Author's note: This chapter is kinda boring, and really only a bridge into the more exciting part of the plot. You have been warned (if a chapter being boring is something that you 'warn' about, idk)
"Are you sure this isn't one of Opera Penguin's tricks, though?" asked Cheyenne. "I mean, I'm happy for you, and all, but it's all so sudden and I'm thinking that's how you can tell it's him involved."
"Honestly?" asked Gregory. "I don't care at this point. Even if it is, I'm still happy with it."
"It feels real." said Rochelle.
"But what if he doesn't plan on keeping it the way it is? What if he somehow, I don't know, pulls the rug out from underneath you?" asked Cheyenne.
"Even if he somehow took our love away, I think we could bring it back, as a real thing." said Gregory. "Even if I stopped feeling this, I would want to feel it again. To be able to see Rochelle in this beautiful way again. To feel like I'm regressing, in a good way, walking back to a fresh, good place, like a mellow spring morning in the woods, a nice where all these nightmares in this place are just that."
"You really feel that way about me?" asked Rochelle.
"That's not all, but, yeah." said Gregory, smiling.
"Ohhh, this is so sweet but it feels so—and please don't take this the wrong way—unearned. Like, it came out out of left field, shoehorned in, forced, I don't know how else to say it, I'm just sure it's him. . ." said Cheyenne.
"I'm just going to let myself be happy and not worry." said Gregory. "If he did make this happen, I'm glad. If he didn't, I'm also glad. If this is just me going through puberty, well, that sucks but I know it's also something more than that. Whatever it is, I love Rochelle, and I'm gonna keep her safe."
. . .
"Laying it on a bit thick, aren't you?" asked William of Opera Penguin, as they hung out in the black room.
"Technically, it's Ian doing all the work now." said Opera Penguin.
"Really?" asked William.
"Well, that's a half-truth—It's really all of Gregory's proposed hypotheses. It is mystical influence, it is partly pure, real love, and it is partly just his hormones." said Opera Penguin.
"Still, explain to me how Ian is involved." said William.
Opera Penguin explained the 'phantom' to William, who winced slightly. "I'm not quite chuffed about the fact that a vestige of Ian remains in this place. I assume he himself, however, met a similar fate to Casey?"
"No, I faked his death and sent him to Lowrealm with a horrifying demon-looking version of Roxanne he inadvertently made." said Opera Penguin.
William sighed. "I shouldn't even be surprised anymore."
"But, they are a happy couple now!" said Opera Penguin. "Really, everyone's happy! Except Cheyenne, of course."
"And Andre." pointed out William.
"Actually. . ." said Opera Penguin, smiling. "I'm pretty sure he wanted it all to be over with."
"Oh?" asked William.
"Well, you see, before I called him, he was descending into delusion, to a terrible degree. He had an obsession with a cartoon character, which eventually became a belief that she was real, and was codifying itself rapidly in his mind into a veritable religion! It was all that lay inside him, and so when I broke his delusion, with a telepathic message imbued with a certain force that made it border on an attack, the shattering of that inner world of madness left him empty, left him purposeless. Which, of course, made him far easier to manipulate." said Opera Penguin.
"And also made him want to die?" asked William.
"In the end." said Opera Penguin. "Really, it was Cheyenne that did it. I nudged it along a little, too, but it was the result—him 'dating' a neon-colored anthropomorphic avian, that made him wait for it all to end. The funny thing was that he did begrudgingly like her, to some extent, and enjoyed her company, but that only served to break down his respect for himself even more, knowing that he was happy in this state, in this existence, defeated, enslaved, locking arms with what amounts to a giant child's doll. He wanted to die, William, because in his mind he had become a fascimile of and insult to what he had planned to be. Meanwhile, I was losing use for him, as I knew the Converts' 'war' was soon ending, so I sent him off with Ian."
"Wait, what? What do you mean, with Ian? Is that just a clever way of saying you think he's going to hell, or what?" asked William.
"No, silly Willy." said Opera Penguin, making Afton cringe again. "What do ghosts do?"
"Uhhm. . . they, uhh. . . Haunt. Things." said William.
"Things, and. . . ?" asked Opera Penguin.
"People?" asked William.
"That's right." said Opera Penguin. "The person he's had the second most close contact with, and who locked eyes with him as he died. Ian. Whom I sent off, far, far away."
"I see." said William.
"Anyway, if you see any residual teen ghost girls, don't hesitate to swat them." said Opera Penguin.
"Where'd that Jason boy go?" asked William, absentmindedly.
"Oh, he's been lurking around, he actually helped fight off a lot of the Converts." said Opera Penguin. "Then I trapped him in a small pocket dimension and started using him as a battery."
"I. . . see." said William. "Speaking of dimensions, why are you only trying this novel idea of making this place its own world now?"
"Well, like I said, Gregory's producing dark remnant en masse now." said Opera Penguin. "And as I stated long ago, I can convert that into more raw spiritual power in you."
"You mean I'm finally becoming a god now?" William asked. "Because of him?"
"I mean, you were in the process all along. You just couldn't see the results." said Opera Penguin. "But did you really think all this 'matchmaking' has just been for some nebulous something-or-other? Or, more absurdly, out of some philanthropic desire to guide them to love? No! It's all been leading to this! I'm also going to put most of the dream realms from the dollhouse in you—but not all of them. Then I'm going to bury the dollhouse with its remaining dimensions at the base of a mountain. I haven't decided which one yet, though, so don't ask."
"Do you really think I want to hear about it?" asked William. "Honestly, I'm more interested as to why you're burying it."
Opera Penguin then detailed every mountain he might bury it under, with no indication as to the reason why.
The latter part was not solely to torment William, however, but to keep him ignorant. For in that dollhouse would be left the 'killswitch' for if William ever got out of hand while Opera Penguin was absent, or worse, broke the tether Opera Penguin had on him.
V1.
Neon White.
Matthew Thomas Fuchs.
He had increased each's power sevenfold. He had removed weaknesses. Hyperbolized strengths. Smoothed over gaps in capability. He had made them demigods three, who would together have at least a chance at taking down William, should the need arise.
. . .
Bernard lit a sparkler in front of Ferdinand's face.
"Please put that out." asked Ferdinand, as one of the sparks nearly flew into his eye.
Bernard did.
. . .
Night 66
Opera Penguin did as he said he would, and separated the Pizzaplex from Earthrealm.
He also introduced everyone to 'training grounds' where he expected everyone to 'train' by murdering conjured-up phantoms of Penguin's own making.
This was a small caveat, but it was strange to everyone, especially Vanessa.
She asked why, and asked if they were still inhabited by disembodied ghosts.
Opera Penguin said "Well, if they are, you'd better expect them to be getting stronger, too." while smiling.
. . .
Opera Penguin lifted his bizarre sleeping impositions from the children, and instead had the three of them just sleep side by side. He also expanded Vanessa's apartment, complete with a large kitchen that he restocked every day. He made a room for Bernard that was not connected to the common room, but to Ferdinand's room. He 'fixed' the crater in the Daycare by turning it into an opening into a secondary, somewhat larger daycare.
Opera Penguin had the yiffbabies perform re-creations of their prior concerts before, and peopled the seats with dead children. He also gave Rochelle the ability to reassume her 'ageless' form for short periods of time, because she was insecure performing as a child. The form would also have the slightly different personality she had before the change. Bernard also 'entered the cycle of life', and Ferdinand soon followed, the latter also being given the same gift as Rochelle. Opera Penguin finally captured Charlotte, and brought her to life as a living Marionette with long, flowing black hair and a new mask, patterned after No-Face from Spirited Away for some reason.
The arcades were fully functional. The bowling alley was used often. Mazercise was altered so that it didn't suck. Monty Golf was unaltered, because it was perfect already. Fazerblast was supplanted by the aforementioned 'training'. Roxy Raceway was replaced by an entire new plane with a surreal lavender sky, which contained a size-adjustable actual racetrack. William Afton's old 'home' was transported to its own plane as well, and refurbished.
Opera Penguin made a copy of himself for William Afton, and as one last swansong to his days of overexplaining magic to William, clarified that it was conscious, which meant that it did, in fact, have a soul, and that a soul came to any being 'complete' enough to have a consciousness but consciousness itself existed as the soul's presence within the spirit. Opera Penguin thus exhorted William to treat the clone well, for even though he had made it with the knowledge that it wasn't the 'real him', it still could remember things, and keep grudges, and did, indeed, have certain, major elements of Penguin's personality.
Opera Penguin finally made one last dimension, a room full of shelves, on each being a crystal. Opera Penguin explained that they were 'spell crystals' and not actually material objects but energy constructs that gravitated to a materialized form, and that they shaped energy channeled through them into spells, each bearing its own spell, and could also imprint their spell onto malleable power, such as that of Survyen, whom Opera Penguin no longer referred to as 'Fake Penguin'.
This wonderland was enjoyed by all for two weeks. Everyone was happy. Cheyenne and Monsanto got back together. Gregory and Rochelle became closer and affirmed their bond. Vanessa seemed happier living like this.
But on the fourteenth day, Vanessa followed Opera Penguin out as he left to 'restock'. She saw that, in between picking up groceries, he killed random people, mostly the ones that wouldn't be missed, as well as sensing the hearts of those who would welcome such a 'new life'. She retreated before she thought he could see her.
Then, on the fifteenth day, she still called him out, in front of everybody. She said that they were all stronger than Penguin had let them know they were, even though he had been cultivating their power for his own use. And everyone listened. Both about the murders, and about the lying.
Penguin proceeded to laugh, and call them all idiots.
He snapped his fingers, and Monsanto and Cheyenne fell down, limply. As Vanessa gasped, he explained that, having given them the powers through which they manipulated their bodies, he also knew how to add restrictions and rules to how they used them, as he had prior through their 'needs'. These could include outright disabling them, which also disabled their normal ability to move. He said he would undo it 'when everyone calmed down'.
With this, Vanessa charged him, and he destroyed her sword, reducing it to a broken flashlight before she pulled, from her back, the chainsword, and swung it down at Opera Penguin, wounding him badly, and then did so twice more. Immediately after, Rochelle shot him through the shoulder, and Nyx tackled him.
Shocked at how close to death he suddenly felt, Opera Penguin shifted his form into a shapeless surge of energy which rushed into Gregory, briefly possessing him before rushing back out.
Opera Penguin called up and absorbed another energy body from the stash that he'd had Survyen create.
Vanessa grabbed Gregory and Rochelle, and jumped back to Earthrealm. Nyx got back up, but Opera Penguin stared at him and, as Monsanto and Cheyenne had, he fell down.
"Well." said Opera Penguin. "That went as bad as it could possibly go."
"What happened?" asked William.
"We just lost our greatest sources of energy just as everything was getting good." said Opera Penguin.
"Well, do I get to be stern now, since you've acknowledged me as your patron?" asked William, with a weak half-grin. This was the wrong thing to say.
Penguin snapped, making a fist and jerking it down, forcing Afton violently to his knees.
"You know full well," hissed Opera Penguin, "that to say that was a euphemism, a euphemism for your inability to have achieved this in any other fashion than being the subject of my work. You are nothing without me, you are a tool of mine, and any right you think you had to yourself was waived the moment you shook hands with the devil. With me."
Ferdinand watched all of this in shock, but didn't say anything, rather returning to his room and hiding there with Bernard.
Meanwhile, Penguin took in a breath, and decided on his next move.
"So, anyway. Without Gregory and Rochelle, I think we're going to need to kill as many people as possible." said Opera Penguin, without any particular tone of excitement or gloating, so much as musing. "We have enough power to gain a monopoly on death, over time."
"Wh-what?" asked Afton.
"We lost a great thing when we lost the two lovebirds." said Opera Penguin. "But we still have much. And with that, we can coerce the power of death itself to be ours. With the byproduct being a million children of your reign, or more."
"Y-y-you, what?" asked Afton, dazed.
"The ghosts, damn it! Everyone that dies in relation to this place—fuck it, you know this shit by now!" Opera Penguin was now stomping his foot like a child. "Why should I have to tell you this all over again just so you can complain? The universe gives power to death, to what is dead and dying, to what brings about death, based on the proportion of that death to all the death in the world! So if we become the biggest and baddest at making people dead, and then end the whole world, that'll give us the power of the universe! Or, at least, a third of it! And with all that loss, keep in mind that every death that occurs with even the slightest relation to this place results in a ghost bound to here! We reprogram the human spirit like more of your machines, and in the absence of living birth, maybe the part of the universe dedicated to that will give itself over to this transmigration! And then in your real will dwell all art, for all humanity will have been reborn, you its god, you supreme, you the judge, jury, king and executioner!"
Opera Penguin then jerked his head to the side, and raised a hand, calling up Charlotte, who he then pointed a finger at, doing to her what could only be described as 'zapping' her with an indigo sort of electric shock, the immediate effects of which were not visible.
"You will be responsible for their initial transformation beyond death. I have given you the power to wipe away their memories and break down—to simplify their personalities, reducing them to a blank slate, a quintessential representation of who they are. I will make their deaths painful, so that you must use this power, to remove their trauma. When the world is completely dead, Afton's realm will encompass it; indeed, they shall be one and the same. And you will roam the earth, raising the dead. I will make it so their deaths will leave their spirit stable, stationary and secured. That is all the aid I will be giving you." said Opera Penguin, in a cold and almost judicial voice.
"Any other declarations?" asked William.
"Night. Night upon the world. This world will not see day again for a long time. The night will fall as we reap our first harvest. There must be night where you rule, as it always was, as it always will be. The light has always shut them off, shrouded their spark, left your machines as just that—machines. Machines that lack the heart of the people you wronged, with the negativity you built up. And lacking what makes up the essence of your rule." said Opera Penguin.
"Sweet. . ." grumbled William.
"Now that I really consider things, I think we'll take this for a test run in the backwaters of this world. Tribes of people that will be less missed. Peoples who isolate themselves and have tenuous correspondence to the rest of the world. And a fair few in parts of the world where less sunlight would in fact be pleasing." said Opera Penguin.
"You did say you were human, yes?" asked William.
"Yes." said Opera Penguin.
"Just checking." said William.
"You're delusional if you think the morality of your time is the ultimate metric for whether one is of the human race or not." said Opera Penguin.
"I guess that's fair." said William.
"And I'm not even going to wave your actions in your face this time." said Opera Penguin, to which William perked up, before Opera Penguin continued, "I only know a laconic summary of your world's history. But I think this vast chunk of civilization, as it is, exists only as the result of a man, Alexander, who tread down on his equals and on his lessers in kind. Do you think he would have hesitated to crush any little villages or hamlets that stood against him? But all human life other than my own is now standing against us, because it's a degree of separation from what we want to make of the world. An eternal Dia de Los Muertos, except instead of tasteful ghoulish visages, they'll all be clad in costumes made in your creation's likeness. Like Alexander, we will turn everything we see into our own. We will make them ours, force the inhabitants of every territory to convert, and throw down not only their allegiance to any other in this world, but also their very life and humanity."
"You're insane." said William.
"No, I'm simply giving purpose to this purposeless world. I'm sure you'll enjoy being its king." said Opera Penguin.
William paused, and thought for a moment. Technically, everything Opera Penguin was promising him was what he had always wanted. Immortality, influence, fear, power. But this was not the way he wanted it. This grinning, pale, slightly effeminate man inexplicably named after antarctic waterfowl promised him the technical sum of his desires, and yet in doing so, he was allowing William to realize—too late—that he had wanted to achieve them for himself. And he had only wanted some people to die, he had wanted to reap the pain and suffering of a few, but he didn't want the whole world as he knew it to go away, replaced with, with a reminder of everything wrong about everything wrong he had ever done wrongly. Yet here he was, in the high chair of the spirit world, the new spirit world, the consolidated engine of the world's damnation, in which the dead for whose death he was responsible now uneasily permeated all and the only life in existence was the life Opera Penguin had made. He didn't feel like a king. He felt like a puppet. A figurehead to be waved around. He missed Henry. He missed Elizabeth. He even missed Michael at this point.
As absurd as it sounded, William Afton thought the world was saner when he was lurching around as a glorified zombie in a yellow rabbit suit turned green by filth and darkness, experimenting with pearly ghost juice in elementary ways just to keep himself alive. It was saner when he still though Henry just finding out about his deeds after decades of willful ignorance was funny. It was saner when the worst thing he had to worry about was keeping his suit intact, or the disrepair his creations had fallen into since being inhabited by children and maintenance staff, or even getting burned yet again. All of it was less absurd than this. A human with a heart like a demon, from another dimension, bearing powers William couldn't understand, yet all too willing to explain them, performing a massive ethereal chemistry project with the essence of all that William had done in life. It was doing what Henry couldn't. It was doing what the flames couldn't. It was doing what even the captive nightmares couldn't. It was making William feel penitent. William couldn't stomach what he had done because of this. Because of where it had led to. From the eagle's eye vantage point of another world, a great evil had taken sight of the festering heap of sins that William had built up, and now he was using them as fertilizer for a greater darkness. How William wished he had never been born.
"Hello?" Opera Penguin asked.
"What? Oh, yes, yes, I'll quite enjoy that." muttered William, dispassionately.
"Good." said Opera Penguin. "Because if all goes well, you'll be like this for eternity."
"And why, tell me, do you want to give me this?" asked William.
"Compensation for what you're going to help me do." said Opera Penguin.
"Remind me again. . ." said William.
"We are going to kill the Overseer." said Opera Penguin.
"Would you mind reiterating who and what the Overseer is?" asked William, hoping the answer would be nothing too metaphysical.
"The Overseer is the viceregent of the cosmic federation." said Opera Penguin.
"Okay. . . and what's that?" asked William.
"Normally, separate worlds don't really coexist. Any point in time in one is equally existent to all points in time in another. In other words, there's no real continuity. A cosmic federation is like a bunch of existential rubber bands making there be a continuity, making everything occur in parallel, in one collective timeline. In our one's case, there's also a barrier blocking us off from other timelines, and from things that lead to slipping into them, like backwards time travel." said Opera Penguin.
"And this Overseer, he looks after. . . the bands?" asked William.
"No, he looks after all the worlds contained within that association. You see, the person who made this Cosmic Federation, a being named Kauthann, sees it as a finished job of his, which means he wants someone from within it to do all the ruling to 'prove' that. But the thing is, the mechanic for deciding who will do that. . . kinda sucks." said Opera Penguin.
"So, the Overseer is a corrupt ruler." said William, somewhat relieved.
"Yes." said Opera Penguin.
"And you want to take him down because of that?" asked William.
"Ehh, really, it's more because it affected me personally." said Opera Penguin. "That's when I started caring."
"If there's one thing I can admire about you, it's that you seem to have no pretenses." said William.
"I take mild offense to that." said Opera Penguin. "I'm pretentious as fuck. It's part of my character. But I do see what you mean. Yes, I'm in control, so I take advantage of that to be honest."
"Wait—why do you want to be considered pretentious?" asked William.
"I always wanted to be a magician in both senses. Neither one on its own was enough for me. A mere scholar of the arcane is too dry, too. . . 'wise'. Too repressed, and restrained, and all of that. But the power they wield is perfect. A stage magician plays of the worth they don't have, of the power they don't have, and so the worth of their boasting is worthless, because they boast of nothing, and all their character is for naught. But that glamour is intoxicating. I wanted to be both. I wanted to be glamorous, and boast of a power that is there. I wanted to be glorious, in my arcane splendour. Delicately, and elegantly, suspended, dangling between the position of a man, and of a god." said Opera Penguin.
William paused. All this time, he had, in spite of everything, seen Opera Penguin as his 'senior', in an ambiguous sense. Certainly, the man knew of things William couldn't quite get. But then again, how was that different from kids being educated in modern technology by default? William was beginning to see how young Opera Penguin really was, and how identical they really were, but for a few key differences. Opera Penguin wanted control, but wasn't quite content with that. He wanted that respect that trudged the wastelands between love, awe and fear. He wanted reverence, and to be beautiful in the same way a neutron start was beautiful. He wanted to be a nuke with glitter on it. He wanted to be lightning in a bottle, with multicolored sparks that entranced the eyes. He wanted to be beautiful in a kind of way that the likes of Roxanne or Rochelle or whatever she was called now could probably never understand. Although that 'Ian' bastard might have. Ian had been consumed with the same type of self-absorption, but as a person he lacked any of the refinement that the slender, pale, behatted performer that ruled William's life possessed.
"I don't need your pity, Afton." said Opera Penguin, coldly. "I can hear it echoing throughout your mouldering skull."
"It's not pity." said William. "It's recognition."
"Part of it is. And part of you just wants me to die. I can hear it, too." said Opera Penguin.
"You can't deny that you're the kind of person who evokes that desire." said William.
"I can deny whatever I damn well please. But, again. I get your point." said Penguin. "You're mad that I took all your control over your life. And subsumed it into my own. I get that. But I need this control to achieve what I must. I promise you, I am not the worst in this circumstance. I am simply blazing my own trail and killing all that stand in my way. For a greater good than this world has known."
"Do you intend to become the next Overseer?" asked William.
This silenced Penguin. He hadn't thought of that, legitimately. "No." he said. "That's a pair of shoes too big for me to fill. Although it doesn't change the fact that the present feet are rotten. And besides, I feel like I'm spent apart from this. You could well call it a suicide mission—not just because it's dangerous, and almost impossible to undertake. But because I hope it'll kill me."
Now it was William's turn to be surprised. "Why do you want to die?" he asked.
"Because when you really make friends, friends aplenty and friends that you let in close—and I know you did neither—you will find that they become a constituent part of your life. And without them, you have nothing. You are nothing. You are bereft of what makes you whole, and who you are. Once you let them in, they become a vital organ of your life. A necessity comes into being that wasn't there before. And if you lose them, if you're a better man than I—which you aren't—then you can reshape the husk of your life to form around replacements, to fill that void. But I never could. I was only good enough to make the friends that could make a friend of me, and I was never good enough to move on from such an absence as they left." said Opera Penguin.
"You could just kill yourself." said a voice from a fair bit away. It was unfamiliar to William, but Opera Penguin's head shot up.
"You!" he said. "You're not him, you're another—agh!" Opera Penguin started smothering his face with his hands, trying to staunch the furious, angry tears that were now almost sputtering from his face.
William looked over, at. . . a neckbeard, without the beard. He was wearing a fedora, or something like it, and a long black trenchcoat. He was also wearing a visor like that one guy from Star Trek: The Next Generation, except with a red tint.
"Who the hell are you?" asked William Afton.
"Kiel Laurens, at your se-" said the newcomer, before Opera Penguin screamed "NO! NO YOU FUCKING AREN'T, YOU REPROBATE!"
"You seem distressed." said Kiel.
"Yes. I am." said Opera Penguin.
"Allow me to clarify something. Losing someone in the mist is not the same as receiving confirmation of their death." said Kiel Laurens.
Opera Penguin's face vibrated with a mixture of emotions, mostly malignant.
"And another thing," said Kiel, "although you probably know this, standing up to a tyrant only when you decide they've gone too far isn't justice."
"So you're saying I should kill myself." said Opera Penguin.
"No, I asked you why you haven't." said Kiel. "That's the third thing. Even if you don't enjoy life, you still have life to live. And capability. Why waste that just because you're trembling under the weight of a perceived tragedy? But if you are, and you know that you're not truly serving justice, then why not just end your suffering already?"
"Because I have revenge." said Opera Penguin. "It's not justice. I'm not calling it justice—at least, not justice objectively, not justice to the just. But it is a justice. Justice to me. My justice. And in that respect, my heart and actions are completely lucid. They are all those of 'revenge'."
"Come with me, Martin. Come with me and I'll put in a good word for you, and we can try the test again. All this" said Kiel Laurens, waving his hands around, "isn't what you're meant for. And you know that. You're a magician, not a ringmaster."
"I want to believe you." said Opera Penguin. "But apart from what I've accepted as the cold truth, and the resolutions I've made in my head, the fact is that I can't know this isn't just a trap and you're not some mimic seeking to drag me into the abyss. I'm sorry, but that's the fact of it, so get out before I decide you are and get very angry."
Kiel shook his head. "I think you've gone quite insane, my old friend. But I understand. It's been a long time, and while I was hoping you could be brought to reason, I guess my other friend might have a point. Nonetheless, I can't put you out of your misery. Obviously. But just to be clear, don't actually end your life. I still have hope for you. Oddly enough."
"I have to say, it's quite tempting." said Opera Penguin.
"Then I apologize for even bringing it up. Good day." Kiel said, and then vanished.
Opera Penguin stood in stunned silence, and then raised a hand.
Several cloudy 'displays' appeared around the Atrium, and visions of clouds of pure night appearing over obscure villages around the world were shown.
In each formed a 'star' of green light, and from the villages came more green light, streaming into the 'stars' as agonized wails were audible.
"Is that life?" asked William.
"Yes." said Opera Penguin.
"And they're all dying because of us." said William.
"Yes." said Opera Penguin.
"And they're going to come back. . . as ghostly Freddy's characters with no remembrance of their past selves." said William.
"If they run into a family member, they'll recognize their familial relation, but more or less nothing more." said Opera Penguin.
"And Chicago is next?" asked William.
"Yes." said Opera Penguin.
"I never liked this city anyway. Whose idea was it to put a landfill in this city, then dump a dismantled Freddy's location in it, then build a giant pseudo-mall on top of the landfill?" asked William.
"I think the sheer power of your bullshit was already distorting the universe before I came along." said Opera Penguin. "But why don't you like Chicago? It seems nice."
"It's known for its quality of phallic sticks of meat you shove in your mouth." said William.
"Excuse me, you are American, right?" asked Opera Penguin.
"Yes? And?" asked William. "Also, I'm only second generation, my grandparents were Londoners."
"Ahh, that makes sense. Say, do you think anyone has ever shoved a hot dog up their ass?" asked Opera Penguin.
"How the hell should I know?!" asked William.
"Ahhh, just food for thought." said Opera Penguin.
"You make me not want to think about food." grumbled William.
"Good thing you don't need to eat." said Opera Penguin, as the two of them watched the life get vacuum-cleaned out of several villages.
. . .
Night 81
Gregory, Vanessa and Rochelle were all dumped outside the crater the Pizzaplex, around which there was police tape. Vanessa cut through it with her sword, and the trio walked away, before Vanessa was approached by a policeman.
He, however, seemed too confused to do more than stammer, and when he pulled for his gun, Vanessa made a flare of fire that startled him enough that he dropped it, and she led Gregory and Rochelle away.
They left for an alleyway, and walked until they found a nasty motel, and Vanessa managed to find her wallet in her pocket, and get them in there for three nights.
They settled in, in spite of one of the mattresses being covered in an obvious piss stain, which they had room service come in and replace.
"Well." said Vanessa, once they were settled in. "This kinda sucks. Doesn't it?"
"I guess it could be worse." said Gregory.
"Oh, do enlighten me." hissed Vanessa.
"We could be trapped on a, a 'sabbati-" said Gregory, before Vanessa slapped him. "I don't ever want to hear that fucking word again. You know what, don't even say 'holiday' or 'vacation' or even 'paid leave' around me. I'm sick of that shit."
Rochelle's eyes widened, and she reached forward with concern.
Vanessa sighed. "I'm sorry, kids. I'm just. . . so done with everything. There's no peace, is there?"
"I guess not." said Gregory. "But we're still alive, and we can still fight."
"I can still fight. Not that I will. You are kids, and even though I'll grant that you probably can fight, you shouldn't. I. . . couldn't bear the guilt if either of you got hurt, and even if you didn't, you shouldn't be risking it."
"Vanessa, we're not exactly in a place where we can choose. You need all hands on deck. In fact, even with all of us at work, I don't think we have enough." said Gregory.
"No, no, no. You're assuming that I'm going to try and stop this. No. I'm done with this shit. I'm keeping you kids with me, and we're getting as far from here as possible." said Vanessa.
"But-" said Gregory.
"No. That's final. I'm not hearing any argument, this has all gotten too big, and too out of hand-" said Vanessa, before there was something like a small thunderclap, or a gunshot. It was Gregory's doing.
"Vanessa, listen. Opera Penguin was planning on transferring knowledge to me, and he ended up doing it quicker than he planned. When he jumped into me, I got a big dose of. . . revelation. That's the only way I can describe what hit me. He's got plans that I wish I didn't know. But I know that I have to know them. Because now that I know them, I know that we can, and have to fight back. If we don't, we've indirectly got the blood of millions on our hands. I mean, millions by the end of the week. Later it'll be billions." said Gregory.
"What are you talking about?" asked Vanessa.
"There'll be nowhere to run to!" continued Gregory, insistently.
"What do you mean? What are you going on about?" asked Vanessa, now concerned more than before.
"He's gonna—well—suck up all the life. Out of everyone. I don't know if that includes us, but we aren't going to survive with everyone else dead anyway, so. . ." said Gregory.
Vanessa slumped against a wall.
"You've gotta be—you're joking. Right? You're joking, and this is all a joke, and you're not actually serious. Right? Right? Good." she sputtered out, in staccato.
"No! I saw it, and I felt it with certainty. This wasn't just an idea, this wasn't just his, his wet dream! This was a real intent, he tried to possess me, the whole of me, like his body, and I felt all of him coursing through me for just a moment, and it copied stuff over. He was even getting ready to transcribe spells that he had translated from arcane formation to psionic input into my mind, and his brief, momentary 'possession' did it automatically. And. . . he had a lot of tricks. But I know one that we're going to need to use, and you're not going to like it, because you're going to need to hurt someone. A lot." said Gregory.
"What? What are you talking about?" asked Vanessa. "Has he. . . has he corrupted you?"
"No!" said Gregory. "At least, I don't think so. . . but you're going to need to torture a woman."
Vanessa stared at him, dumbfounded. "That's, uhhmm, real convincing about the whole 'not being corrupted' thing." said she.
"No, listen, remember when you got your powers?" asked Gregory.
"I just remember being told I had them, but I didn't really use them until after. . ." Vanessa's eyes glazed over. "Ohh. Holy shit. Gregory, you. . . You can. . . you can do that? You can give more people. . ." she shook her head. "But why women?" she asked, eyes narrowing.
"Women have lower pain tolerance." said Gregory.
Vanessa's palm beat her head. "I mean, yes, but do you really have to just say it like that?"
"Is tact important right now?" asked Gregory.
"Well, no, but—whatever. You want me to torture someone?" asked Vanessa.
"Obviously not in a way that's gonna disable them, but yeah." said Gregory. "This is the only way we can get a force to fight Opera Penguin."
"You know this is a terrible thing to do." said Vanessa.
"Compared to the deaths of millions?" asked Gregory. "Plus, the people we hurt are going to become magical girls in exchange. I think that's a fair trade for them."
Vanessa sighed. "Of course you would."
"Anyway, you can burn people. Just torch their ribs a little, and I think that'll be enough." said Gregory.
"Gregory, you really aren't taking this seriously enough." scolded Vanessa.
"Does giving the subject at hand the respect it deserves really help?" asked Gregory. "I mean, it won't make it hurt any less. And if it did, then we would really need not to give it. Because we need them to hurt. We need them to suffer like hell. So they'll have the power to give Penguin hell."
"This is so evil. . ." said Vanessa.
"Pick the lesser of two evils and all that." said Gregory. "How much suffering do you think Opera Penguin will cause?"
"Just call him 'Penguin'. He hated that." said Vanessa.
"And you know those people he kills aren't going to whatever the normal afterlife is." continued Gregory, ignoring her. "They'll all be delivered into his hand so they can suffer more. And they'll probably suffer in the transitory process. We'll only hurt our people a little, in relative terms. And we'll make them like demigods, if I can pull this off."
"Aren't you worried about how this will affect you?" Rochelle spoke up.
"I. . . I was already the person that would have done this, in this circumstance." said Gregory.
"But actually having had this circumstance take place and take you here will be different." said Vanessa, riding on Rochelle's words.
"It doesn't change that we have to do it." said Gregory.
"Isn't there any other way?" asked Vanessa.
"This way supplies our side with the most power in the least time. And we can't afford to risk losing." said Gregory.
"And then what? You become evil, you become a lord over suffering, just because the bigger guy is eviller?" asked Vanessa, feeling a sense of deja vu.
"Yes. And I can accept that." said Gregory. "Because otherwise, we can't stop the bigger, eviller guy from doing bigger, eviller things. So I've made up my mind. I'm pulling that trolley lever. If. . . if you two don't want to have anything to do with me afterwards. . ." his voice started to crack.
"No, we're not doing that part. Abandoning you, I mean. I know Rochelle loves you, and I care about her, and even though I've never been particularly fond of you, no offense, I feel an obligation to keep you safe, because of who I am, and for Rochelle's sake." said Vanessa. "She could do a lot worse." she added, looking at Rochelle. "I mean. . . she has. But are you sure this is the only way?"
"Like I said, it's the only real, reliable way to get a lot more power on our side." said Gregory.
"And power is 'ultimately what calls the shots'. . ." said Rochelle, eyes glassy as she remembered that rant.
. . .
Ian Brandon Anderson and Michelle were walking along when Ian was interrupted by Opera Penguin in his mind. "Ian! I need you for another week. Sorry."
Ian sighed, and shook his head. "Wouldn't that screw with the illusion that I'm, well, dead?" asked Ian.
"That, mmmm, doesn't quite matter any more. Because of. . . circumstances. You'll see soon enough." said Opera Penguin.
Ian sighed more exaggeratedly. "What do you need?"
"Just know this: You will be spared by it. You must prevent Vanessa from stopping it. Michelle will wait for you here. You will be able to return to this world, eventually, as a reward. But it will not be the same." said Opera Penguin.
"Fine, beam me up, Johnny." said Ian.
. . .
"Okay, I think Rochelle will be sleeping with me." said Vanessa. Rochelle gave her literal puppy-dog eyes.
"Look, it's just not right, you two. . . sleeping together." continued Vanessa.
Gregory gave her a kind of sideways frown.
"Look, just-" Vanessa said, with a pained expression, "you're not gonna. . ." she wheezed as she saw two quizzical looks. "Please don't start having sex, alright?"
Gregory burst out laughing, and Vanessa's face relaxed into relief as she realized the prospect had probably never been on the table, and she was just being incredibly stupid.
. . .
Charlotte picked up the grey husk of a child. Oh, how it looked like the phantoms she had nurtured. Just as it contained something analogous. And now, she was doing something analogous. She had been given a new power, to give a truer form of life, and yet this was a hollow victory, for she knew it was in the interest of the killer, the perpetrator.
The process, at least, took little effort. She had been given great power. And yet, surely, this meant that the one who had given it to her was confident in his ability to keep her reined in.
Though she had control over the forms they took, she let their inherent selves guide the process of shaping them. They were all shaped into such beautiful forms, sculpted in ways that had been impossible with mere machines. And yet these were machines, in a sense, machines of the spectral world, yet possessed of life.
She was their reaper in reverse, their non-familial mother, their gatekeeper into rebirth. She took them down this ignoble Styx, past which the realm of Hades consisted of an existence as William's favorite cartoon characters. There would be peace there, and love. But it would be built upon this wretched existence. As ghosts, in the likeness of machines, depicted characters which themselves were merely part of a brand. The fungus growing on the corpse of the most mediocre fruit of corporate America. Alive. But born of death and decay.
She moved on to another body, and did likewise with it.
In spite of the ease, this would be a long day. Even with Opera Penguin transporting her across the earth.
. . .
"Just in case someone still screws this up, I'm putting the power to recreate all of this in you." said Opera Penguin.
"Reassuring. So you don't know we won't fail?" asked William.
"It's just best to be safe. Even if we are thwarted at first. I can make sure that you will be the master of death. And when you are, the realm of the Preachers and Converts will crumble. And of the Monoliths and Fervors." said Opera Penguin.
"The what?" asked William.
"Don't worry about them." said Opera Penguin.
. . .
Night 82
"So you're gonna suck the life out of the human race and then turn them all into furries?" asked Ian.
"Well, not all of them." said Opera Penguin. "Some of them will look like the Puppet, some of them like Balloon Boy, and some like the gross Cabbage Patch doll that William's daughter had the audacity to call 'pretty'." to which William huffed, displeased. "And some may even resemble the fullbody equivalent of a shrunken head that William's wife ended up in." Penguin continued, and William couldn't stifle a little laugh. "The spirit follows the body, usually. . . but in this case, the body merely suits the spirit." contributed William to the conversation.
Ian giggled like a madman.
"But of the 'furries', only a minority will be like the sexy furries you jerked off to." said Opera Penguin.
"I'm surprised any are." said Ian.
"The form will suit the personality in almost all cases, contrary to the bullshit William just spouted out." said Opera Penguin. "And that means some, especially perverse ones, may even look the special kind of ugly that comes of trying too hard to appear enticing that would repulse even you, Ian."
Ian laughed.
"Not that it matters." said Opera Penguin. "You do, after all, have a, 'wife'."
Ian laughed. "You can drop those inverted commas in all you want, I think she's perfect for me, and more worthy of me than anyone I could have married legitimately."
"She is the lover most fitting for you." agreed Opera Penguin. "The same type. The same affection. The same. . . brand of wretchedness."
"Yeah, whatever." said Ian. "I think she's better than Rochelle."
"I think Rochelle was too good for you." admitted Opera Penguin. "But the fact that you feel how you do attests to how much more, what was it, Michelle is for you."
"I mean, if you value a weak cunt in girlboss' clothing, yep." said Ian.
"You're a savage, Ian." said Opera Penguin, smiling faintly.
"Yeah, I know." said Ian, grinning like a pitbull.
"That wasn't a compliment." said Opera Penguin. "I meant that in the archaic, degrading sense."
"Yeah, I know." said Ian, smiling wider.
. . .
Vanessa visited her old friend Amy, pretending just to want to get in touch. Although Amy was understandably perturbed about her presence, it was a day off for her, and so she let Vanessa into her apartment.
After an awkward silence, Vanessa asked her how she'd been. Amy gave a dismissive, general answer, and Vanessa continued, asking about the catastrophe, to which Amy glowered at her, before saying it was all that had been on the news recently.
Past this point, Vanessa broke and asked Amy if she wanted to suffer for power.
Amy stared at her with intense confusion and distrust. Past a natural period of grilling, Amy concluded that Vanessa was insane, but Vanessa, assuming her power, grabbed Amy's arm and pulled. Amy was shocked at the brute strength of her, but pulled away.
"What the hell, Vanessa? Are you even the same person? I know we haven't been in touch, but I could never expect that you'd go batshit like this. If you're gonna be like this, then you can count me out of your life as much as anyone else from high school." said Amy. This level of emotion, compared to what Vanessa remembered, was uncharacteristic, but since Vanessa had just gone into what Gregory had told her, it was understandable.
"Look." said Vanessa. "The world is going to end."
"What the—what are you talking about? You know what? Screw it, I'm going to call the cops!" said Amy, before Vanessa repeated the fire trick she had done before.
Amy yelled in shock, but stayed standing as she stepped back.
"Have you been summoning demons like you said you would?" asked Amy.
"What? No. That was a joke." said Vanessa. "And, like, eight years ago. Now I'm glad that I never tried that. It might have worked."
"I'm not even—ugh. Vanessa. Just get out." said Amy.
"AMY, I'M SERIOUS! THE WORLD IS GOING TO END UNLESS YOU-" Vanessa was cut off as Amy waved her hand. "Vanessa, I'm 22. I'm, we're too old for this. YA protags are always like 15 or 16, remember?"
"I didn't choose this. This was done to me." said Vanessa. "But I took it on anyway. Now, I need others to take it on. Not just you. But. . . if someone doesn't, the world is over. I'm serious. And if I can't get you. . . then who?" said Vanessa.
"Technically, Penguin knew spells to detect people with specific susceptibility to certain tactics!" said Gregory, appearing out of nowhere along with Rochelle.
"DAMN IT, GREGORY!" said Vanessa, beating at herself. "THIS IS THE WORST TIME YOU COULD HAVE DONE THAT!"
"What—" said Amy, backing away further. "Okay, this is out of hand. I'm calling the cops, and—"
Gregory raised a hand, and her phone snapped. Amy was instantly pissed, recovering from the shock in record time.
"I had irreplaceable files on there!" she said, advancing on him.
"Uhhh. . ." said Gregory, before snapping his fingers and mending the phone. It mended in midair, hovered for a second, and then landed on the tiles of Amy's miniature entryway and broke again. Gregory snapped his fingers again, and it mended again.
"Wh-Wha—" Amy was more shocked at this less destructive display of power than she had been at Vanessa's fire. It was as if only now did she recognize the supernatural nature of what was going on.
"Okay. You have my attention. Why is the world going to end if I don't help?" said Amy.
"Because. . ." said Vanessa. "Well, this is gonna take a long time to explain."
"If this is all about some 'power of friendship' shit, then can it, and leave." said Amy.
"Well, no—" said Vanessa.
"That is why she chose you, but we could really do it to anybody." said Gregory.
"That consented." added Rochelle.
"Well, I mean, technically we could drag anybody away and torture them into a cool magical person, but then we'd just have another enemy and that would kind of be counterproductive." said Gregory.
"I thought we were trying to seem like the good guys to her?" asked Rochelle.
"That's what we're supposed to be doing." said Vanessa, glowering at Gregory.
"Well, I just explained why we didn't. . ." said Gregory.
"Using practical, pragmatic reasoning instead of morals." said Amy.
"This is not an invitation to repeat that it's better than the alternative for the fourteenth time." warned Vanessa.
"But it i-" said Gregory, before Vanessa's finger nearly went in his mouth.
After a pause, Vanessa said "The world ends if we don't get an army to crush the force that's encroaching."
"Holy fucking shit, this is a YA novel." said Amy.
"No, this is Sailor Moon except Tuxedo Mask is the devil." said Vanessa. "And Usagi has gone on long enough as the only Sailor."
"What, and you're her?" asked Amy, sneering.
"Yes." said Vanessa.
"For fuck's sake." said Amy, slowly bringing her hand up to her face. "I mean, you can understand why I'm having a hard time taking all of this at face value, right?"
"Yes." said Vanessa quietly. "But you need to."
"Technically all she needs to do is let you blowtorch her—" said Gregory, before Vanessa squatted down and elbowed him in one fluid motion.
Rochelle keened at the sight, and Vanessa muttered an apology, but that didn't stop Amy from looking at her like she was a psychopath.
"What the fuck." she said, like it was a statement.
"He can take it. Look. To emphasize. End of the world means specifically the end of humanity, not the literal destruction of the planet. But that includes you, and likely me and them." said Vanessa, gesturing to the kids.
Amy was too overwhelmed by it all, and when her mind finally settled on one thing, it was "And why is one of them wearing a hyper-realistic fursuit?"
"That's not a fursuit." said Vanessa.
Feeling no more patience with this line of conversation, Amy grabbed Rochell by the mouth.
Then she recoiled.
"Ohh. . ." said Amy.
"Yeah." said Vanessa.
"A freak." said Amy.
"Hey! She's sensitive." said Vanessa.
"Whatever. You expect me to submit to torture?" asked Amy.
"Yes, but we need you to." said Vanessa.
"Sounds like you can use someone else." said Amy.
"You know, not only can the magic I learned from Penguin discover people of certain susceptibilities. . ." said Gregory.
"Shut up, this isn't your conversation." said Vanessa, angrily.
". . .but it can also discover susceptibilities of a given person." said Gregory.
"I SAID!" said Vanessa, before she stopped. "What?"
"Amy, you have enough days off to fight a small war." said Gregory.
"How did you know that?" asked Amy.
"Because I learned using this spell that saying that would win you slightly over." said Gregory. "And furthermore, you won't have a job to keep if the world ends."
"Have you got the slightest bit of proof that will happen?" asked Amy.
"How do you think I got this power?" asked Gregory.
"I don't know!" said Amy.
"So you admit there's more to the world than you realize." said Gregory.
"Yes?" asked Amy.
"And you also see that I'm the one with the powers, meaning I've been in touch with that 'more' that you haven't been in touch with?" said Gregory.
"Yes, but, well. . ." said Amy. "How I know you're not lying?"
"Because if Vanessa just wanted to burn people, she'd probably just burn people. Or at least, she'd already have burned you by now." said Gregory, looking at Vanessa's less-than-pleased face in response to this.
"Fair. . . I guess. . ." said Amy, looking back and forth between Gregory with an uncertain gaze.
"Look, what have you got to lose?" asked Gregory. "You're in a job you hate, you have no clear path to your future of being a comic artist, and here's one of the only real friends you ever had,"
"Gregory!" Vanessa said.
"if we're telling the truth, you get to exist as a being of great power, and achieve somethign greater than anything you'd ever have done in your boring, insignificant life. If we're lying, yes, you get tortured for nothing, but you get to write a cheap novel on your traumatizing experience and then you make millions off of it. So what's to lose?" asked Gregory.
Amy gawked. And then, to everyone else's shock, her face softened into something more contemplative. "Damn. You're right." she said.
"So? What're you gonna do?" asked Gregory.
"Fine, but at least tell me some more backstory on this first." said Amy.
"Then, can we come in?" asked Vanessa.
"Yeah, sure." said Amy.
Vanessa warned Gregory not to butt in any more as they sat down on Amy's couch, Amy facing them in a recliner, and she recounted it all. After several hours, she had pretty much led up to where they were now, and Gregory asked, "So, can I talk now?"
Vanessa looked at him, still smoldering a little from before but now too tired to react to a great degree. "About what?" she asked.
"The things you don't know yet." said Gregory. "Fine." said Vanessa.
Gregory went into the 'backup plan' Penguin had had for if the 'main operation' went awry, which it did, and he elaborated on the end result.
"So we all get turned into furries? No way in hell am I gonna put up with that." said Amy. Then she shook her head. "What am I saying? Why am I believing this? Your little kid, he bewitched me!"
Gregory snorted slightly at being called a 'little kid', but then said "Again, though, the fact that I can 'bewitch' you at all says something."
Amy shook her head again. "It's a figure of speech. All that's just rhetoric."
"And I'm just a 'little kid'. You think I've been to college? And how could I have guessed all that about your life?" asked Gregory.
"All the assumptions you made are safe assumptions about the life of city people." bit back Amy.
"And again, you think I've been to college? You think I've taken courses about that stuff? To me, 'rhetoric' just means a question you're not supposed to answer." said Gregory.
Amy threw up her hands. "Fine! You're psychic or whatever! Go find the eight fucking melodies of the earth or something! What are you doing here?!" she snapped.
"It was Vanessa that wanted to come here." said Gregory. "Anyway, I was never really a musician."
"It was a reference!" said Amy, exasperatedly.
"Look, the only way," Vanessa said, looking uneasily at Gregory, "if Gregory is being honest, the only way to get the power needed to fight Opera Penguin is to make it in people. And for that, we need pain as fuel. So we need to torture you. . . a little."
"It won't be much, since the pain is as much a catalyst as anything else." said Gregory. "This particular world is. . . it's complicated, but we'd all have magical powers or something like that if the world weren't the way it is, or it would at least be more possible to have them, but for the same reason, the world gives power to birth, or life, to death, or dying, and to art. And then there are mixed domains, like secondary colors, life and art/birth makes dreams, and secondarily love, and death and art makes faith, and life and death together makes pain. Pain, agony is given power by the cosmos. So is art. I'm using your agony and using it to make art within you, I'm using it to make power. And I can sort of feel your personality, and I can use it to help guide me—kind of like what Penguin is going to have the old Puppet do."
"The Puppet? You're saying, the same Puppet from Freddy's, the one that's all creepy and spooOOOooOOoky in all their horror attractions? The one that looks like No-Face and Jack Skellington's MPreg lovechild?" asked Amy, flatly.
"Yes, that one." said Gregory.
"Okay, and it's going to be doing the mass furry conversion?" asked Amy.
"Yes." said Gregory. "After all the life is sucked out of everyone, which Penguin specifically designed to be as painful as possible."
"Okay, good, just making sure." said Amy. "And you got your methods. . . from Penguin. . . directly? When he possessed you? Like a demon?"
"Yes." said Gregory.
"Okay, cool. Cool." said Amy.
"Not really?" asked Gregory.
"And you're sure you couldn't. . . alter the process? At all?" asked Amy.
"I don't know how to write this 'code', I only know how to copy it, and even then only how to copy the psionic input meant to mimic it, not the arcane manipulation itself, and arcane manipulation is probably needed to be that precise." said Gregory.
"Huh." said Amy.
"Nevermind. It's crunchy magic-y stuff." said Gregory.
"Try me." said Amy.
"Psionics use complicated thoughts, feelings, and something like mental gymnastics in the abstract to manipulate energy, along with raw willpower, which is what most power involves at a base level." said Gregory. "It's generally less precise than arcane magic, which is like coding inside your own brain. But you can 'translate' an arcane manipulation, that is, the process of shaping energy into a spell by 'writing code', into a psionic input, meaning the thoughts and feelings and brain contortions and abstract, mystical 'try-harding', all that achieves the same or nearly same end result as the arcane manipulation."
"Okay, and so since your powers don't run Python like his do, you can't control them as much." said Amy.
"Right, I think the only thing I could switch around, is if you have some kind of religion, we could use that." said Gregory.
"Nope." said Amy.
"Didn't think so." admitted Gregory.
"What, because I'm not a blonde, dainty little pick-me bitch that frolicks around in a blue prairie dress?" spat Amy.
"Damn, I didn't know this was a sensitive topic for you." said Gregory.
"It's not, I just assumed you were like that so I could be vindictive." said Amy.
"Can I somehow use that to guilt you into letting us give you powers?" asked Gregory.
"Hell no! There's no way I'd feel guilty about that. But don't worry, I already wanna try this. So, do we do it here, or?" asked Amy.
"No, we need an abandoned, remote location." said Gregory.
Amy froze. "Why?"
"Because this will hurt. You will scream." said Gregory. "More than can be blamed on haha funny silly drunk time. Or on you two scissoring."
Vanessa choked on her own spit to the point where she very nearly died, and Amy had to punch her in the stomach. Then Vanessa punched Gregory in the face.
After he recovered, Gregory said, "Well, there is one more thing. . ."
"Yeah?" asked Amy.
"You've got aspirations about art, right?" asked Gregory.
"Yeah, I have a whole comic planned out and a computer full of notes, there are notes on my phone, too." said Amy.
"Could you try drawing?" asked Gregory.
"I can't draw while people are watching, it's just—" said Amy. "You wouldn't get it."
"No, I have the same problem. But you have to try. Remember, this could replace literal torture, so it being figurative torture would be fitting." said Gregory.
"Fine, fine, I'll try. But you two, just. . . go somewhere, okay?" asked Amy.
"Can you do that?" asked Gregory, to Vanessa and Rochelle.
"Yeah, I can take her somewhere." said Vanessa.
Rochelle voiced her fears about being separate from Gregory, but Gregory reminded her he knew a lot of magic now and could probably find her wherever she went.
They left, Vanessa getting Rochelle ice cream.
Meanwhile, Gregory watched Amy drawn, while asking annoying questions about the main character as Amy drew her first panel.
This got annoying fast, but Amy answered every one of them, and made it a good, long while—thirty-five minutes—before bursting out that she couldn't take it anymore.
Then there was a flash, and Amy was enveloped for a moment in a grey-azure light before looking down at herself.
"So how do I. . . activate it?" asked Amy.
"I skipped the part where it's a 'mantle' and just gave you powers that just. . . are there." said Gregory. "As for how you work them, whatever you feel now within yourself that you didn't feel before, try to work them."
Amy punched forward, and some electricity shone around her fist, like minute lightning, the same color as the light that had engulfed her.
"Is this the same as how I described Nimbus?" asked Amy, referring to the main character of her comic.
"Yeah." said Gregory.
"So, like, the faster I move, the harder I am to hurt?" she asked.
"Yes." said Gregory. "Both less tangible and inherently harder to inflict injury on apart from that."
Amy waved her arm around in a circle, generating a whip-like 'rope' of lightning. "It seems it's not just a 'will' kind of thing that's going on. I have to move my arms."
"I modeled your powers after your character, so yes." said Gregory. "Conditions make powers stronger, though. Although I think I did give some power that isn't modeled after that condition, both with your physical power and the lightning."
"Physical power? You mean my durability?" asked Amy.
"And your strength—your conditional intangibility can be suppressed in parts of your body based on what you're trying to do, although you'll always be tangible to yourself, so body parts won't detach. And also you can, like, push and lift and pull and beat up stuff better." said Gregory.
"So I'm a. . . lightning bruiser, huh?" asked Amy.
Gregory winced as he thought of Ian.
"What, it wasn't that bad." said Amy.
"No, no, it's not that, I was just thinking of Ian." said Gregory.
"Ohhh." said Amy. "Yeah, I kind of got the impression he was a chode."
"Yeah." said Gregory, quietly.
"And now you're, what, dating the de-aged version of the girl he dumped? Who is also a furry thing?" asked Amy.
"Yes, and I don't see why you called her a 'freak'. . ." said Gregory
"Ohhh, it's an Internet thing." said Amy. "In case you didn't know, furry shit was not something I was expecting to deal with outside of the Internet."
"And how do you 'deal' with furries on the Internet? Do you bully them?" asked Gregory.
"Well, I used to." said Amy.
"But you realized it was wrong?" asked Gregory.
Amy laughed. "No, Internet moderation just became a bunch of pussies and I got too old for it. Not in a 'maturing' way, more that in some areas of your life, you can become a tired old person way early. You know?"
"Yeah, I get that. . ." said Gregory.
"What, you're implying you're already world weary because you got a bunch of food and entertainment and shit for free, but it was in a slightly toxic environment?" teased Amy.
"I mean, it was more than 'slightly toxic.'" said Gregory, and then he went into more about Casey, and how Opera Penguin had treated him, especially how Penguin had humiliated Casey and hurt him at times.
"Oh." said Amy. "So you were scared that, at any moment, he'd turn on you?"
Gregory nodded. "It was like. . . being part of a cult, except no one had agreed to be part of the cult, and the crazy, wacky demon god that they worshiped was real, and walked among us."
Amy involuntarily snorted at the phrase 'among us' for multiple reasons, but then asked "So why do you think he didn't?"
"I think the power he was harvesting from me, even though I could barely use it myself, was somehow too valuable to him. That, and/or he didn't actually want to hurt a kid himself." said Gregory.
"And this guy, all this time, he looked like Tuxedo Mask?" asked Amy.
"Who?" asked Gregory.
Amy showed him a picture of Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon on her phone, and Gregory froze.
"That's him. That's—I mean, he wasn't cartoony—his chin wasn't so pointy—and the inside of his cape was blue when it wasn't portal-y, and his mask was different, and he had a gun, not a rose, and his eyes were blue, but yeah, that's pretty much the same guy." said Gregory.
"And he's who we're fighting?" asked Amy.
"Him and William Afton." said Gregory.
And Amy laughed, because it was all so stupid.
"By the way, you might need to torture people with that electricity." said Gregory. "To give them the power."
"Oh." said Amy, who stopped laughing.
"I can use my power to discover people who are willing." said Gregory.
"But I'll still have to torture them." said Amy.
"Yes, but I'll find the ones who that won't be too bad to." said Gregory.
"Yeah, still. . ." said Amy.
"The four of us can't beat Opera Penguin and all his forces." said Gregory. "Heck, we couldn't all beat Opera Penguin on his own. We need lots of people, with lots of power."
"And you're volunteering me to be the, what, the suffering engine?" said Amy.
"Well, I can't make you." said Gregory. "But think how hard it was for me to bring up this idea in the first place. Think how scary it must have been to risk the only two bonds I have in this world. I. . . need them. But the world needs our help, and that includes the nasty parts."
"Ohh. Well that's just great." said Amy. "So I guess I have to?"
"Technically you don't. Un-technically, either you or Vanessa have to. But you might be able to torture without leaving a scar. So what do you say?" asked Gregory.
"Well." said Amy. "If you're really sure about all of this. . . and you're telling me the truth. I guess I have to. So, let's do this."
"But we should probably sleep on it." said Gregory. "Oh, and by the way, have you got any sleeping bags? Or mattresses"
"Gee, thanks for inviting yourself over. . ." said Amy, then after a while, added, "I'll buy some."