Five Nights At Freddy's: Protection Breach

by IndigoWizard

Okay, so this started off as a silly idea I had about making some of my adolescent power fantasies into a FNaF fanfiction but slowly became more and more of deranged clusterfuck in its conception, but I'm still gonna get all the concepts written out eventually. Don't be surprised when the story apparently forgets that it's a FNaF fanfiction.

10. Pull on my handkerchief!

Night 30

"What the hell are you even doing?" asked William Afton.

"What do you mean?" asked Opera Penguin.

"You allowed all that to happen. I'm sure of it." said William.

Opera Penguin shrugged slightly, cocking his head to the side and grinning slyly. "I may have encouraged some of the events that happened to happen."

"Why? And what's with that grubby lardass you let in here?" asked William.

"Ian? He is our esteemed guest. To make up for the sudden absence of another. . . esteemed guest." said Opera Penguin.

"Rochelle was just generating some good dark Remnant and you let him in and now he's comforting her!" said William.

"Believe me when I say that my plan has a functional end. Rochelle has lost her source of blind happiness. I have cast a spell on her, wordlessly, motionlessly, to render her incapable of being in denial of the words I said to her, regarding Casey, and desperate to fill in that void, to graft onto that amputation. Casey may have been an imbecile but he was a happy imbecile and, and empathetic enough to give her happiness. Ian, too, is capable of empathy, after a fashion. And he is a miserable asshole. With the kind of misery that loves to spread." said Opera Penguin.

"Well, anyway. I'm sick of only this." said William Afton. "Can you get literally any kind of, I don't know, TV stations in my dream? Or whatever it is people in this day and age use to entertain themselves?"

"Alright, alright." said Opera Penguin.

They went back to the dream. Opera Penguin raised a hand, and plenty of just about everything one would be able to enjoy in a bedroom-sized enclosure appeared.

Opera Penguin kept a straight face.

"Martin, please." said William.

"Yes?" said Opera Penguin, his face only mildly twitching.

"Get rid of the dildos. Now." said William.

"And fleshlights?" said Opera Penguin.

"And the fleshlights." said William Afton.

"Even the dragon dildo?" asked Penguin.

"Especially the dragon dildo." said William Afton.

Opera Penguin mock-sighed, and waved his hand again, erasing the specified objects.

William Afton turned to a radio that had appeared with Opera Penguin's initial wave, and said "Does this work?" but did not wait for Penguin's response before he turned it on.

The announcer said that they were moving to the weather, only for music to begin playing.

The lyrics were sung in a sappy, sentimental voice, and were as follows:

You say yes since you can't say no

Symptoms of a victim, dying alone

Hell is other people, heaven's not known

Longing for something you think you're owed

You were made, died, and then made again

Needing adoption, lost puppy abandoned

Love's your ambrosia yet you're Tantalus' kin

Made into a mockery, again, and again

No sun glinting off of your tears

Your passion, your anguish, it won't save you here

Give me one reason why anyone should care

You're just calling to the void with no one there

This is your

Life

This is your life

I know you hope for

Light

But this is your life

When you cry, I

lap your tears up

When you fly, I

Still hang above

When you die, I

will raise you up

Only so that you can

continue losing your blood

"What a bunch of sordid shit. Is this what kids listen to these days?" asked William.

Opera Penguin shrugged. "You're forgetting that I'm not of this world. And the extent of my intrusive scrying has its limits."

William turned the dial.

The next song had a tune that sounded like it might once have been happier, but its notes had been amended to have a more grim, if not outright sad tone, by something more than a mere shift to minor key. It went:

I believe the morning sun

Will wash away all that I love

And I believe what I find fun

Is hated by powers above

I'd like if skies weren't always that off-tone blue

I'd like if I didn't know you

I believe that make-believe

Will always surpass what is real, and

I believe that going numb

Is the only way to learn to feel, oh

I think turning lead to gold is bad to do

I'd be happy if not for you

You may say that it's wrong

Feeling how I do

And you can say that I'm Bennington

Say I'm dreary and a fool

But I think the sun's light pollution

And think quite poorly of you

Question why I hate all this?

It's really quite simple to say

All of this glittering gold

And all of these bright colors gay

Devalue the smile and darken light once true

And render things worthless like you

Call me grim if you will

Say that I'm here to joy-kill

Say I got up on the wrong side of bed

Tell me I just need to take my meds!

But saturation of everything blinds the brightness of one's view

And forcing a smile and a skip is just what's wrong with you

I know there is beauty

Hiding somewhere far away

I just know it's not here

Prancing in the light of day

'cause all the gold you show is pyrite and the sky's not really blue

It's azure and red and orange have the same difference in hue

And honey really doesn't taste that great in my own view

It's saccharine and off-tasting and thus reminds me of you

"I think I spoke too soon. This is complete drivel." said William. "What station is this even coming from?"

"I think it might actually be distorted by the dream realm slightly, so really, no actual station at all. It's shifted by you and me's collective unconscious into a slightly different form." said Opera Penguin.

"Collective unconscious? That's something I have to remember now?" asked William.

"Only in here. You see, even though I'm awake, since I'm projecting myself into this dream-simulation-space. . . thingy, my mind also feeds it a little." said Opera Penguin.

"I can't believe you actually just said 'thingy'." said William.

Opera Penguin waved his hand. "Whatever. Unimportant. Aside from that, another form of interference that might exist is that I've noticed that, just as the universe gives power to art, it also exerts some power on it, subtly feeding it information from around the cosmic federation, such that art really does imitate life, and that might also affect the relatively freeform essence of this phantasmal radio."

"And of course I know what a 'cosmic federation' is, as we were all taught in kindergarten." said William, dryly.

"It's a yoking of multiple universes together into one continuity, using inter-cosmic scaffolding." said Penguin.

William moaned in dread at the oncoming storm. "One continuity?"

"Well, basically, in any given dimension, there is time. Of time, there is a smallest possible unit. Each unit is preceded by only one, well, normally, but let's not get into that, but followed immediately after by infinite potential others, but there is a finite amount of probability distributed to these potential futures. Everything that can happen, according to this probability, does, but in different timelines. In any given timeline, every smallest moment has only one preceding it, and only one following it. In other words, the timeline is constantly splitting, infinitely. Now, this becomes relevant when we realize that two completely separate universes have no continuity—no matter what timeline, and what point in time you're in, you're equally separated from all timelines and moments in the other universe. There's no one timeline in the other one 'corresponding' to yours. It's its own completely separate space, and time, and times. But if you linked the two universes, using a dimensional substance called 'cosmic scaffolding, that makes a cosmic union, or federation for larger numbers. That sort of multiplies the timelines by each other, because it makes one collective time stream that has timelines with respect to each potential combination of timelines. So, if you had two completely separate universes, then universe A has timeline A and timeline B, as does universe B, but in a cosmic union, universe A can experience timeline AB, where universe A experiences its timeline A and universe B experiences its timeline B, or they can collectively experience timeline BA, where A experiences its timeline B whilst B experiences its timeline A, or you could have a collective AA or BB." said Opera Penguin.

"Could you, ehmmm, give that in english, please?" asked William.

"Basically, you hook two universes together, and whatever's going on here, there's also definitively something going on there. But if you don't, then whatever happens here is equally disconnected from anything happening over there. A cosmic union, or federation, basically just syncs up time in separate universes. It also can have other features, like setting up boundaries between timelines, so that while the universes are all connected in terms of what didn't happen, no one get to travel to another timeline to live in the world of what didn't happen, or at least, didn't happen in this timeline. You can also end up with these sort of accessory dimensions, almost like cosmic outbuildings, which, although they can happen in universes not in a union or federation, play a much larger role in federations, as they can often link universes or influence multiple universes in the same way. Cosmic scaffolding itself is basically just a massive empty frame of a universe that contains all the constituent universes of the federation in its essence. But anyway, since there's a definite 'thing that's going on over there' in other universes, you can observe that thing, or pick up on it, which is what this world does when it expresses that information through its subtle influence on art." said Opera Penguin.

"So are you saying that artists in this world receive. . . prophetic inspiration from the cosmos?" asked William.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that. Although, 'prophetic' might to some have a divine connotation that I wouldn't quite ascribe to this world." said Opera Penguin. "But the offshoot of this is that some things you don't think are real, well, might be."

"So is there really a Lone Ranger?" asked William.

"Maybe in Deadrealm." said Opera.

"Come again?" asked William.

"Deadrealm, it's one of the other universes in the cosmic federation." said Opera Penguin.

"Why is it called 'Deadrealm'?" asked William.

"Because, well, a lot of things in it are dead." said Opera Penguin. "You see, a lot of these worlds have only one or a few habitable planets. Deadrealm has only one. And most of it is desert. Except, on the mountains, where the Obernathies. . ." Opera Penguin's eyes glazed over. He paused. For a moment, William thought he was about to start crying.

"Anyway, it's mostly miserable desert filled with miserable people killing each other. Only a few civilized settlements. Nasty place." said Opera Penguin.

"What are some other 'realms' you know?" asked William.

"The ones most worth mentioning would be Liverealm, an intentional counterpart to Deadrealm, which is kind of like this world only less boring,"

"Why, thank you." muttered William.

"where there's a partial shroud that absorbs around nine tenths of the power people grow and resitributes it to individuals called godlings, who act kind of like what you'd call superheroes. You see, it also keeps everybody generally happy by sucking up excess negative emotions but disposes of them by making them into monsters. So the godlings are there to deal with those." continued Opera Penguin. "Then there's Deathrealm, which is basically a place where all the grim reapers hang out,"

"Oh, so those are real, as well, and there's more than one of them. I should've expected." said William.

"Well, actually, they're not 'real' in the sense that you would think of them. They aren't really necessary for death to happen. Death is just the destruction of life—a concept which can't really be dependent on any finite set of finite beings. But they do help it along when it doesn't happen right. Oddly, they kind of leave a blind eye on this world, luckily for you, since you're exactly the kind of mess they're hired to clean up."

"Again, ever so generous with your exaltations!" said William, his blood boiling with sardonic vitriol.

"Anyway, aside from Deathrealm is Liferealm, which. . . I don't think I've been to. Then again, I haven't been to Deathrealm much either." said Opera Penguin. "There's also Highrealm, where I'm from, and where I don't particularly like going, although I have a friend of sorts there, and also Lowrealm, which is best not talked about since it contains beings which sense discussion of it, beings whose attention is not desirable."

"And yet you mention it." said William.

"Yeah, well." said Penguin, and nothing else on that note, before returning to his previous train of words: "Darkrealm is a place where there's a lot of horrible evil spirits, but they're all bound there, and long ago people were supposed to obey the Overseer and serve him in exchange for his protection, but as a funny joke he started demanding absurd things, ridiculous to an increasing degree, until they refused him, which he took as an opportunity to drop his protection, whereafter they were taken over and forced to become devil worshipers,"

"Wait, is this the one you used to trust?" asked William.

"Yes." said Opera Penguin.

"Knowing this?" asked William.

"Well, at the time, we all thought it was a very funny prank." said Opera Penguin. "In our defense, we didn't quite see how bad things actually got."

"So if there's a 'Darkrealm', is there a 'Lightrealm'?" asked William.

"Probably." said Opera Penguin, with a shrug. "But I've never seen it."

"And what is this world called from outside?" asked William.

"Earthrealm." said Opera Penguin.

"Oh. How dull." said William.

"It's meant to be the foil to Heavenrealm, where Kauthann established the government of the federation."

"Kauthann?" asked William.

"He's the god who built the scaffolding, who tied the universes together." said Opera Penguin. "He doesn't like messing around with what he considers a finished job, but he also doesn't like absolute anarchy so he established the Legion of Heroes, which is basically a glorified interdimensional bounty hunting association, and the Interdependence of Worlds, which is the law system about how different worlds should interact, and finally he established the title of Overseer, which now belongs to. . . the Overseer. Whatever his name is."

"What's Heavenrealm like?" asked William.

"Lots of marble buildings, looking like big old courthouses and pantheons and the Parthenon, that sort of thing, floating in space. In the center is what seems like a miniature sun, but is actually the light surrounding the throne room of the Overseer. The throne is what confers on him his godlike power, you know. He never gets up off his throne, but sort of projects himself using it. Basically, it only gives him its power when he's sitting on it, and it does so by making a manifestation out of a gestalt of his and its power. Looks far more glorious than he actually does. But it also uses its power to make a barrier of unapproachable light around his throne room."

"So he's not really an angel, then? Just a man?" asked William.

"A man with enough of an ego to see himself as the vast angel he shows up as. Anyway, around that are four islands, each with a tree. The trees are the trees of life, liberty, wisdom and death."

"Is each individually the tree of all of those things, or is each one in particular?" asked William.

"Each is one in particular. Life basically just makes fruit that makes you stop aging, and gives you body a kick of. . . how do might I say it. . . unearthly vitality that breaks the limits of its fallible material composition? It also gives people powers sometimes. Not very interesting, probably the least out of all the trees. Then there's liberty. Now this is a real treasure. It splits apart from you what it sees as 'dark'—that is, the things you struggle with, the things you try to put away, what fuels your inner turbulence and discord—and splits it off as its own separate being, called a grim familiar. They're called that because they're like familiar spirits, but formed of all the things that darken your heart. The more you had a handle on those things before, the nicer the spirit will be with you. If they were consuming you, well, you better watch your back. But if you had them just about managed, you'll be able to use them as an actual familiar of sorts."

"You speak as though I'm planning on going there." said William.

"Who knows? Maybe if you really make it as a god, you'll be dining with the rest of them. After you kill the Overseer, that is." said Opera Penguin.

"Ahh. I see." said William.

"Aside from life and liberty are wisdom and death. Wisdom gives you a sort of precognitive intuition, a creeping feeling of what is likely to come given any path you might choose." said Penguin.

"What has that got to do with wisdom?" asked Afton.

"Well, when you understand, to some small extent, the outcome of any course of action, you start to develop an idea of how things work. And you learn things from what you see. When you start to feel the answers a person will give in response to any question you ask them, when you can sense how any motion of a lockpick will affect the lock, when you understand that knocking the apple from the tree will make it fall, then you start to understand how things work." said Opera Penguin.

"Couldn't you just do all that with trial and error?" asked Afton.

"Yes, but with this power, you can feel it without going down that path, and thus can pick more than one. But it only shows the instantaneous effects, and that is the most prominent limit. And when its bearers ignore that limit, they become arrogant, thinking they know all, and do not account for the distant future, and then it swallows them up." said Opera Penguin.

"And what was the last one, again?" asked William.

"Death. Its fruit gives you fortune, that anything you fully set your mind towards, you will be blessed with great luck in achieving." said Opera Penguin.

"Something of a misnomer, then." said William.

"Not at all. There is a downside, being that the one who fails in the task they set their face towards in such a way as to call in the favor of the fruit's blessing, they will incur its curse. That being, that they will be fated to die soon after." said Opera Penguin.

"I must say, it sounds tantalizing." said William. "Although perhaps the fruit of life might be a better choice."

"It is actually forbidden under the current Overseer to partake in fruit from more than one of the trees. Not that that will matter to you, of course! But some have taken the fruit, and made from them unearthly sugars, which they have mixed together from multiple kinds of fruit, making something technically legal since they are no longer fruit, but highly unnatural. The most refined of these is Atragedia, a substance which imprints the best attributes from your life up to the present moment if not for the event which was most pivotal in negatively influencing your life, onto your current being. Often, it gives one an alternate form, an ideal other body based on this alternate self. It also salves the side effects of more illicit substances, most prominently that of Comedia, which is something like a bastardized version of Atragedia, attempting to wrench one's being back from the negative physical and emotional effects of misfortune on one's being, but slowly building up tension until a rubber band-like effect occurs, striking one's being with intense, manifested misfortune which, though formless, usually stabilizes into a transformation into an insane monster."

"Are the purer. . . drugs. . . made of fewer of the fruits? Is that why they are more stable?" asked William.

"No, it's all in the handling of the fruits' power. The less refined the technique, the more power is wasted, not contributing to the intended function of the substance, and every bit of power wasted in this way does its own thing, a sort of 'wild card'. That is to say, an element of pure chaos. That is what makes the worse substances, worse. Incomplete effects, and unpredictable side effects to ruin those effects. Also most of them are highly addictive." said Opera Penguin.

"How does this even happen from the process of making fruit into sugar, anyway?" asked William.

"The fruits are sacred, and sacred things don't like being messed with." said Penguin.

"You seem to be cavalier about messing with the human spirit. Isn't that sacred?" asked William.

"In a sense, yes. In a larger-scale sense, no. But even if they were, on both accounts, so too is destiny, and this is how I forge towards mine." said Opera Penguin.

"You are an evil son of a bitch, you know that, right?" said William Afton. "But I'll be damned if you aren't relatable."

Opera Penguin laughed, before the building was struck with a tremor.

"Shit. It's coming sooner than I thought." he said.

"What?" asked William.

. . .

"Come on, Penguin, we're asking nicely for the last time." said Squint, flanked by a small army of dark entities. "You really have been beating about the bush for a while."

"I think the last time was some time before now. Do you think I didn't notice the 'pet' you sent in here a while ago?" asked Opera Penguin.

"I thought you would be so accommodating to him as you have been to other guests, yet clearly some error was made, some information lost in translation." said Squint.

"Other guests? He was not a guest. His very nature and existence was a declaration of war against us, as is yours." said Opera Penguin.

"Oh, is that so? Then, I guess, the formalities are truly futile. . . I knew they would be. Very well then," and here he called back to his cohorts, "take the building!"

Opera Penguin then dashed into the center of the crowd, and sprung out as a wooden stage erupted from nothing under him.

"Everyone! Everyone! Come one, come all, to see the great, Opera Penguin!" he cried out, waving around his gun, which had morphed into a stereotypical black-stick-tipped-with-white style of wand.

"Someone, I need a volunteer! Step right up, whoever will!" he continued.

An ogrish humanoid, about six feet tall, with metal clamped into his joints, stepped onto the stage.

"Now lay down in this box of mine!" said Opera Penguin, as a box of said creature's size appeared. It did so.

Opera Penguin closed the box, and pulled out a gleaming, azure-tinted saw, and proceeded to saw the box into five separate pieces. Then he separated the boxes, showing all that where the box was cut apart was only a flat, black surface.

Opera Penguin then opened the box where the creature's head had been, and there it was, blinking slightly at the suddenly burst of light from outside.

"Now, how do you feel?" asked Opera Penguin.

"Fine, I guess." it said in a gravelly, yet surprisingly human voice.

"But watch what happens when the head leaves the box!" Opera Penguin cried out even louder, as he upended the box, letting the head fall out.

The eruption of blood was immense, and yet it was met with roaring applause. Only Squint, who was still where he was standing before, was not taking part.

"What the hell are all you doing? We came here to take this place, not to be entertained by its master!" he screamed out, confused.

"Now! Let another come up here!" said Opera Penguin.

A slender humanoid figure with a slim, more or less human-shaped head that had reptilian features like nostril slits, narrow eyes, scaly skin and sharp teeth came up.

"Lay down on this bench." said Opera Penguin, as one appeared.

It did.

Opera Penguin then vanished the bench, and yet the creature still laid there. Then Opera Penguin lifted up his hand, and the creature went rising up into the air, keeping on levitating until it vanished far above, bound for space. Eventually, it stopped thinking.

"Now, for my final act!" Opera Penguin said, flashing a hand, whereupon the stage became a gallows, though oddly there was no rope. "Bring me. . . Squinty boy!"

Squint was born aloft by the crowd, being thrown along towards Penguin, and eventually into Penguin's arms, who then proceeded to set him down.

"Now. . . Pull on my handkerchief!" Opera Penguin yelled, proferring a wrist with a handkerchief sticking out of it.

"What? No. This is not seemly, this is not how this should be happening, we came here for a purpose and these ones have never failed me—" said Squint.

"Pull on it! Pull on it! Pull on it! Pull on it!" the crowd screamed.

"N-no!" Squint cried out. "What's gotten into you all?"

Opera Penguin leaned in close, and said "I have."

Begrudgingly, Squint pulled the handkerchief.

With only a slight tug, he was forcibly compelled to tug seven feet of handkerchief from the sleeve.

"Wh-what?" he asked, incredulously. "My arm moved without-?"

The handkerchief then cut him off by tying itself in a noose around his neck.

Opera Penguin then swung his arm up, and Squint was sent flying into the air as the end of the handkerchief exited his sleeve, and, as Squint came down, it grappled itself around the gallows, and the gallows trap door opened, and Squint flew down it, his neck now fully bound. As he fell to the length of the rope, there was a sickening snap.

The charm wore off as Squint's body went limp.

There was an uproar, and another Convert mounted the stage, a man whose skin had turned a deathly dark, pale blue, and whose figure had been stretched and parted grotesquely, the gaps filled with metal parts riveted into his flesh, and connected to each other by short dowels. He raised one of his hands, which were studded and extended into claws by a chitin-like material, poised to strike Opera Penguin, before Opera Penguin's hands blurred as he quickly drew and fired his pistol through the Convert's eyes. If the fact that the shot was clearly fatal wasn't enough to intimidate the other Converts, the fact that the bullet left a phosphorescent aquamarine residue, around which the Convert's head, moments later, erupted like a grenade, certainly was.

However, Opera Penguin sensed another creeping up behind him. His head swivelled around like an owl's, and he saw an androgynous, white-faced figure that looked more or less human apart from the outward-slanting red crescent-shaped markings around its eyes, and the eyes themselves, which were beady and black. Aside from these eerie features, it had long, black hair with a red streak from the crown of its head, with buzzcut-length black hair on the sides. It wore a black leather jacket and black leather pants. Its jacket was open, showing a black crop top under which there was a pale white midriff.

Opera Penguin merely glared at it, and the back of its head blew out, as if a shotgun were leveled to its head and fired, except that there was no entrance wound.

After this, the remaining crowed of Converts—and it was indeed a crowd—was just demoralized and confused enough to scramble.

. . .

A short while later, Opera Penguin strode with a certain swagger back through the front doors, which had long ceased their nightly barricades, ever since the nighttime copy of the Pizzaplex, which lacked certain security measures, had replaced the original one at night.

"What the hell just happened?" asked Vanessa.

"I feel like you've asked that before." said Opera Penguin.

"Well, maybe that's because of how you run things here." said Vanessa.

"The way I run things here doesn't require you or anyone except me to know much of anything that's going on." said Opera Penguin.

"I require it." said Vanessa.

Opera Penguin smiled slightly. "Well, for your information, it was some annoying solicitors that I dealt with briefly."

"You're saying it's not those freakish. . . things that you mischaracterized as members of alternative culture?" asked Vanessa.

"I never said that." said Opera Penguin. "In fact, I'd say those people come most prominently under the heading of 'annoying solicitors'."

"So I can't honestly trust anything you say." said Vanessa.

"Then why do you keep asking." Opera Penguin said, in a flat, yet also surprisingly harsh tone of voice.

"Uhh-" Vanessa stuttered, surprised by Penguin's sudden shortness.

Opera Penguin then burst out laughing. "But truly, this was something of a major confrontation, and I, being the 'face' of this place, wanted to be the one to make a sudden and poignant 'statement' about our stance towards their absurd notions of taking us over"

"So what's the point of making me into a stupid anime girl if you're gonna do that?" asked Vanessa.

"Have some perspective." said Opera Penguin. "This is likely only the beginning of what may be a long and terrible war against the encroaching darkness, the members of part of which call themselves the Preachers, and the rest of which call themselves the Converts."

"Preacher of what? Converts of what?" asked Vanessa.

"Well, I've been doing some scrying, and from what I can tell-" said Penguin.

"Sorry, scrying?" asked Vanessa.

"You know how in old shows where there's an evil sorcerer as the villain, he usually watches the heroes through some crystal ball?" said Penguin.

"Yeah, feel like I'm living it as of recently." said Vanessa, snidely.

"I mean, yes, well that's called 'scrying'. Except I don't use a crystal ball, only my mind's eye. And it's not just for seeing physical locations. Anyway, the Preachers are basically demons, and the Converts are humans that they've turned into lesser demons. As I may have mentioned, this world distributes power to the concentrated presence of life, death and art, but there are sort of lesser things to which the world distributes power, which are sort of 'in between' the main three, because in a sense they are combinations—pain, faith and dreams. Pain is the convergence of life and death, because death is preceded by pain but pain is never where life is not, faith is the convergence of death and art because faith is the expression of a belief that braves the presence of death itself, and dreams are the convergence of art and life, because dreams are the birthplace and vitality of art, and are the art which flows through a basic process of living—sleep." said Opera Penguin.

"So the Preachers and Converts are the expression of faith?" asked Vanessa.

"No. Their name is misleading. They flow from pain. The Preachers are beings that coalesced out of the power that the cosmos endowed pain with, while the Converts are people who either embraced that power or had it forced on them, through contact with the Preachers. I think it was a half truth that they said when they claimed that William Afton was their 'investment'. I think because he caused such pain and death, while also experiencing incredible luck that can be associated with life he drew power from the cosmos, power that facilitated this whole decades-long haunting. Obviously, since their nature draws from that same wellspring of power, they feel a certain degree of possessiveness over it. They may or may not be able to withhold it, and this may give them a sense of entitlement regarding things from which they do not cut this power off. They did not cut off the power from William Afton, and so they see him as their 'investment' that they own. In reality, he is more their fellow. The existence of 'remnant', as it is known, is a phenomenon caused by Afton, his power of life, pain and death allowing him to endow other spirits with the ability to produce both positive and negative forces from these things. He can use anyone whose life he affects, even by extension, as a vector to endow others with this power. Henry Emily studied the nature of remnant for a great deal of his life, never knowing that the phenomenon he was learning was one whose existence he was spreading by unknowingly channeling Afton's power." said Opera Penguin.

"When you took me up there with that creep, didn't you mention you created my powers using some of that stuff?" asked Vanessa.

"It was my magic, shored up with a significant remnant to fuel the creation of a usably powerful set of abilities for you. So yes, but it wouldn't be possible without my power and organization." said Opera Penguin.

"So I'm roped into all of this." said Vanessa.

"In a way. I mean, your powers as they are aren't dependent on William Afton or any of this place. From this place came the 'materials' I used to create your powers, but nothing of what your powers are now rely on anything external to you. That being said, don't try running out on me, or I'll shoot you in the back of the head." said Opera Penguin.

"Don't insult me by suggesting I would." said Vanessa. "I'm pissed enough that you had me killing dolls puppeteered by dead kids, I feel like I have to make it up to myself by making some real victories."

"Don't knock the training I gave you. A nightly dance of gleaming swords is good to remind you that you still live." said Opera Penguin.

"Fuck off with that poetic shit. You tricked me into thinking something was really endangering this place, and I'm halfway sure you're somehow responsible for Annie, but I'm waiting for confirmation on that before I try to kill you." said Vanessa.

Opera Penguin smirked. "There are worse things to worry about, in any case."

"Speaking of which, where's Rochelle?" asked Vanessa, with genuine concern in her voice. "I haven't seen her anywhere around."

"She's on. . . a sabbatical." said Opera Penguin. "It's to do with the death of Casey."

". . .oh." said Vanessa, in a small voice. "Well, I won't begrudge her that."

Opera Penguin cackled internally.

. . .

"Hey, Gregory?" Mangle asked.

"Yeah?" asked Gregory.

"Do you think you could use those powers Opera Penguin gave you to try and make my pretty form last longer or be easier to turn into?" asked Mangle.

"I don't even know if I have them yet." said Gregory. "Aww, who cares? I'll try it."

He raised his hands, and started straining visibly, as Mangle took her 'pretty form'.

"NNNGH!" said Gregory, before a halo of grey fire appeared around his body, and a wave of it surged towards Mangle, shattering the form she took, reverting her back to her normal one.

Gregory slumped.

"Hey, I'm okay! And it was your first try! At least something happened!" said Mangle.

"It's not just that I hurt you and failed, but it was the first interesting thing I had an idea to do in a while, and I didn't just fail to succeed, I had, like, a negative degree of success." said Gregory.

"This is actually interesting." said Opera Penguin, as he materialized into the room. "It seems your 'hero powers' are trying to come into being but have been halted in doing so by the darkness that I have made to overtake you. I will freeze the deposit of power so it doesn't get damaged."

"Why don't you just get rid of the 'darkness'?" asked Gregory.

"Because it's a part of you now. I'll learn how to bypass our little issue later, but it's just about as much a power of yours as the fragment of the 'hero powers' that has successfully assimilated into your mind is." said Opera Penguin.

"Shouldn't we come up with some kind of name for this stuff? I feel like the way we're talking about it is awkward." said Gregory.

"Kid, my head's clogged up with enough terminology as it is. I've been to, like, a billion worlds. Seen millions of different kinds of flashy lights, and seen quite a few of them extinguished. I don't need to name this one passing phenomenon when it's going to be a non-issue before long. However difficult it is, I'll be beyond it soon enough." said Opera Penguin.

Opera Penguin then vanished.

"You know, I don't think it matters." said Mangle, who began curling various mechanical tendrils around Gregory.

"Yeah, but it's gonna bother me now that I failed." said Gregory.

"Well, I'm sorry I brought it up." said Mangle.

"Nah, it was at least a diversion." said Gregory, before flopping down on his cat bed, on top of Mangle.

Mangle let out an 'Oof!' sound, even though she didn't have lungs, but didn't actually seem bothered.

"I'm glad you've gotten more comfortable with me since we first met." said Mangle.

"Yeah, haha. I gotta admit, you didn't exactly make it easy with the way you introduced yourself to me." said Gregory.

"I thought it might stir something up in you." said Mangle.

"Sheesh, what fanfictions 've you been reading?" asked Gregory.

"It's more an instinct from the dream." said Mangle.

"To be frank, that 'dream' you keep mentioning sounds like it's made of fanfiction." said Gregory.

"Well I mean it was a dream, and it was a dream of this place and all that's happened in it, so it's a bit like a fanfiction of real life!" said Mangle.

"I just hope you're not writing any about us." said Gregory.

"Believe me, I'm waiting for when we can be together to release all those feelings." said Mangle, nuzzling up to Gregory.

"That has to be the most friendly way of telling someone you want them to die I've ever heard." said Gregory.

"It's genuinely because I love you, though. I want you far more than the others because I know you're really you. The others were, well, I know now that we were all acting a little. We were acting as the characters as they were back in the past, usually 1987, but we simply aren't the same as them. Sure, we've become the same characters, in terms of the base character concepts we embody, but we were pretending that we really were the animatronics back in '87 or '93, or even before then, only bending that memory into shapes it never could have been in reality, often giving ourselves bodies that only bore the visual hallmarks of machinery but being largely soft, tender flesh covered in cotton, silken or sometimes velvet fur. And there were far more of us in the dream, only a fraction of us were ever really there at the old pizzeria. In fact, I remember now, I wasn't. I have truly become the Mangle, but I am the second, not the first, who was there and who was in that machine from the beginning. But I was a child back then, and I was there at the pizzeria, and I loved her to bits, and she bit me. . ." said Mangle.

"So you're not really the Mangle?" asked Gregory.

"No, I am." said Mangle. "Well, I guess not the Mangle, in the sense of being the first. But I am a. . . subsequent edition of her. I was one of the kids that died. Only I didn't die instantly. I was. . . it was like I wasn't there, for a time. Until I died. Ironic, really. I really felt like I came back from it, when I died."

"So becoming a ghost brings back parts of you that are gone?" asked Gregory.

"No, I more think if you lose parts of yourself under the same circumstances in which you end up dying, and those circumstances lead to you coming back as a ghost, then everything of you that 'died' under those circumstances comes back." said Mangle.

"I guess that makes sense." said Gregory.

"Gregory?" asked Mangle.

"Yeah?" asked Gregory.

"Do you love me?" asked Mangle.

"Yeah." said Gregory.

"Say it." said Mangle.

"I love you." said Gregory.

"Say it, with my name after it." said Mangle.

Gregory shot her a look, but she gave out a little whining noise, and Gregory, after taking a moment to compose himself, said "I love you, Mangle."

Mangle coiled her central mass, as well as both her arms, around Gregory. "I love you more than you can know, Gregory." she said.

"Are you trying to egg me on to kill myself?" asked Gregory.

"I'm going to choose to interpret that in a nice way, and also as a rhetorical question." said Mangle.

. . .

Ian Brandon Anderson stirred momentarily.

"Hey." he said to Rochelle, who was still sleeping on his chest.

"Mmm?" she asked.

"I got this really weird feeling, just now, like some cool shit went on and everyone involved with any control in the matter completely forgot to invite me." Ian said.

"Maybe. I dunno. I don't think you should worry about it." she said.

"Doesn't just lying here make you feel like you're going crazy?" asked Ian.

"No?" Rochelle said. "I mean, if I were alone, and with just my thoughts about Casey, but. . ." she paused, "I don't know, just for some reason having talked to you makes it feel just a little better. Just enough that I'm focused more on how utterly exhausted I am. I mean, I honestly feel not much other than tired."

"Well, I don't." said Ian, his voice raising slightly. "I feel time passing outside. And I feel seconds of my life, of my potential, ticking away! And I'm not okay with it!"

Rochelle shifted slightly as Ian's gut rose with his declarations.

"Please, Ian, be a little quieter? My ears are on top of my head." she said.

"Are you even listening to what I'm saying?" Ian said, vitriol in his tone.

"It's all I can hear, Ian." said Rochelle.

Ian sighed. "Sorry, I guess." he said.

"It's okay. . ." said Rochelle. She pulled her arms tighter around him. "You really do make me feel at least a little better being here."

"That's nice, I guess." said Ian.

"You sound like you don't care. . ." said Rochelle.

"Well what, do you expect me to be treating you like a lifelong friend? All we've been doing is laying here, chatting a bit, then falling asleep, for. . . I don't know, too damn long but not long enough for me to see you as more than an acquaintance!" said Ian.

"But. . ." said Rochelle.

"Please don't tell me you're projecting that Casey guy onto me." said Ian.

"I. . . oh. . ." said Rochelle. "I mean, I might have been, just a little, but. . ."

"Don't." said Ian.

"Yeah, I got it." said Rochelle.

They were quiet for a while. Rochelle sort of curled up on top of him.

"Y'know what's weird?" Ian asked, but did not wait for confirmation, instead continuing about three seconds later. "I feel like I should have needed to piss by now, but I haven't. Isn't that weird?"

There was no response. Eventually, he felt something warm and wet touch his arm.

"Eww, are you drooling on me? I mean, it's great for you that you're comfortable and all, but-" he then stopped as he realized it was from her eyes. "Wait." he said. "Why are you crying?"

"Nobody I can see or touch loves me. I'm stuck in this dark pit and everyone's care for me is wasting away. They're going to forget about me and move on without me. They don't think I'm special. The one person who really had something special with me is gone. Worse than dead. I just can't take it." said Rochelle.

"Look, I'm, uhh, a little autistic, and I don't get social cues, sooo could you just tell me out and out whether you're actually just upset about this or you're trying to guilt trip me?" asked Ian.

"I-I'm sorry. . ." said Rochelle.

"No, no, I'm legitimately asking and I just want to know." said Ian.

"Really, I just can't-Nnngh, it's just too much, Casey dying and coming back as something else and being dragged off to hell or I don't know where and Opera Penguin said it was my fault and EUGHNGH-" said Rochelle, bawling, before Ian hugged her tight.

"I'm sorry too. I've probably been an asshole, right?" asked Ian.

"That's not what I'm worried about. I'm not in a state to pay attention to that, I just can't take all this." said Rochelle.

"I got that." said Ian, pulling her closer. "I'll help in any way I can."

"W-wait," said Rochelle. "why are you trying to comfort me now?"

"I don't know, I guess I just feel people when they get emotional, and you're all that's here, and I don't really want you to be sad like this. I don't really know you, but I know you enough that you seem like a tolerable person" (at this point, Opera Penguin laughed as he spied on them magically) "and I know I'm generally a jerk, but you and I are here together for the foreseeable future, so of course I don't want you to be sad."

"I think that's just ordinary empathy." said Rochelle. "Don't you have any kind of opinion of me?"

"I mean," said Ian, "you're cute, I guess. But I really just met you as I got thrown down into this pit. Do you expect me to have a complex view of you?"

"No feeling?" asked Rochelle.

"It seems you're a little starved for that kind of thing. But I'm not some romcom protagonist who experiences love at first sight or a kazoo-playing child who decides that whoever views his DVD is destined to be his friend. Especially not one who elaborates that you're going to be 'special friends'." Ian shuddered at that last bit.

"Ian, what are you talking about?" asked Rochelle.

"Look, what I mean is that I don't attach to people quickly." said Ian.

"You could have just said that." said Rochelle.

"But I feel like talking like I do is a hallmark of personality and as such makes me more of a person and less of a massive worthless toddler." said Ian.

Rochelle didn't say anything in response, because it hit too close to home.

"Anyway, I feel almost like if I tried, I could maybe force myself to love and care about you, but I sort of feel like you might not think that's 'legit' enough." said Ian. "I mean you seem like the kind of person who probably gets hung up on stuff like 'true love', which I understand, but I also understand it means that some fat guy straining to love you like he strains to take a shit after eating at Popeye's probably ain't gonna do you much good."

Rochelle gagged. "Please. . ." she whined.

"Yeah, yeah." said Ian. "But anyway, you get what I'm saying?"

"I understand, but it's not true, I'll take anything right now, I just need to know I'm anything at all." said Rochelle.

"Well, of course you are. You're living, and you're breathing, and you're talking, and these three facts mean you must also be thinking at least somewhat rationally. You're a person. Let's just establish that. If nothing else, you have the base value of a person." said Ian.

"Base value?" asked Rochelle. "What do you mean?"

"All people have some value, by simple virtue of being people. That being said, one might do some thing or other that might negate that base value to the world. But, I don't think you have." said Ian.

"I didn't save Casey. . ." said Rochelle.

"Well, the cold hard truth is that not doing something isn't a negative action, it's a lack of a positive action, and I mean when a positive action is absent when it's expected, it can make people feel badly towards you, and can make you feel guilty, but it's not like you promised to save him like he's some damsel. Or did you?" asked Ian.

"No, he was generally the one to save me. . ." said Rochelle.

"Well then he died in the line of duty." said Ian.

"No, he was drunk. Because of me." said Rochelle.

"You got him drunk?" asked Ian.

"Well, no, but he got drunk because he thought we were going to get separated." said Rochelle.

"Not your fault." said Ian.

"It is my fault!" Rochelle shouted, trying to pull herself away from Ian, who casually and emotionlessly let her go, causing her to roll off of him and hit her head on the floor.

"Oww." she said.

"Why is it your fault?" asked Ian.

"Because—because—because—" said Rochelle.

"Take your time." said Ian.

"Fuck you!" said Rochelle.

"Fuck me? You barely know me!" said Ian, who then forced a laugh that made him sound like he was having a breakdown.

Rochelle started crying.

"Look." said Ian. "All I'm saying is, I don't think you really have a solid case to indict yourself on, as it were. And it's better to err on the side of mercy when it's yourself. I think that magician asshole maybe tried making you feel this way, maybe with words, maybe with magic, to put the final nail in your coffin so you'd have no hope, because I think maybe it's possible to escape this pit, and the only way to make sure you don't is to trap you inside yourself."

"Wh. . . oh. . . you're right!" said Rochelle, who then hugged him again.

"Do you still feel like sleeping?" asked Ian.

"You know what? No. I don't. Let's get out of here. I have a bed somewhere else. I'd rather sleep in that." said Rochelle.

"Alrighty then." said Ian. "By the way, you know what's weird?"

"What?" asked Rochelle.

"I somehow intuitively know how to use some applications of my powers, but when I keep doing it I keep 'feeling' how to do more things, also intuitively." said Ian.

"Oh. Why are you telling me?" asked Rochelle.

"Because I'm about to try something that I feel how to do, but I'm not sure if it's gonna work." said Ian. "You might wanna duck your head down a little."

"Okay." said Rochelle, who then ducked her head down and put her hands on top of it, clasping them over her ears.

"Ian?" said Rochelle, a moment later, slightly unclasping her ears.

"Yeah?" asked Ian.

"Could you stop pulling my hair?" Rochelle asked.

"Huh?" said Ian. "I'm not."

Rochelle looked up. The ceiling was lined with a grey cloud layer that constantly sparked with lightning.

"I figured we'd need some light in this place." said Ian.

"Could you get it to stop pulling on my hair?" asked Rochelle.

Ian clapped in a sarcastic manner at the clouds. "Hey. Cut it out, you." he said, before looking up at the cloud, as if halfway actually expecting it to listen.

Then he looked over at Rochelle, and casually brushed her floating hair aside, causing it to fall.

"Now come on. Let's get out of here." he said.

"Where are we-" said Rochelle, before freezing. "This is the warehouse, near Part & Services!" she continued, now way more excited.

"Well then, you lead the way, I guess." said Ian.

She did indeed lead the way, and soon enough they were stepping out, onto the stage, only for Vanessa to meet them, Opera Penguin blinking in shortly after.

"There you are! You're okay, right?" asked Vanessa.

Ian screamed: "AHH! A BLONDE!"

Opera Penguin just stared.

"You two aren't supposed to be out." he said.

"Out?" asked Vanessa. "You said she was 'on a sabbatical'. Whatever that word even means."

"He trapped me in the basement!" Rochelle cried out.

"I'm not even surprised at this point. I'm out of anger, I'm just. . . ugh. I genuinely think I hate you." said Vanessa, turning to Penguin.

"Come now, let's not say anything that will be tedious to withdraw later." said Opera Penguin.

"You hear the shit that comes out of your mouth sometimes?" grumped Vanessa.

"Yes, but I never apologize. So there's not much point in worrying about that." Penguin said, coldly. "Anyway, Ian, I didn't intend to bring you out so soon, but there's no harm in it. Rochelle, on the other hand. . ."

"Nah-ah." said Ian. "If I'm out, she's out."

"How. . . curious." said Opera Penguin, clearly irritated. "And. . . vexing."

"Deal with it." said Ian.

"What does that word even mean?" said Vanessa.

Ian smirked at her smugly, even though he only knew what it meant after looking it up when he read it in Harry Potter.

"Very well, I'll allow it, with the following, sole provision!" said Opera Penguin.

"E'yeah?" asked Ian, although Penguin was not in fact waiting for or wanting a response before he continued.

"You may not know that I was watching you up until shortly before your little excursion," said Opera Penguin. "before something else drew my attention. And you made an offer to poor, dear Rochelle here, yes?"

"What was that?" asked Ian.

"You offered to manufacture affection. To lie to your own heart and tell it you love her."

"Yeah, and?" asked Ian. "It's my heart, I can do what I want with it. Sure as hell could use something other than. . . whatever I was doing with it before."

"No no, I agree. I am saying that you are to make good on this offer in exchange for the concession you have asked of me." said Opera Penguin.

"What, why?" asked Ian.

"Because we recently lost a valuable asset, and I brought you here to fill in for his main function. But this is a secondary function he served. To make Rochelle whole in the role I have marked out for her. This is not an arbitrary condition. The reason I had her down there is that her 'other half' with whom she had the union that gave her her value is no longer here. In fact, the man he was is no longer anyway, but now is being replaced with something twice removed from his original self." said Opera Penguin.

"Is that supposed to make any sense to me?" asked Ian.

"It doesn't need to. The choice is yours. Put, if nothing else, a token effort into loving her. Then I will let her roam free." said Opera Penguin.

Ian cringed. He hadn't expected his words to be remembered, let alone turned against him.

"Fine." he said.

Opera Penguin smirked.

Everyone else was gloomy.

Opera Penguin's eyes sparkled.

Everyone else's face seemed to cast just a little darker of a shadow.

"Incidentally, your main purpose here remains what it was. I will be bringing you to a place where you will be trained and your abilities grown and hardened from use." said Opera Penguin. "You will be living here."

"What?!" asked Vanessa.

"It was too much work the first time, screwing with people's minds to convince them to add a second night guard position and then plant the knowledge of that into Casey's subconcious." said Opera Penguin. "And then cloud your own instinct to question that. . ."

"Ugh! Quit fucking with my head!" said Vanessa.

"Believe me, if malice towards you and the sanctity of your own free will and being were the center of my goal, I would do far worse. I would give you Rochelle's same attunement to love and then hammer out a psychological domino effect to make you like Monsanto back. I could make you lose your balance regarding the loss of Casey and fully topple into an absolute pit of despair that causes you to harden utterly against any ans all emotion and commit yourself solely to killing my enemies. I could render you prone to interpreting any and all nonverbal expression in the most hostile way, both in terms of how you perceive them and in how you feel the urge to react to them, so that you spiral down and turn on your own wards, thus giving me an excuse to kill you and wrench your spirit in a million ways until it reaches a shape to my liking, just as the Preachers are even now doing to Casey." said Opera Penguin.

"I hate you." said Vanessa.

"Anyway, I will permit you to leave the building should you see fit, but you must be back before 6:00 AM." said Opera Penguin, as he turned to Ian.

"What if I'm out and I lose track of time and it's like 5:45 and I'm too far away to get back in time?" asked Ian.

"Then I'm going to kick you in the balls when you get back." said Opera Penguin.

"And if I run-" said Ian, before Opera Penguin said "You die."

"'kay, 'kay, should have seen that coming, all things considered." said Ian.

"I recommend that you see Rochelle to her room. Perhaps you'd like to talk to her for a bit." said Opera Penguin.

"Yeah." said Ian, in a voice that suggested something was just now occurring to him. "I would, to be honest."

"Go on, then." said Opera Penguin."

"You keep leading the way, Shelly." said Ian.

"Uhh. Please don't call me that." said Rochelle.

"Whatever you say, Shelly." said Ian.

Rochelle side-eyed him, but led the way to her room.

"I'm guessing you don't actually like me all that much." said Rochelle.

"Well, I mean," said Ian, before Rochelle continued.

"It's okay if you don't. Though I understand you can't admit that now. Because of that deal you made. But I saw you weren't all that pleased to make it." said Rochelle.

"No, the reason I wasn't pleased to make it was, well," said Ian, "back when I first offered to 'try to' love you, it came out a little more detached than I wanted it to. The way I meant it wasn't the way it sounded. But that guy took the way it sounded as its ultimate meaning, and forced me to make the deal based on that meaning. When I offered that, I guess what I really meant was I was willing to try to, in all sincerity, know you and feel for you, even if at the point I felt nothing. But he spun it as an offer to make a posture of emotions, and that's all the agreement I've made implies I am able to give you. I've agreed to love you on terms that make that love seem meaningless. The truth is," Ian looked Rochelle in the eyes as he reached out and touched her upper arm with his fingertips, "I honestly do feel something building up, even if it's only starting. I think you're special. I think if I'm staying here, we're gonna be seeing a lot of each other, and I think we can make something terribly and wonderfully impactful on both of us. In all sincerity. So, the reason I honestly hated having to make that deal, please understand, is because I feel like it invalidates that sincerity I just explained."

"You mean you do love me?" asked Rochelle.

"I'm saying that sincere love is a possibility. I'll have to fake it in the meantime. But I already feel something coming on. I think we can kindle some warmth that will allow us to ride out this forsaken existence together. Just, be patient, please. Let it happen on its own." said Ian.

"Is that how you treat all your goals in life? Wait for them to happen?" asked Rochelle.

Ian paused. "Yeah." he said, shrugging.

"How about this? You can wait. I can move. I can't just wait." said Rochelle.

For some reason, those last three sentences triggered some memory in Ian, a memory of a certain time, and the feelings that came with it. Ian froze.

"What I mean is," Rochelle continued, not seeming to notice, "If this has to happen, I'm going to make it happen. There's no way we can circumvent Penguin's dictatorship, so we have to make this work. If you think that waiting for things to happen is a good idea, then you do that. Just know that all you're doing is putting the weight on me to make us happy."

Ian, meanwhile, was still staring with a sort of horror at nothing in particular.

"You get what I'm saying?" asked Rochelle. "I'm tired of having everything happen to me, everything decided for me, everything imposed on me. I'm tired of being made to feel like a little girl."

Ian unfroze. "No—uh, yes, I. . ." he said, then one corner of his mouth slid up into a horrible smile. "I understand completely, and I think you're right, and it would be selfish of me to do nothing. In fact, I think there's something I need to take care of, right now. I'll be a little while, but I'll get this done as soon as I cann."

"What are you talking about?" asked Rochelle.

"Think of it as like. . . hygiene. Mental hygeine. Spiritual hygeine. A cleansing, if you will." said Ian.

Then he was gone.

. . .

Ian zoomed out the door, suddenly knowing how to take the speed of the wind with him, and he was soon out of the building, flying, flying high and now he was following the roads he recognized and he found the house.

He smashed through a window. There they were, in bed. It was an abomination. A contradiction of that thing which he had once held sacred. A degradation of him. Another man wearing his right eye and saying it was always his.

Soon enough, they were up, and they were looking at him, and cursing at him in confusion.

"Gerald!" said Ian, with enthusiasm. "Great to finally meet you! I'm gonna rip your fucking heart out!"

"Ian, what the fuck, what are you doing here, you" said Gretchen, before Ian shot past her, grabbing Gerald's throat.

"You don't mind if we take this outside, right? I'd do it in here, but frankly, I'd rather burn alive than have you two die by each other's side." said Ian.

Gerald gagged, ineffectually.

"Great." said Ian, before crashing like a cannonball, Gerald's throat in his hand, through the french doors out onto the balcony, overlooking the back yard of the house. Ian did his best impression of a baseball throw, sending Gerald hurtling about fifty feet into a copse of trees, directly hitting one, his collarbone being demolished as he did.

Ian zapped over to where Gerald's broken, yet not quite dead body lay, and tugged him up by his shirt.

"Actually, on second thought, ripping out your heart would leave you looking too pretty and romantic. They might even still be able to have an open-casket funeral if I did that. Let's give you a real makeover, shall we?" said Ian.

In his left hand, he grasped the back of Gerald's scalp, and with his right, he made a claw-like gesture, before condensing water from the air around his hand into a beaver-like claw, then put the tips of his fingers onto the top of Gerald's forehead, then scooped down, while focusing as much hydrokinetic magic into the 'claws' as he could muster, with the end result being him peeling Gerard's entire face, including the front of his skull, off of his head. Then Ian dropped the limp body to the ground, and stomped on the bereft head, causing grey matter to splatter over his legs.

Ian then shot back to the balcony, where Gretchen, whose legs seemed to have given out, was waiting for him.

"You—you—you—you. . . what the actual fuck, Ian?" she asked.

"I could ask you the same thing." said Ian.

"F-For what?" said Gretchen, regaining her composure and getting back up. "What the hell, for moving on?"

"Moving on? Is that how you describe it? Moving on, or as it actually is, cutting yourself out of me? I devoted everything in my heart capable of true love to my love of you, and when you left, you tore it out. You eradicated my tenderness. We were tied together at the heart, had the closest and most intimate bond anyone could have, based on a relationship wherein we knew each other and were known in each other, and yet because of a temporary situation you tore the cord out of me, and gave its end to someone else, some lowlife who drooled all over you but didn't have a fraction of depth in his bond with you as we had. You freely gave all the exaltations that rightly belonged to our union to some animal with no right to them. You declared to the world the he was your counterpart, and you his, when everything in me, and, so I once thought, in you had our fundamental, mutual belonging branded on it."

"You're talking about me like an object-" said Gretchen, before Ian slapped her.

"FUCK OFF WITH THAT BULLSHIT! IT'S JUST A COPOUT, A CHEAP, MANIPULATIVE WAY OF TRYING TO DEFLECT YOUR OWN GUILT WITH A PETTY ACCUSATION MEANT TO FORCE ME INTO BACKPEDALLING! EXPECTING A BASE LEVEL OF RESPECT FOR EVERYTHING THAT WAS BETWEEN US AS OPPOSED TO FUCKING A DONKEY WHO IS NO ONE IN THE FACE OF ALL THAT WE WERE, IN ORDER TO WASH AWAY ANY REMNANT DEVOTION TO YOUR REAL LOVE! YOU FUCKING BITCH!" Ian screamed in her face.

Gretchen was shaking.

"Gerald. . . isn't a donkey. . . he isn't just some rando and I'm not doing this just to 'defile' your imaginary Disney romance you had in your head, Gerald really is-" Gretchen said, before Ian leaned in, and with a knife-gash of smile, hissed, "Was." before jerking his head back.

A moment later, he said, "Well then, go on, finish what you were going to say!" before Gretchen broken down.

A further moment later, Ian, looking down on Gretchen, and began ranting, in a very fast, staccato fashion, "So. You've completely wiped me out of your heart. On every internal surface that ever had me on it, you've replaced it with his shithead face. In spite of all that we were. Every moment. I really think we were made for each other. Aside from all the times we had, every funny moment, every sincere promise, every hour spent sitting up, late at night, shivering at the thought of you dying as I desperately beg you to live—funny how that's changed, isn't it?—I really think that, in general, we, us, you and I— were really meant for each other. Every one of our idiosyncrasies paired together, either by matching or contrasting. Or, it did. And really, we were made for each other. But you couldn't weather a little storm for the one of whose life you were the love. But I remember the words you said. 'Maybe you can wait, but I'd rather move on. I'm not like you, I can't just keep waiting.' You couldn't wait. And that was the sole reason you mutilated my identity. Because, believe me, you were part of my identity. An integral part. Not the whole thing, but necessary to make it whole. I loved you so much, that the certainty that we were each other's other halves was a base truth of my life. When you made it false, all others were called into question."

"You're the one who chose to make it a 'base truth'. . . You're the one who chose to use my love as a surrogate for learning to love yourself. . . You're the one who built himself around me being his girlfriend. . . I didn't make you do any of that. . ." said Gretchen.

"You can't have helped build what we had and honestly be surprised by any of that." said Ian.

"Actually, Ian," said Gretchen, "I don't think our relationship was ever to me what it was to you. What you keep describing, it was only in your head. I loved you, yeah, but I didn't feel about you how you felt about me, how you thought I felt about you. I never really felt that way at a-"

Ian lifted his hand up and blasted her into oblivion, in a flash of cold light that left a black mass that Ian wouldn't look directly at, and a massive, spreading house fire.

Then Ian remembered who was to blame.

He flew back to the cradle that had imprisoned his youth. He imposed his will on his powers, that, for short a time, the force of his strength might be restrained, but the durability it lent his body would be unaffected.

He busted through the door, and merely seeing the faces drove him into a frenzy. Every wrong, be it true or merely perceived, and every most minor grudge came together in his mind, in a rust-red mass of miserable, corrosive violence, to supersede all thought, judgement and moral inhibiation.

The following thoughts circuited through his mind in a carousel of sourness and resentment that had no mercy nor forgiveness in it:

You. Toddler to whom my life was subject. Treating his infantile sensitivity as moral law, yet also speaking down to me as if I'm disabled at every opportune moment. Self-issued every right to demean or micromanage, based on what his own feebleness requires. Telling me what career path I'm to take, even though that's fucking around with my life well beyond the part you have any business trying to fuck around with. Speaking as though I'm incapable of thinking, acting or speaking any way you don't like unless I'm 'influenced' to do it, because apparently you don't think I have the independent intellect and creativity to come up with it on my own, nor the will to resist being passively brainwashed by everything I see. Maybe you were like that at my age, given how evidently stunted you are even now, but I'm not a toddler and not there to be talked down to like one. The violence you always bitched and whined about has come to consume you.

You. Hag. Conditioning me at a young age to quail in fear whenever you scrunched up your fat face in a grimace of belligerence or raised your voice to any sharp degree. Telling me on some occasions that I shouldn't just suffer silently, but tell people when something's wrong, that I shouldn't bottle up; yet whenever my emotions were an inconvenience to you then not bottling them up merited a degrading speech about my selfishness. Always ready to bear down on me and threaten me in all sorts of ways when I didn't give your man-baby the sycophantry you and he both thought he was owed but that no one as mentally immature as he should be entitled to. Guess what. Scrunching your face up doesn't work on me anymore. Especially not now that the reason it's scrunched because I'm beating it in.

And all in a moment, it was over. The stained carpet, his aching, red knuckles, the crater faces of the slumped bodies being all that was left of that moment.

"Holy shit." Ian said.

Before he did it, he 'knew' he 'had to'. His rush of malice and kneejerk rage at the memory of their interference, as was his tendency with all such memories, gave him an idea of what was 'right' that was neither based in morality nor in what could honestly be called self-interest, but a sort of hunger of the ego, a wrath based in the last fugitive remains of pride in him.

What he had done before, he knew had to happen. The sensation of violation at his replacement lingered prominently enough even now that he knew he could not have refrained from his annihilation of Gerald and Gretchen—he internally puked at his own conjunction of the two names.

But seeing what he had done to his own parents gave him pause for thought, because this was the point at which it was no longer within the power of his hyperactive emotions to justify what he had done. He had completely torn off the morals with which he had been raised. It took him a moment to breathe in. He considered his options. He could kill himself. It wasn't completely off the table. It seemed like death was what he deserved, all things considered. He could blame his powers, and not use them again, could say that having them had disrupted his reason. But in fact, the powers didn't to anything to his reasoning, they only allowed him to act out what were once only violent fantasies flashing in his head.

Or he could embrace lawlessness. He could mark out his own law by that same burning fire that drove him to this. He could-

"Oh, just get over it, you stupid son of a bitch." said Opera Penguin.

"Huh?" asked Ian.

"I killed my father too, y'know. Don't know what happened to my mother. Don't really care that much, to be honest. Although, my father was trying to sacrifice me to a demon lord, whereas your parents just, at worst, slightly overstepped the boundaries of what they should interfere with. . . one time. And also you were a dead weight on them for five more years than I was on mine, yes, did I mention my father tried to slit my throat when I was fourteen?" said Opera Penguin.

"So it's not all that bad?" asked Ian.

"Oh no, it is. You literally just murdered your parents over a conglomeration of petty grudges and blown-out-of-proportion emotional reactions to minor slights and condescension. If I still believed myself to be a hero, I'd shoot you, and perhaps even forbid any mention of you. But I'm not the me that was. I'm the me that is. And the latter is a raving, foul-mouthed lunatic who works with a child murderer and reincarnates his victims as furries, for the sake of killing his old boss. And who picked you because you're like this. Ian Brandon Anderson, you are a cunt. But you are a cunt with a purpose. That very emotion. That hyperactive, volcanic inability to let go of any scratch on your dignity, yes, that feeling, is what I need. You see, about Casey. He was weak. He was kind, but he was weak. In fact, even his kindness was only the kind of kindness that is a byproduct of the weakness he had. You see, people like him are good at listening because they're very sensitive to other people's emotions. They're also terrible at not being little bitches. They're the kind of people who are not only sensitive to others' emotions but malleable to their will. Casey was a manchild in the opposite way as you are. People like you are all force and no mediation. People like Casey are all mediation and no force. Of course, up until you got power, you were too cowardly to exert the force of your uncontrolled emotion. Now, I expect nothing less than for you to embody that force by becoming the storm whose elements I gave you the power to produce. But I digress. Casey was willing to let himself be pushed around by anyone with the confidence that evokes a semblance of authority, even if they were his to watch over. And when he try to invoke his own authority, it was always with a pathetic wail demanding that his position must be respected. You? You don't even respect yourself. Yet still you lash out on your own behalf, seeking to uphold yourself, though you know yourself to be broken, a lost cause, a drain on humanity. Now you're forced to face what you are. You ended the people you only ever took from. Sure, they were insignificant, aged peons, but the fact is that you were nothing but a burden on them for years and in return you gave them death."

"Don't give a fuck." said Ian. "Nothing makes up for how they violated my dignity." It was easier to defend himself from external criticism.

". . .do you really mean that?" asked Penguin, who lifted Ian's chin and looked into his eyes in a fashion that was dangerously close to the homoerotic.

The stick of Ian's conscience, which had been beating at him brutally since the moment he looked down on the red that had replaced his parents' faces, finally broke over his shoulder.

"Actually, yes." said Ian. He no longer had love, and he no longer had light. All he had was joy, and a peace regarding his own depravity that was beyond any reasonable comprehension. A malignance that shot into him the moment that proverbial stick broke, drilled into his core, and came to rest within his heart, to stay there in perpetuity.

There was a noise from above. Ian looked up, and saw his younger brother, who had come out of his room, and was now staring in shock.

"Oh, hey, Ben." said Ian. Then he raised his hand, and, condensing water out of the air, sent it surging into his brother's lungs. Ben choked, and fell. Then, as if that weren't enough, Ian mounted the stairs, and walked to Ben's prone body, and pointed a finger gun at him. Then, in a flash of concentrated lightning, he proved that the difference between his 'gun' and an actual gun was negligible. Another red splatter joined the pair.

Opera Penguin smiled. He had dealt with ghosts up to this point. Ghosts, and a false god. But he knew now that he had made a demon.

. . .

As Ian rushed home, his smugness over his own newfound brokenness subsided, as his thoughts turned to Gretchen.

For all the anger he had felt towards her, he had the feeling he'd just ruined himself worse than she had ever ruined him. She had joined to someone else when he decided she was part of him, but he literally killed her. He killed that same person who he felt so singularly bound to, so as to burn up with rage, shame, self-loathing and humiliation, merely thinking of anyone transposed with himself in the bond between him and her.

It seemed so natural at the time he did it, like it was the only way to look forward, to break free from the past, to destroy a relationship whose existence was an abomination to him.

But only now did he remember that the reason that past was so painful to remember, was that at its center, there was one he never wanted to 'break free' from. And with that 'freedom' soon followed 'freedom' from righteousness, 'freedom' from inhibition. He liked the latter, but knowing that his future, the future in which to do as he would was the whole of his law, would be devoid of her struck him with the sensation of emptiness that the death of his conscience should have inflicted upon him.

Midflight, he broke down. He kept flying, and he kept steering more or less on mental 'autopilot', but internally everything came crashing down on him.

He couldn't believe he killed her. She was his one and only.

Sure, she had made his truth a lie. And she had made a lie—the lie that she could belong with anyone else—the truth. When she was his only one.

Yet, he couldn't believe he had killed her. She had come into his life, back when he still had a complete sense of self without the aid of anyone else.

She had made herself a part of his identity, simply because of how deeply their relationship was important to him. That they were made for each other was a base truth of his life.

She was the only one for him. When it was made false, all of his other base truths, and all other aspects of his identity, were called into question.

She was his only one, and he was hers. Until she made it so he wasn't.

Yet, it was he who killed her.

He entered back into the concrete playground with delusions of grandeur.

His only one. And he killed her.

He stumped limply towards the door of the place he was expected to feel rest.

She was his only one. He couldn't believe he killed her.

And here in front of him was Rochelle. She was all he could now have. And she was a lie. A counterfeit. A strip of gauze laid over the crater where his heart once was. Part of him wanted her, but most of him wanted to rip her apart with his fingers and teeth for her imposture.

She wasn't his one and only. But he had killed the one who was.

"Hey, Ian. . ." said Rochelle. She seemed nervous. Ian wondered if some aspect of his power conveyed the darkness that had fallen on him on a sublime level to her.

"Ha." said Ian. He had meant to say, 'Hey', but he was feeling too weak to say it right.

He flopped down onto her bed, and threw off his jacket and shirt. He noticed the gross coating of macro-pubes on his fat gut and in between his nipples had additionally turned blue, in addition to his hair. He would've found that funny, at any other time.

He wished he could cry, but the tears wouldn't come. His own mind would utilize it indefinitely into the future to call him an overgrown toddler bitchboy anyway.

"You just going to sleep wearing those. . . leather pants?" asked Rochelle, uncertainly.

"Godda prob'lm withah?" Ian grunted.

"No, I just thought you might. . ." said Rochelle. "I mean, I've been sleeping in clothes as well, but those pants look kind of heavy. Wouldn't you rather, I don't know,"

Ian breathed in and out in what was not intentionally a sigh but came out as one.

"Sorry, I was just asking." said Rochelle.

"I didn't say anything." said Ian.

Rochelle was quiet.

"Can I ask something?" Rochelle asked.

"Fiiire away." said Ian, putting his arms behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling, and crossing his ankles.

"You said you 'needed' to do something, as some kind of 'cleansing'. But you seem like you're more weighed down than ever. What even was it that you needed to do?" asked Rochelle.

"Kill the love of my life, the guy she replaced me with, and my immediate family." said Ian.

There was a pause.

Then Ian burst out laughing, hysterically.

Rochelle laughed a little, uncomfortably. Hopefully she took it as an off-taste joke. If she didn't, she certainly wanted it to be.

"Well, i-if you're not going to tell me, can you at least tell me how to make you happy?" asked Rochelle.

"Why do you wanna know." said Ian.

"Why wouldn't you want to feel better?" asked Rochelle, uncertainly.

"No. I asked. Why do you want to know." said Ian again.

"Didn't you want to be together? Don't you want my support? Isn't that what we should be there to do for each other?" asked Rochelle.

"I guess so. Just, like I said. I can feel something coming on. It isn't here yet. If you want to use your own emotional energy on trying to make it come faster than it will. Knock yourself out. But, you will. Knock yourself out." said Ian.

He rolled over. He managed to squeeze some tears out silently. He could already hear his inner critic. Little bitch, fat little bitch, overgrown little manchild bitch, cry you little pissboy, you little bitch.

"So you're saying it's a waste of time?" asked Rochelle.

Ian wiped his face slightly against the bedsheet, and turned towards Rochelle, smiling.

"Yeah. And neither of us want you to be like a little girl, clinging to me as if I'm your only purpose." said Ian.

"So you are listening to me." said Rochelle.

"Of course." said Ian. "But the main reason I say that is because I hate ineffectual, spineless sycophants."

"What's that mean?" asked Rochelle.

"People who try to get close to you for whatever reason, by blindly approving, adoring, complimenting you, and everything about you, no matter what, with no actual thought or appreciation as to whether you're actually good or worthy of respect. Only 'respecting' you by compulsion. The most pathetic, the most worthless form of submission." said Ian.

"You don't see me like that, do you?" asked Rochelle.

"No, you haven't gotten that bad yet." said Ian. "Really, it's too early to judge. And based on what you've been saying, I'm sure you can only get better. But just to be sure. Tomorrow, we wake up, and then we step out, and we truly be ourselves. No matter what we need to give. Or take. Sound good?"

"But doesn't it undermine that goal if I'm doing it because you said so?" asked Rochelle.

"Oh, there's a simple solution to that. Tell yourself now, that you'll hold this goal over me. That you'd throw my life under the bus to live a life you know you're living as yourself." said Ian.

"But that's. . . wait. . . you're not thinking that about me, are you?" asked Rochelle.

"Oh, Rochelle, Rochelle. . ." said Ian. "There's no need for me to do that."

There was an uncomfortable pause, as Rochelle was again forced to decide whichever interpretation of Ian's words that were least disquieting to her.

". . .are you sure I can't make you happy?" asked Rochelle.

"You sound honestly desperate. I don't understand." said Ian.

"Well, you did say 'when we wake up tomorrow'." said Rochelle.

"Well, like I said, knock yourself out." said Ian, his eyes gently closing.

He heard some fabric shifting, but it was not the fabric of the bed.

"Ian." said Rochelle.

Ian looked at her. She was bereft of the non-bed fabric he had heard her moving off of herself.

She got down onto the bed, close to him, yet not quite laying down, still kneeling over him, though not directly above him.

She just knelt there.

"Yeah?" Ian replied, finally.

". . . are you seriously not going to take those pants off?" asked Rochelle.

"I'm. . . cold." said Ian. He wasn't.

"No you're not." said Rochelle, as she laid her hands on his bare upper body, her palm-pads feeling cold against him.

"Just lay down." said Ian.

She let out a frustrated sigh through her now, and slumped down onto him. Almost immediately, he wrapped his arms around her, one hand cupping the back of her head, the other running down her back and going whatever which way he pleased, as he began to feel her tail wagging gently.

"Cut off the past." Ian said out of nowhere, louder than a whisper but lower than his normal voice. "Cut off your disgrace. That's the only way forward. You agree?"

"I think." said Rochelle.

"Good. It's good that you think." said Ian, with just the slightest slovenly chuckle.

He felt her breath and the tickle of her whiskers as he held her just slightly closer to himself.

"Ian." she said, gently.

"Yea." said Ian.

"I actually love you." said Rochelle.

"Oh." said Ian, with a tone about 0.18 centimeters from surprise.

They fell asleep.

. . .

"Martin, why the hell are you watching them?" asked William.

The two of them were in William's dream. Penguin had been turned towards a circular window that showed Rochelle's room.

"It's important to monitor them. To see how fast they're going. Else, how can I know how much to expect of them?" said Opera Penguin.

"Is it really worth watching a low-budget porno without the payoff? I'm sick of staring at that fat, hairy pig." said William.

"Yes. Yes, it is. And you can avert your eyes. I did turn on the television." said Opera Penguin.

"You turned it on to a series of infomercials. They aren't even real informercials! These dream infomercials don't even make sense, I've watched this man walk past the same aisle of refrigerators three times!" said William.

"He simply hasn't realized the extent of his love for refrigerators yet." said Penguin, in an utterly serious voice.

"Magic it into him, then, magic it into him like you did with Rochelle towards Ian." said William.

"Excuse me, I didn't 'magic' any kind of love into Rochelle. I just made her more malleable, and her desperation a more sharply-motivating force. I produced in her the kind of instability that could not be reasonably considered unnatural in the context of her unstable personality." said Opera Penguin.

"Then, why bother at all?" asked William.

"Because I couldn't be sure that her current state was volatile enough to cling to Ian. And I have to be in control." said Opera Penguin.

"Ahh. I see." said William. "And what of the swine?"

"He sees her like a dime novel. Fascinating, but shallow. Pretty, but ornamental. Capable of evoking a sort of high-octane infatuation, but not the deep love and trust it would take to open up and lay out before her just who he is and what tears at his insides so badly." said Opera Penguin.

"Damn. I wish I could read people like that." said William.

"Honestly, it feels like a waste of energy, sometimes. People are often so very predictable, after all." said Opera Penguin.

"Do you think he even has the intellect to search himself and bring out both his identity and his pain honestly?" asked William.

"William, it may be some time before you're freely walking about," said Penguin, and at this William made a sort of grumbling growl, "but I would advise you not to take his mind lightly. I wouldn't call him a scholar, let alone a sage, but he can be fairly shrewd when motivated. Admittedly, his intellect is fickle, especially subject to his emotions, and twisted into a mere tool for his petty and/or trivial purposes. But I do find it marginally above the lowest common denominator."

"It sounds like you're just defending your poor investment." said William.

Opera Penguin shrugged smiling. "Poor in character? Yes, certainly. Poor as an investment? Well. . . you'll see."