For a few awkward moments, the unlucky anartists up on stage 
began the play. Their movements were jerky and their eyes 
wandered, but they filled their assigned roles. The anartists among 
the pews collectively held their breath while they waited for the 
demigod they had created to notice they were no longer paying all 
that much attention to its work. 


Aldon hastily scooped up some more bullets and loaded as many as 
she could. Nine shots total. A short distance away, Finnegan was 
fiddling with his backpack. He withdrew one of the few surviving CDs 
and placed it within the gauntlet. He cranked the volume dial to the 
max setting before nodding to himself. The anartists hastened their 
ritual as best they could. Or some of them did, several fled the 
moment the curtain began to open. Felix, to his credit, was not 
among them. Because he was too busy hiding under one of the 
pews. 


"Whoa, whoa, whoa. What the hell is this?" The Old Sculptor 


stomped out from behind the stage. "Who said you could stop being 
hostages?" 


Twenty seven hands flew up, twenty seven fingers pointed at Aldon 
and Finnegan. Twenty seven ungrateful assholes. The Old Sculptor 
marched to Aldon for the second time, this time leaning over slightly 
to loom over her. A line tore across his clay face until it split into a 
toothy grin. The maw stretched open, revealing an abyss within the 
sculpture. Paint splashed and paper shuffled and clay thumped and 
power screamed within the yawning chasm. Then the little mouth on 
his chest, which was about even with Aldon's eye level, opened. 


"Hello," he said with soft venom. 


"Goodbye," she said hastily. Aldon jammed the barrel of the golem 
gun into the open mouth and yanked on the trigger. Boron felt the 
tug and kicked at Oxygen, severing a tapered point from the body. It 
immediately expanded into its gaseous form, blasting the diamond 
bullet forward and out of Nickel's mouth. Oxygen started eating the 
air around it to reform the tapered limb for the next shot. 


The entire exchange would have been entirely silent if The Old 
Sculptor hadn't started screaming about his new gunshot wound. 
For a little less than a second Aldon pulled at the trigger futilely 
because of how long it took Oxygen to reform the firing mechanism. 
By then The Old Sculptor had bit through the barrel, likely murdering 
poor Nickel in the process. But shortened barrel or no, the gun still 
fired, shattering ceramic teeth and embedding itself somewhere 
within clay. Which only caused The Old Sculptor to scream even 
more. 


Still writhing in what semblance of pain his clay body allowed, The 
Old Sculptor tried snapping at Aldon with his gnashing maw. Before 
ceramic teeth could clamp down around her neck, Finnegan pushed 
Aldon out of the way. Using the momentum of rushing forward, 
Finnegan threw a punch with his music-encrusted fist. The hardened 
clay was able to absorb most of the blow, and combined with the 
sheer amount of it, the punch did little. 


"What the fuck?" The Old Sculptor demanded with both mouths. 


"The fuck do you mean, ‘what the fuck?" Aldon asked. She felt the 
pistol shift in her hand, but she ignored it for the moment. "What the 
fuck is wrong with you?" 


The massive head-mouth closed, its front/lower lip jutting out. 
"Nothing. Shut up." 


Aldon glared at him for a moment before raising the pistol with both 
hands, which had since expanded its barrel considerably. Oxygen's 
severed limb was considerably bigger to compensate for the larger 
bullet, and as such the recoil nearly ripped the golems from her 
hands. It did, however, manage to put a hole in The Old Sculptor's 
face despite his hardened exterior. So he responded in kind by 
morphing most of his upper body into a revolver, the barrel 
extending to just shy of Aldon's face. 


From his precarious perch on Finnegan's shoulder, Everett tackled 
the barrel. He exploded into droplets of water, soaking into the clay. 
Finnegan followed up by swinging his fist around in an arc, crushing 
the barrel. The Old Sculptor misfired, a mouth just above the grip 
yelling the word "fuck" repeatedly. Perhaps more than necessary, 
even. 


"Owe ya," Aldon said before unloading a second slug into the 
screaming statue. 


"Okay, fuck this," The Old Sculptor growled. He ripped the twisted 
barrel off of himself, tossing it to the ground where it writhed slowly. 
A new head, more closely his original human self, extended from the 
shoulders. He turned to face the stage, where the hypnotized 
anartists were still performing a play. "Hey, shitbirds! Stop dicking 
around and help me." 


Aldon unloaded the final shot into the back of his head as the 
performers hopped off the stage. He didn't scream, and Aldon 
smiled nervously. Had that done it? Were headshots really all the 
rage? Then a face emerged from the back of The Old Sculptor's 
head and he just glared at her, the bullet wound forming the right 
eye. 


"I'm going to kill you now," he said. 


Aldon held her arms out, the weight in her right hand shifting. She 
glanced down at the other golems, who were forming a tower on 
each others' shoulders. She leaned slightly toward them extending 
the already morphing pistol to them. "Come try it, bud." 


The face protruding from the back of his head extended, bringing an 
entire body along with it. Once detached from the main statue, the 
clay clone launched itself at Aldon. Although she was somewhat 
taken aback by the new tactic, she had been a bit prepared. She 
brought her right arm up at an angle, lashing out with a crude blade 
fashioned from most of the golems. It honed itself as it slashed 
through the fresh clay clone, deftly slicing it in half. It splattered to 
the floor on either side of Aldon. 


"Nice timing," she said to the tip of the blade, where Hydrogen's face 
was. It smiled in return. 


A strong stench tore her from her thoughts. On either side of her the 
two halves of the body were morphing into a more detailed corpse, 
gore steaming as it slid onto the floor. Aldon surveyed her murder 
for a moment before looking back to The Old Sculptor. He was 
spewing out more clones, which were taking their time to fully form. 
Some were more impatient, and glomped onto nearby anartists and 
formed a shell around them with nothing but their faces showing. 
They then stalked the unwilling anartists toward Aldon. 


"Let's see you deal with this," The Old Sculptor said. "And none of 
you kill them! | want that pleasure myself." 


Aldon beheaded the first clay clone that came at her. It was pretty 
easy to differentiate between the full clones and the anartist 
puppets, and they didn't seem to exhibit any particular strength. The 
Old Sculptor didn't even seem to be able to form them well enough 
for them to fully morph into flesh and blood humans. They were very 
good simulacrums, but they maintained the same gray-brown color 
throughout their bodies. And they were only becoming worse as The 
Old Sculptor tried pumping them out faster. 


"Shitty clones or no, they're going to overwhelm us soon," Finnegan 
said before jabbing at an oncoming clone. The music around 
Finnegan's fist splattered clay everywhere. "And it looks like them 


Researcher Picaro 


SCP-566 Instance Number 566-1 

Calendar Date: 21/8/2017 

Word or Idiom: to denasate (v) 

Definition: To cut off one's nose. Following their sentencing, the 
prisoners were denasated. 


being clay is actually working in their favor against the others." 


Indeed, while Aldon and Finnegan had art on their side, the other 
anartists only had what few tools they had managed to find lying 
around. The clay clones they struck absorbed the attacks without 
flinching and encased them. Luckily, at least from certain 
perspectives, the hypnotized performers were easily brought down. 


"So we have to deal with him," Aldon concluded. "Right, right. 
Okay." 


The Old Sculptor took a few moments to laugh mockingly with his 
massive mouth, and the chasm within caught Aldon's attention. A 
few seconds of mental connections led her to pick up Aluminum 
from the ground and decapitate it with the sword made from its 
siblings. She then jammed the back of its head into Finnegan's 
gauntlet. 


"Can you explain-" Finnegan yelled when the gauntlet came to life, 
moving his fingers farther back than they probably should. "Ah! 
Calm down little guy. What are you doing?" 


"I'm going to need that in a minute!" she yelled as she sprinted for 
The Old Sculptor, completely ignoring the question. She slashed 
through two clones and dodged a puppet, then The Sculptor stood 
face to face with her predecessor. He looked down at her for a 
moment before leaning forward, roaring near-deafening music in her 
face. 


And she dove inside the chasm within the statue. 


She fell for several seconds before colliding with a tower of papers. 
As much of it as there was, she might as well have been striking 
stone. It knocked the wind out of her and nearly knocked the golem 
blade out of her hand. She resumed falling until she landed in a pile 
of shifting clay. After fighting her way out of it, now somehow floating 
through the ethereal nothingness, she tore bits of the clay away as 
music assaulted her eardrums. That seemed to be all it was, a 
congregation of art mediums in a black expanse of nothingness. 


"Okay, so... Let's see if this works," she mumbled to herself as she 


kneaded the clay. 


She rolled it into a cord and pulled at the ends, forming a three- 
prong plug on one end and a something resembling the Space 
Needle on the other. She stumbled through the blackness toward 
what she decided was a wall, her new little creation shifting out of its 
clay form. The cord itself became an elastic polymer, both ends 
taking on a chrome shine. When she decided she was far enough 
from the writhing art supplies behind her, she haphazardly stabbed 
the air. The tip of the blade disappeared from her view. 


"Well, shit," she said, almost laughing. "That actually worked." 


She put all her weight onto the sword, slowly slicing through 
whatever veil separated the art abyss from the outside world. 
Somewhere near the tip the blackness switched the gray-brown, and 
beyond that she could see the warehouse. She pushed her way out, 
exiting The Old Sculptor from the back of his right shoulder. She 
rammed the blade into the bullet wound in the back of his head to 
get some leverage and hauled herself out into reality, the blade 
slipping out. She landed in an unceremonious heap on the ground. 


"What the actual fuck was that?" The Old Sculptor yelled, wrapping 
his arms around himself to push the split clay together. "How did you 
do that? Why did you do that?" 


Aldon just chuckled and shrugged as she stood. The Old Sculptor 
swung one of his massive arms, colliding with her back and sending 
her sprawling again. A pair of almost fully developed clay clones 
pinned her down. She tried struggling, but a pain in her chest kept 
her from putting much effort into it. That last blow must have cracked 
a rib or something. 


"Well, who cares? Gotcha now, you little shit." 


Aldon ground her chin against the concrete to look for Finnegan. He 
was attempting to fend off puppets, but was unable to put up much 
of a fight for fear of hurting the anartists within. Soon he too was 
overwhelmed and pinned to the ground. The aussies were similarly 
subdued, in one way or another. 


"Now," The Old Sculptor said loudly. "What to do with you two? 
Should have some fun, | think." 


"| think you forgot something," Aldon choked out. 
He sneered. "What, The Clipper?" 
"...Yes." 


A pair of anartist puppets hauled Felix out from behind a pew. The 
Old Sculptor turned to face him, which was exactly what Aldon was 
hoping for. Now if only he would say something to further the 
distraction. Felix stared at Aldon while the puppets dragged him 
over, at least until something caught his eye. He only glanced at it, 
but after a moment he turned his attention to The Old Sculptor. 


"I've still got one more trick up my sleeve," Felix proclaimed. 
"Oh yeah? What's that?" 


"Something actually really obvious, you're just too much of a 
goddamn idiot to notice." 


The Old Sculptor laughed. "Oh, do tell." 


One of the clay clones holding down Aldon found himself suddenly 
lacking a head as the golem sword bent and swung on its own. His 
associate likewise found himself permanently disabled thanks to an 
oversized Aluminum hand crushing his face in. Said hand skittered 
over to Aldon's right hand, and she jammed it inside after setting 
down the blade. Aluminum clamped down on her, fitting her hand 
snugly, and together they picked up most of its siblings. 


She stood without making any noise, twirling the pronged cord in her 
free hand. A glance at Finnegan told her he wasn't sure what she 
had planned. Time to give him a show, she figured. She waited for 
Aluminum to merge with the sword, leaving her unable to release it. 
Then she slid the three-pronged side into his mouth and eyes, which 
were situated on the back of her hand. She stuck her tongue out at 
Finnegan as she continued to spin the mini Space Needle around. 
She then locked her wrist, flipped it, and jammed the very sharp 
needle directly into her chest. 


The reaction was near immediate. Finnegan screamed at her in 
confusion, Felix yelled in alarm at Finnegan's screaming, and The 
Old Sculptor was left looking between them until his fragmented 
mind thought to look to Aldon. By then a blue light was shining from 
what little was visible of Aluminum's orifices, and the translucent 
section of the CD player within the gauntlet was ejecting the same 
shade of blue. One by one, up the length of the sword from the 
handle to the tip, the golems winced and then began to scream with 
their eyes wide open. Blue light surrounded the sword in tiny beams. 


Aldon grasped the cord of the music gauntlet. She pictured herself 
as the hero of a horror flick, ready with her trusty chainsaw. But 
when she yanked on it, rather than the growl of a motor she heard 
nothing. However, both the sword and the gauntlet were now 
encased in a shimmer, which refracted the blue light and sent it 
spinning in all directions. After a moment to giggle over the success 
of her little experiment, Aldon slapped the flat of the blade into her 
open palm. 


Or tried to, at least. Just like before, the blade stopped short by 
several inches. Except instead of just feeling a song from a CD, 
Aldon felt what the CD player was plugged into. Which just so 
happened to be her soul. It burned like nothing else she had ever 
felt, seeping so deep into her bones she wondered if her marrow 
would boil. Rather than instruments, or even a choir, she felt only a 
single voice. A very angry woman screaming louder than a jet 
engine. 


"Yeah, that seems about right." 


With what technically counted up to ten separate anomalies and a 
soul smashing against each other, Reality decided to take a brief 
paid vacation in Aldon's immediate vicinity. Light bent in strange 
ways, carrying a wordless roar into the eyes of all who beheld it. The 
air shook as the golems screamed twofold, deafening all those who 
heard it to everything but the sound of Aldon's soul. 


Which, because of the small radius of alteration, was only Aldon. 
Senses overloaded with her deepest sense of being, Aldon began to 
laugh. It started as a broken chuckle under the weight of two 
cracked ribs, but developed into a cackle when she felt nothing but a 


burning sensation as her nerves ebbed and flowed with tangible 
rage. The laughter extended into a yell until Aldon was little more 
than frustration made flesh and bone.