
"Well, it's hard to be your own, strong person when everything is being forcibly managed for you—by a man in a fucking Tuxedo Mask costume, no less." said Ian.
"You're going to die." said Opera Penguin's voice, as he did not even deign to appear physically.
Ian and Rochelle laughed, but Opera Penguin did not further threaten them.
"Am I really worth you?" asked Ian, smiling serenely.
"Well, I am exceptional." said Rochelle. "But you're not too bad either. And besides, if someone as exceptional as me loves you. . ."
Ian squeezed Rochelle in his arms. "You're so warm." he said.
"I'm about to go cold and limp if you don't let me breathe." Rochelle managed to squeeze out.
"Sorry." Ian said, laughing.
In the black room, from where he watched them, Opera Penguin checked his teeth for cavities.
. . .
Gregory woke up to two characters standing above him that looked like Mangle but not, well, mangled. They also looked to have been crossbred with a microphone, and one of them departed more from her color palette by being purple and orange where she was pink, and having black pits with white sparks for eyes. The purple and orange one also seemed more insubstantial, illuminating her surroundings with a vaguely, whitish-bluish light like a digital monitor, and occasionally seeming to become visually overlay with three-dimensional television static.
The normal, pink one looked to Mangle, and said, "You should be ashamed of yourself, hounding a little boy like this." Interestingly, her voice was the booming voice of an adult man.
"Oh, get off." said the weirdly-colored one. "It's just banter, it's just childish playing."
"Soliciting a young boy!? And attempting to coax him into death in order to do so!?" yelled the pink-and-white one.
"We're all basically young, some of us are just staying that way." said the staticky one. "Even if some are pretending to be all 'responsible' and 'mature'."
"Funtime is right. . ." said Mangle, who had woken up. "I'm horrible. . ."
"I just woke up, and I don't get what's going on." said Grergory.
"Do not worry, it should not burden you." said 'Funtime'. "Come, back to the basement with you."
Mangle began to move off of Gregory, before he grabbed a strand of metal.
"Ow! Wait! Stop listening to her, I'm fine with you being here, just stop having conversations when I'm trying to sleep." said Gregory.
"But I really am horrible for everything I've done-" said Mangle, before Gregory clapped a hand to his head. "Oh! Not this again! You!" he turned to 'Funtime'. "You've started her on this again! Apologize and piss off!"
"What? I am here for you safety, and you speak to me with this impertinence-" 'Funtime' said, before Gregory telekinetically grabbed a chair, and beat her over the head with it.
"Augh! You!" she growled, before Gregory beat the side of her head with it.
'Funtime' disappeared.
"Yeesh. . . you really got her." observed the staticky one.
"Who are you two?" asked Gregory.
"I'm Lolbit. And that was Funtime Foxy, and I think you've got her mad." said Lolbit.
"Is she gonna want to kill me?" asked Gregory.
"No, just yell at you probably." said Lolbit.
"I can just solve that with violence, then." said Gregory.
"Heck yeah!" said Lolbit.
"Hey, can you cheer up Mangle?" asked Gregory.
"No way!" said Lolbit, who then kicked Mangle. However, her foot seemed to halfway phase through Mangle: while it struck her, it only seemed to push mildly before 'falling through' the metal.
"You're being way too soft and shy! You need to badger him more! Play harder! He needs to be thinking constantly about whether selfishly remaining alive and not cuddling with you as a dead person is worth it! You could be playing tag through cameras with me, and living out your happiest days on loop forever! But nnnoooo, he won't die until you push it on him a little more, and you won't." said Lolbit.
"Hey! If you have an issue with my choice, take it up with me! Don't bully her!" said Gregory.
"I'm not! I'm just playing! But I do think dying would be the right thing to do. You never have to grow up, to stress, you can be happy loving her and playing with me, forever! Your life is getting in the way of your happiness! Instead of worry about how you're such a vulnerable little boy for, what, the next six to eight years, you could just die, and become part of this realm where it doesn't matter! You're old enough to have feelings, and that's all our little world cares about!" said Lolbit. "You're old enough to play games without always crying, you're old enough to banter with without feeling like a bully! You're old enough to get a life! By dying!"
"You're crazy. Everyone is crazy here. Except maybe Vanessa. I'm getting a little sick of it." said Gregory.
"Even me?" asked Mangle.
"Yeah, but I can tolerate it with you. I'm willing to tolerate it with you, because I can accommodate my friends, but you're probably my only friend here. I mean, there's Ferdinand too, but he's not crazy, just really, really depressing recently." said Gregory. "You know what? Fuck it, let's just leave. I'm taking you with me, Mangle, because we're tight. And maybe if I die, you can hold me tight enough to keep me as a ghost anyway. Or maybe I could use my powers. But that doesn't matter, since I don't plan on dying."
"Nuh-uh!" said Lolbit. She danced around Gregory and Mangle, and blocked the doorway out. "You don't get to go! You stay here, and you play with me, until you die! And we'll be even happier once you do! We're gonna have so! Much! Fun!"
"Go away! You're beginning to come off like a lame furry version of Apollo!" said Gregory.
"I don't know who he is, but I bet he's gonna be fun, too!" said Lolbit. "We can all have so much fun, and it never has to end, you just have to die for it to be like that!"
"Enough!" cried out a high-pitched voice. "I've had enough of seeing Gregory toyed around with by, by weird people!"
A flare of fire struck Lolbit, who yelped, and prancing into and through a wall.
"Apollo!" Gregory said. "How'd you know we needed help?"
"I didn't, at first, but then I was drawn by you abusing my name!" said Apollo.
"Oh, um." said Gregory. "Sorry."
"Well, I can't hold a grudge against you, friend." said Apollo. "But I don't think you should go. There are horrible things out there, dark things, and I'm not just talking about things from the realm of man. However much 'realer' you think human threats are, that's only because you know them. The darkness hides evils that have all the reality of human malice, but have capabilities and cruelty beyond most humans. You might find humans more frightening, but that is only because you can understand their feelings with familiarity. If you could know and understand the horrors that lie in the hearts of demons, you would know horror that your mind cannot withstand the knowledge of."
"How do you know all this?" asked Gregory.
"Opera Penguin's been whispering it into my mind as I sleep." revealed Apollo.
"What's wrong with him?" asked Gregory.
"I think he actually likes me, he just thinks it's a privilege knowing about the horrors beyond the cosmos." said Apollo.
"It also helps him to prevent stupid ideas like you just had." said Opera Penguin, who had appeared behind Gregory.
"I was worried you were gonna do that." said Gregory.
"Yes. So you might as well go back into your room, cuddle your hard, dirty fox, and weep for your hopeless captivity. Because it's not this place keeping you in here. Because it's not this place that's keeping you inside. It's the pressure of what's outside, pushing you in. That this place is the only thing keeping you safe from hordes of darkness, in whose eyes a crosshairs has been painted on your head, and on your heart." said Opera Penguin.
"Because of what? Because of you!" accused Gregory.
"Yes. And because of me, you are worth many times more than a street mongrel ever would, otherwise." said Opera Penguin.
"Hey, could you stop?" asked Apollo.
Opera Penguin turned to him.
"Being mean to him?" clarified Apollo. "I mean, it seems like you're trying your hardest to be as mean as possible, and I just don't like it."
Opera Penguin sighed shortly, slipped his hands into his pockets, and said. "Very well."
He then turned to Gregory. "You can sleep in the common room from now on, if you wish. I will furthermore cause the basement to illuminate your surroundings in a short-ranged spotlight, should you desire to go down there."
"Uhh, thanks." said Gregory.
"'Uhh.'" said Opera Penguin. "I make these concessions, and I am met with 'uhh'."
"Sorry, I just was going to ask," said Gregory.
Opera Penguin gave him a critical stare, and said, "Go on."
"could you give Ferdinand some antidepressants?" asked Gregory.
"Do I look like a psychiatrist?" asked Opera Penguin.
"I don't know, what does a psychiatrist look like?" asked Gregory.
"Touche." said Opera Penguin. "Still, I don't even know if his issues can be fixed by pills. I think those are for when your monkey brain betrays you, not for when your situation is objectively depressing."
"What's his issue?" asked Gregory.
"He has come to terms with the fact that he exists in a world where he cannot be him." said Opera Penguin. "A short while ago, I withdrew their consciousnesses from the animatronics entirely. Their spirits are entirely in their new bodies, but since their experience of the daytime is somewhat dreamlike, none of them noticed. If they become a bit more unusual in behavior, it is because they are adjusting to experiencing normal dreams."
"And why didn't you announce this?" asked Gregory.
"Because I got tired of making such grand announcements." said Opera Penguin. "Especially since they were not appreciated. But, since Ferdinand has not gotten to be Glamrock Freddy in a while, I think perhaps it would be best if I gave him a new dream self."
Gregory sighed. "And what's a dream self?" he asked.
"Simply a body that one's dreaming consciousness is projected into during sleep. Obviously, the consciousness is different during sleep, so a dream self has some rudiments of a spirit in and of itself, which acts semi-autonomously but feels and experiences nothing in and of itself, its experiences being a dream for the dreamer, and a sort of input from the dreamer's wavering consciousness filling in an essential gap in the dream-self's incomplete being." said Opera Penguin.
"Huh." said Gregory.
"It's basically another self to be in your dreams. But it's real, and what you dream is the real circumstances it goes through." said Opera Penguin.
"Neat." said Gregory. "And you're going to give him one?"
"Yes, I think I'll have him liberating children from Darkrealm." said Opera Penguin.
Gregory stared at him, waiting for him to crack a smile. "That's a joke, right?"
"No." said Opera Penguin.
"What dark realm?" asked Gregory.
"Oh, just a world that's mostly a hegemony ruled by demons, the rest of which is an anarchic wasteland inhabited by more demons." said Opera Penguin.
"And how does this pertain to him being Glamrock Freddy?" asked Gregory.
"Oh, it's quite simple. He can protect children from indoctrination by kidnapping them right before some of them are baptized into a cult, and others are burned as a sacrifice on behalf of the first group." said Opera Penguin.
"Do you fit everything into some sort of conspiratorial agenda of yours?" asked Vanessa.
"Oh, no. I benefit nothing from this, if anything, my ulterior motive is to get Ferdinand to stop moping." said Opera Penguin.
"Oh." said Vanessa.
"But, speaking of that, the Converts have made another fake hero. I'll put the directions in your mind, go deal with it, please." said Opera Penguin.
"Not like I have much choice." said Vanessa.
"Right." said Opera Penguin.
"I don't mean only because of you, I mean because he's probably massacring single mothers or something right now." said Vanessa.
"No, of course, I recognize that." said Opera Penguin.
. . .
"I DIDN'T MEAN IT LITERALLY!" cried Vanessa, throwing up her arms as Nathan Porter shot up a single mothers' support group.
"Oh? Who's this? Another blonde I can use to pave the streets with gold?" quipped Nathan.
"Shut up, you pretentious cunt." said Vanessa.
"So someone's found her voice in anything but a cowardly scream. A first." continued Nathan.
"Too bad you didn't actually listen to what I was saying." said Vanessa, breaking a leg off a chair, and extending it into a serrated single-edged longsword.
"Neat trick." said Nathan. "Maybe you can teach me it, in hell."
"Like hell I will!" said Vanessa, charging.
Nathan leveled a hunting rifle that his powers had modified into an assault rifle at Vanessa, before, with a blur, she just slightly melted it, enough both to make it useless, and to make Nathan drop it, barking an indistinct profanity as he did.
However, Vanessa's relief was cut short when he pulled out yet another gun.
After a period of fighting, Nathan got in a stab on Vanessa's wrist with his combat knife, which caused Vanessa to drop her blade.
She held her other hand near her wrist, and a golden light emanated from her hand to her wrist, healing it.
"You made your fair stand." said Nathan. "But you still reek of weakness."
"Oh, shut up." said Vanessa, backflipping over to the chair leg, re-forming her sword, then dashing in a split second to Nathan and returning the favor on his forearm.
"AGH! Fuck you. . ." growled Nathan.
Then Andre burst through a wall, and delivered an upward slash across Nathan's body.
"I spoke too soon! Weaker is the coward who can't come to the feast without thinking his food's been chewed for him." said Nathan.
"I don't care about honor. I care about glory. And I don't think being efficient nullified my glory at all." said Andre. "I just was under the impression that two of my problems were just about to solve one another."
"Not even close." said Vanessa.
"You're a blind idiot if you think I'm even ready to stop." said Nathan.
"But I still have a vision." said Andre. "What do you have?"
"Cold, bitter hatred." said Nathan. "Hatred for all the world."
"Why?" asked Andre.
"I can't explain it. If you don't understand, I can't make you. The world, as it is. The people in it. In and of themselves, without any excuse, I hate their existence. They fundamentally deserve to die." said Nathan.
"Maybe I understand, partially." said Andre. "But I think there's something to be salvaged from it. There's beauty, and everything else in its stagnance can go into the fire."
"The more you look into everything, the more you see. All that beauty is just a mirage that we choose to believe in. The constituent substance of everything is a conglomeration of greed, selfishness, and envy, all imbued into substance that might as well be shit. Show me a person, and I'll show you a collection of vices." said Nathan.
"Are you any better?" asked Vanessa.
"No. But that doesn't make any of it better. It just means I have to die last, because only I have the vision to end it all." said Nathan.
"But that won't make something better come to be." said Vanessa. "Everything is bad if you only see the bad parts. If you only see it with perspective that reduces it to its base components, and sees those components as meaningless. But beauty isn't fake just because it's emergent, or not objectively measurable. Happiness, fulfillment, virtue, these things are all real, you just choose not to believe in them for whatever stupid 'deep' reason. But that doesn't make you enlightened. It just makes you a waste of life that wastes other lives."
"I've heard this already." groaned Andre.
"He hasn't." said Vanessa.
"How can you prove that those things exist?" asked Nathan.
"How can you prove that bad things exist?" asked Vanessa. "Your senses and mind in perceiving those things are just as fallible as my intuition and heart are in knowing that things can exist which can't necessarily comprehended objectively by us. The world isn't made up only of what we see, as if our seeing it is the source of reality. If that were the case, reality itself might as well be a mirage. But that's stupid. I don't need to prove the existence of what I know is there. Beauty, truth, and goodness aren't just play acting, even if they're just ideas in our heads then they at the very least exist as that, and how we experience them makes them worthwhile. If they're just illusions we're wired to believe in, then believing in them is what we're meant to do."
Nathan gawked at her, before Andre impaled him Pyramid Head-style about 37 times through the torso.
"Where did you learn to talk like that?" asked Andre.
"Oh, I just heard something kind of similar from my mother growing up. Thought about it a bunch. She really just said, 'If you have to be absolutely certain that something is real in order to believe in it, you'll end up not even believing in your belief, and then it won't matter what you do or don't believe at all.' and that kind of stuck with me. Whipped it out a bunch against annoying nihilists on the Internet." said Vanessa.
"It seems to be effective." said Andre.
"Well. I know you're probably an enemy, but I haven't really been paying attention to you. That's Penguin's job, so I'm not gonna bother until he sends me at you." said Vanessa.
"You were there when I was fighting Fake Penguin." said Andre.
"Only for a moment. I thought he might have needed help. But I didn't need telling twice to go, I wanted to relax. As I do now." said Vanessa.
As she left the building through a dark hallway, she heard a giggling to her left.
She looked to the side, and in the darkness of the hallway, she saw a teenage girl, unnervingly tall, maybe seven feet, glowing faintly, with white skin, black markings that were probably makeup on her face, and slightly greenish dark hair. She had a generally 'goth' outfit
"What are you?" asked Vanessa.
"Uhh, rude?" said the girl.
"Whatever." said Vanessa, as she continued walking.
Giggling from a different voice issued to her right, as a similar girl appeared in that direction. The color that predominated her appearance was purple, and her hair was of medium length, and spikier. She also seemed to be wearing spiked accessories, like collars and bracelets.
"She looks like a basic bitch. And nasty, too." said the second scene kid apparition.
"Does commenting on me like a nature documentary benefit you anything?" asked Vanessa.
"Well," said a third girl, more red in color scheme, and with even shorter, messier hair, "it did get that hi-larious defensive response."
"High-larious?" snapped Vanessa. "Who even says that anymore?"
"Ha, you're such a grouch. Even got dark circles under your eyes." said the red one.
"There might be dark circles under my eyes, but is there anything behind yours?" asked Vanessa.
"Wha?" asked the red girl.
"Again, what are you?" asked Vanessa.
"We're some kewl gahth girls that Andre saved from ahr dull lives." said the red one. "Now we live to express ourselves."
"But that's the thing, is there anything to express?" asked Vanessa, scowling.
"You tryna start sometheng, betch?" said the red one." asked the red one.
"You wouldn't last a second." said Vanessa. "You'd die in a breath."
"We're already dead." said the purple one. "We're not breathing."
"But I am. And you can die again." said Vanessa.
"Well then, let's see!" said the red one, holding out her hand to the side, and conjuring up an electric guitar as crimson flames flared around and behind her, and she screamed "BURN, BABY, BUR-"
She was cut off, as the top of her head was. Across her eyes, she was bifurcated. Both pieces instantly fell down, and as they did, they became something like a crimson oil, which expanded into a massive fan of flame as it hit the ground.
"Andre ez ganna be sooo pessed. . ." said the purple one.
"No! Kendayy!" said the green one, not able to break her idiotic valley girl drawl even to mourn the loss of her friend.
Vanessa walked through the fire, focusing her power on protecting her, and mitigating the pain enough to keep her posture perfectly rigid. It still hurt, though, almost literally like hell.
"Whatta betch." said the purple one, after Vanessa had left, as her friend bawled.
. . .
After Andre had left, Nathan pulled himself up. He wasn't sure how he could move with a spine stabbed through several times, although he'd hazard it had to do with his new power. Perhaps, if it could modify a gun to be more dangerous, it could modify his nervous system to be remotely controlled?
Nonetheless, using this new gift seemed to make his body break down even faster. He had to think fast.
He stumbled into the waiting room, saw a little girl that some dumb soccer mom had left to do nothing.
It wasn't much, but it was an honest unspeakable act. His boots were heavy enough. Her skull undeveloped. And the wall behind her just shitty enough that the atrocity left quite the conversation piece-worthy hole in the wall.
It was enough to regenerate his spine, at least.
. . .
"So, Ian." said Opera Penguin. "Are you feeling quite well, and awake?"
"Yeah." said Ian. "Why did you call me to the Atrium instead of your, uhhh, office?"
"Because I want to carry you through something." said Opera Penguin.
"Yeah?" asked Ian.
"In the near future, we may be fighting alongside each other. If the worst comes to the worst, that is." said Opera Penguin.
"And?" asked Ian.
"Well, if and when we do, I would like to establish a sort of. . . direction, to give you, in the midst of the fight." said Opera Penguin.
"Yes?" asked Ian.
"You are quite good at throwing those lightning bolts of yours by now, yes?" asked Opera Penguin.
"I guess so." said Ian.
"Well. When I shout 'glitter!' and conjure up an illusion of glittering light, I want you to aim for whatever I am conjuring it up at." said Opera Penguin. "With maximum power."
"Okay, then." said Ian.
"So, for instance." said Opera Penguin. "Glitter!" he exclaimed.
Pink and white glitter appeared on the back of a nearby chair, and Ian nailed it.
"No, no. . ." said Opera Penguin.
"Isn't that what you wanted?" asked Ian.
"No, what I wanted was about fifteen times that power." said Opera Penguin.
"Oh, okay." said Ian.
"GLITTER!" Opera Penguin shouted jubilantly, as glitter appeared on the back of another chair.
Ian hurled a purplish-indigo lightning bolt that ripped through the air with almost the sound of a jet engine, and more or less exploded everything that it traveled through.
"Excellent." said Opera Penguin, and he snapped his fingers, reverting both the instances of damage. "Secondly, I would like to inform you that you may benefit from a bit of extra structure in your magic. If you make semi-permanent constructs of energy to use as sort of implements, rather than only just using your basic energy on the fly, you may become more efficient."
"What do you mean?" asked Ian, and once again Opera Penguin resorted to telepathically conveying ideas to him, rather than talking.
"So make a gadget, but instead of being an object, it's an abstract magic-y thing, and it helps with certain, specific applications or manifestations of power?" asked Ian.
"Yes." said Opera Penguin.
Ian conjured up a mass of materialized water energy, then in his mind built up a structure to shape into tentacles sprouting from his back, then shored up that construct to provide raw power to them.
"Neat, I'll call it Poseidon's. . . no, Cthulhu's. . . uh. . ." said Ian.
"Figure that in your own time." said Opera Penguin. "By the way, if you didn't notice, telekinetic control, if strong enough, can make things act strong and solid, if your hold on them is strong. You simply have to hold them strongly, to hold them in a rigid and unyielding way."
"Yeah, I think I noticed." said Ian.
"What was that noise?" asked Vanessa, coming in.
"Oh, nothing." said Opera Penguin. "By the way, Ian, electrocute her."
"Wha-?" Vanessa asked, before Ian obliged Penguin.
"What!" Vanessa yelled as soon as she recovered.
"Next time, make sure the guy you were supposed to kill is dead." said Opera Penguin. "And, furthermore, rely on your own abilities to kill him in the first place. Not the irate behavior of a mass murderer with a fetish for ghost girls."
"What?! He's a mass killer?" asked Vanessa.
"Yes. As is the one who is still alive because you couldn't take a precaution so simple as, perhaps, separating his head from his body? It really isn't that hard." said Opera Penguin. "A little girl is dead because of you. Quite gruesomely, in fact."
"No, it's because of him, I'm used to people being dead when they're killed, and being stabbed a hundred times through the chest with a comically-large chef's knife the size of an excavator scoop is usually considered 'being killed', and don't even try to get me to think you care about kids when you literally—" said Vanessa, before Opera Penguin made a pinching motion with his fingers, Vanessa's mouth being shut.
"Ah-ah-ahhh." he tutted. "No talking about that out in the open."
"Whatever." said Vanessa. "Where is he now?" she asked.
"That's not important to you." said Opera Penguin.
"Excuse me, what?" asked Vanessa.
"You had your go at him, now it's time for Ian. I just taught him a neat new trick, and it's been nearly 24 hours since he was involved in a lethal fight, so, go on, Ian." said Opera Penguin.
"Thanks for the tips and tricks." said Ian. "By the way, Vanessa, check out that sword I got. I'm not gonna use it, and its owner is dead, so you might as well consider it yours."
"Thanks." muttered Vanessa, as she skulked off.
As Ian departed, Opera Penguin held up his hand, to bring forth a tiny manifestation of the little girl's spirit. "This 'Nathan' fellow has been bringing in a lot of new ghosts to use." he said.
. . .
"Ahh, a perfect way to make up for that minor roadbump." said Nathan, as he torched a crowd with a flamethrower.
"It's quite a grey day, isn't it?" said a voice from above.
He looked up, to see a man that looked like a human version of Pepe the Frog, wearing some 80's midlife crisis biker jacket depicting a rainstorm in neon colors, and with dyed hair to match, perched on some public statue.
"I like it like that." said Nathan.
"Me too." said the grotesque apparition. "But after recent developments, I think grey skies seem so. . . flaccid, without a little lightning."
The ogrish neckbeard raised his hand, and a nearby tree got struck by lightning.
"Oh, so you're another one of those weird superhero wannabes, coming to kill me." said Nathan, before pointing his flamethrower at the fatso, and firing.
But, oddly enough, the flame vanished a few feet out, as it approached the fireplug.
"Damn it, why's it not working?" asked Nathan, to no one in particular.
"It's working just fine." said the clownish figure, as he hopped down from the statue, descending 17 feet as lightly as a bird. "It's just that the fire stops working when you cancel its heat out with an equal degree of heat-eliminating power. That is, frost-elemental energy."
"What kind of hippy-dippy shit is that?" asked Nathan.
"No weed here." said the freak. "It's just like chemistry, but without the chemicals. And there are other 'non-chemicals'. Look!"
A concentrated ball of wind struck Nathan in the balls.
"Heugh!" he yelled, as he clutched the the dull aching.
"But I know you've also got more than one means of working your magic." said the overgrown neon Steven Universe lookalike.
"You're damn right I do, Bozo." said Nathan, as he pulled out a rifle.
"My name is Ian, Brandon. . . something." said Ian, suddenly worries that he might out himself.
Nathan grunted amusedly, as his lip curled up at the side. "Read your name in the newspaper. I guess the Blitzkrieg Batterer is real."
"Hell yeah! And guess who his newest victim is gonna be!" said Ian.
"Himself." said Nathan, grinning wider. "Because his own hubris threw him in my path."
"Tough words." said Ian, drawing himself into a cool pose as lightning crackled in his slowly furling and then clenching hands. "But what's tougher is going to be trying to justify that self-importance of yours."
Nathan cocked his rifle, and Ian spat, accelerating and directing the spit to become like a bullet, that shot through Nathan's hand.
Nathan staggered back, accidentally flinging the rifle due to the force with which his hand jerked in pain, and then, with gale force, Ian ripped his left arm off.
"HOLY SHIT!" screamed Nathan.
"I've disarmed you, and then dis-armed you, without even touching you." chortled Ian, before dashing towards Nathan with a self-motivated burst of speed, and trying to mimic boxing motions, but really just irately throwing punch after punch, cracking Nathan's jaw, his cheek bone, his clavicle.
Nathan stumbled back even further, and then ran a short distance.
"Where's all that talk now, huh, fuckass?" asked Ian, striding towards Nathan with arms outspread, in a poor approximation of the proverbial 'Well? What is it?' pose of zweihander-wielding stunlockers everywhere.
Nathan grabbed his arm.
"Gonna reattach it? Are ya a regenerating freak like me?" asked Ian, before Nathan threw it at a random passerby, knocking them over, and then leap on them, stabbing through most of their neck with his combat knife.
Then, suddenly, Nathan grew another left arm, and straightened up, his right hand also healed.
"What the hell. . ." said Ian, before flying into Nathan with another lightning-charged punch.
This time, though, Nathan was ready for him, and grabbed Ian's hand, blocking the punch.
"Can you hear your guardian angel crying? I can." said Nathan.
"If he's crying, it's probably related to how much of a fuckup I am, and how much I'm going to continue to be once I scalp-AUGH" Ian said, as he got stabbed in the gut with the combat knife.
The combat knife, however, popped out comically, and as it did, Ian did a wind-infused punch straight to Nathan's face again, energized by the rage.
Nathan himself moved like the wind, as he swept his knife off the ground, and became a blur, leaving cuts and stab wounds in Ian faster than he could regenerate from, but then, "BLONDE WOMAN DEFLECTOR!" Ian shouted, as the knife collided with what looked like a snowflake appearing over Ian's heart, right where the knife was headed.
A maelstrom consumed Nathan's right arm, and then suddenly came the tentacles, binding him before he could hope to run, in order to recover from the state of that bloody stump that was the upper half of his upper arm, the bone jaggedly sticking out.
The tentacles, made of water, enveloped Nathan Porter, and then suddenly came the electricity, like the water bed equivalent of an electric chair. It went on for far too long, until Nathan went limp. There still remained some spark in him, but it was too weak to fight any longer, only fit to play dead and hope Ian wouldn't notice.
"Hmmm. . . what was that Penguin said about. . . ahh, yeah. Separating the head from the rest of the body." said Ian. Most of the tentacles withdrew from Nathan, except two under his armpits, but two more wrapped around his head from either side, curling around and suddenly seeming to get harder, and sprout rows of sharp edges. By the time Nathan fully registered what was going on, his ensuing struggles were so weak, that they only served to make the agonizing crushing and severing of his neck all the more painful. Then the tentacles loosened, the false water de-manifested, and two thuds hit the ground.
"You know what? I'll just do it again, to make it a thorough job." said Ian, and he manifested just two tentacles, each with a sharp, hard edge to them, and wrapped them around the midsection of Nathan's decapitated body. This time, the blades were much sharper, and the cut much cleaner, as the body fell in half without the tentacles even having to be de-manifested.
"Kewl." Ian said, and then returned.
. . .
Opera Penguin orchestrated another performance again, and this time Monsanto and Cheyenne managed to shine the most. Ian sat it out, still feeling the pain of his many stab wounds in spite of their being regenerated, a phenomenon which, Opera Penguin explained, probably came from his powers themselves, to maintain the negative feedback that pain provided, as the injuries were still dangerous, drained energy through his regenerative ability, and wore on his 'shell', due to its resilience protecting him.
Rochelle was watching Ian from the stage, and Ferdinand was absent. He was apparently taking a nap.
Gregory sat crosslegged on the floor, with Mangle wrapped around him, as usual. Ian hoped Gregory wouldn't betray her like he, Ian, was about to do to Rochelle, but he knew the kid would, and it would be Ian's fault. Oh well. he thought.
Afterwards, Rochelle grilled Ian about being back out there, fighting again already, and Ian used the excuse that Opera Penguin made him do it, which seemed to sate her for the moment, especially since she was more preoccupied with cuddling and related activities.
. . .
Fake Penguin woke up in the black room.
"You really ate it last time." said Opera Penguin.
"How come I still exist?" asked Fake Penguin.
"I keep a tight tether around my special experiments' spirits." said Opera Penguin. "Although yours required some, how might you say it, restoration?"
"But I'm still Fake Penguin." said Fake Penguin.
"Don't tell me you think you've earned your old identity back." said Opera Penguin.
". . .I guess not." said Fake Penguin.
"Good." said Opera Penguin. "I will now commence in altering your power to give you the ability to take part in the mass production of formless, alterable energy bodies."
"Oh. Good." said Fake Penguin, mirthlessly.
