The Shape of Things Yet to Come

The Shape of Things Yet to Come is the second episode of Ezekiel Elix, Prodigy of Yellowcake. It serves as the second part of the Nucleus of a Spiral arc.
==Synopsis==
"Ezekiel goes looking for answers and finds them."
==Plot==
“Entry two.”
“I followed the bells like a moth drawn to great flames, or instead rather darkness, finding myself pursuing after those figures wrapped in cloaks made from pure inky blackness. They hovered just above the ground, like letting themselves purposefully be taken by the winds, guiding them towards their destination, one I was so enamored by their presence, that I didn’t realize it when it entered my field of vision past all the smoke in the skies. It wasn’t just a church, it was the church, the one still left standing despite all the chaos. It was like if a God themselves had kneeled down and wrapped it underneath his grasp, protecting it from the toxic heat and air.”
“Those massive wooden doors, they pushed straight through them as if they weren’t even there, although when I tried my hand at them, it was if they weighed a million pounds. The harder that I strained against them, the more I exerted my lungs, and the harder I began choking again. This couldn’t be, was this as far as I was allowed to go? To step on the front porch of a divine house but be refused entrance? I didn’t want to die, not here and not now, nor I didn’t want to become one of them, whatever they were supposed to be, still human underneath those tumors and boils? Perhaps, but I didn’t believe so, at least just not yet that is.”
“At that moment, I desired nothing more than salvation. I wanted to be held by the hands and told that even the world may seem tainted to the core, heaven will still remain above, watching down upon us insignificant ants. I felt the winds howl and the smoke billow, as only then was I swallowed within a hoard. Animals, monsters, something, but anything but human, although I was oblivious then to the knowledge that we all shared the same goals, for us to pray and hope. They pushed through the doors like they were nothing, unintentionally shoving me deeper and deeper into the sanctuary, before finally dispersing outwards.”
“It was a dim and bleak chamber, not unlike anything I had hoped, let alone dreamed of, but I refused to judge such a haven that managed to completely endure in these apocalyptic times. Whispering voices were all around me, trembling with fear and anticipation, as I fought my way through the crowd, pushing and pulling if it met I could head deeper within. Wax candles lined the walls, helping to guide me towards this greatness I pleaded to have, and through the mass of silhouettes surrounding me, I finally saw them again, those priests in robes as black as ash and soot. They were royal men, no matter how far they deviated from humanity.”
“There was a mural on one of the walls, of the previous world, by ‘Old Mankind’ as it was called by the faceless figures encased in this tight corridor, left perfectly untouched by the plagues just beyond its own crumpling walls. Solemn faces and eerie shadows crawl across the other three, although I continue trekking onwards, only then finally feeling what must have been the greatest sensation of determination that has ever touched my heart in, perhaps decades? Far too long, all I needed to know. A voice calls out to us, a haunting authority somewhere in the darkness.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages.”
“We gather here in the depths of despair, in this shelter of the forsaken, seeking redemption.”
“It shall be known, we are not merely victims, we are harbingers of a brand new age upon us.”
“Finally, I managed to break my way through the tightly packed crowds, observing the nave full of worshippers, and although the pews were gone, destroyed by the elements, that did not stop every single one of them from standing tall before this altar made out of scavenged metal. The preacher behind the structure, not only one of the many in black, but the one who had extended his gratitude towards me during such a moment of complete weakness, he held out his arms far enough to extend past his long sleeves, revealing his flesh red hands, the left one having the ordinary five fingers, maybe six, but the right one having as many as ten, twelve, fifteen, perhaps.”
“Our world was ravaged by the sins of the forebears, and we linger as the afflicted.”
“We must bear the consequences of their transgressions, even though we had no choice!”
“Rejoice for we are the survivors! We are the fortunate! Henceforth, we are now New Mankind!”
“Godspeed to us all! Godspeed to us all! Godspeed to us all!”
“The chorus of voices before, behind, and all around me, rejuvenated with hope, harmonically call out like everlasting angels rising back up from the bloodstained ashes, and I was truthfully among them. I was offered another chance by our Lord themselves, and I will use this chance to help forge this world anew, for the sake of a newer mankind, a newer us.”
“Godspeed to us all! Godspeed to us all! Godspeed to us all!”
----
“Hear me.”
“Hear my pleas, oh Embodiment of Desolation.”
The “Eden Pond Church” now lays within ruins a decade later, with what appears as severe fire damage rendering its contents into nothing but ash and soot, the walls scorched black and the ceiling on the verge of collapsing inwards. The sprawling mural on the wall leading inside had melted beyond recognition, leaving behind barely visible inklings of the forgotten era lost to the apocalyptic times. Moving past the charred wood and fallen bricks scattered about the foyer, a decrepit hunched figure crawls on their hands and knees towards the still-standing scrap altar, although now without a preacher standing before it.
“In your wicked name, I pray for insight. I pray for knowledge. I pray for perception.”
Finally reaching the altar, the figure slowly pushes them onto their knees, remaining in a bow as they hold their head against their ground and their hands clasped together in prayer. Dried wax stains the walls, from candles that had completely melted from the heat and dripped down them.
“Forgive the encroaching darkness, for I have lost my lighter… unless.”
Unclasping their hands and pressing them against the ground in concentration, a sudden pulse of energy spreads throughout the air, forming a bubble around them that suddenly causes the melted wax down the walls to liquefy back into a fluid form, before rapidly dripping back up the walls and not only regaining their previous shape when the church was still standing during the earlier times of Yellowcake’s development, but relighting with wicks that illuminates the church interior’s ruined status.
“Thank you for your blessings!” The emaciated figure presses their palms back together and resumes their prayer, the newfound light revealing that it was none other than Ezekiel Elsegood, still dressed within the rags of his destroyed undershirt that reveals his poorly regenerated skin underneath. Lifting his head upwards and revealing only a relatively large portion of the left side had regrown, leaving him with a bloodshot blue eye and wet patches of black hair, Ezekiel prays towards not towards the altar before him, but the massive wall behind it, completely unharmed by the fire damage and etched with strange sigils and symbols that were beyond all but his own understanding. These were the words etched into his bones.
“No matter my struggles, I pray that my undying faith has never wavered, and that my loyalty as your very vessel in this mortal realm will last for eons to come.” Ezekiel lowers his head again and continues, the exposed muscles of his jawbone squelching and oozing with black mucus as he speaks. “I have protected this sanctum in its times of loss for over three years now, and in return for my selfless suffering, I only wish that you lend me your vast wisdom, just the tiniest of fragments, and enlighten me upon a question that has dug deep inside my brain in recent times, like a worm eating its way through a rotten apple core, a question I fear has caused me to falter and grow weak in recent times.”
Ezekiel dramatically lifts his head again, causing the whites of his eyes to erupt with color.
“Must I settle? Must I find new purpose? Must I escape this loop that they have placed me in?!”
Ezekiel’s voice hitches within his throat as he nervously pauses, expecting an verbal response from whichever being he was reaching out to, before immediately lowering his head back again.
“Forgive my tone and my volume! I can fully control my anger! I am an insolent child no longer!”
Ezekiel holds his head in dismay and convulses sporadically, briefly losing control and causing the glowing veins across his bare flesh to throb as if pulses of energy were flowing right through them, like electrical currents moving through the inside of circuits, before he slows his breathing rate before he finally pushed towards hyperventilation, eventually calming himself back down.
“I apologize, 'Etosdyochiliades.' I still have much longer until I am mature.”
Ezekiel lifts his head back up, noticing the black tears falling from the edges of his eye sockets, before wiping them off, digging deep in the pockets of his tattered slacks, and soon pulling out several miscellaneous objects and items he had taken from the city dumpsters and scrapyards, letting them fall onto the ground before him. A broken camera lens. A jagged shard of ceramic, likely coming from a dining plate. A cracked fluorescent light bulb. A crumpled smoke detector, with loose wires hanging out its sides. Despite their random assortment, Ezekiel knows they were all representations of one shared factor between them, radioactivity.
Older camera lens were supposedly once coated with thorium to alter their index of refraction. Ceramic materials, such as pottery and tiles, held traces of uranium within their glaze coatings. Certain compact fluorescent lights used small amounts of promethium or krypton to warm up the electrodes within non-electronic starter ballasts, usually told if they flickered repeatedly when first switched on. Most kinds of home smoke detectors contained small amounts of americium. Ezekiel organizes them in front of him, separating them from one another.
“You exist as all things that inevitably rot back into the soil, oh Embodiment of Desolation, whether that may be flesh and bone, wood and grass, stone and brick, fire and lightning, man and animal, all kinds of machinations from past gods and goddesses. Only through your existence that decomposition occurs and life starts anew from their remains. Ionizing radiation is but a tiny force within your grasp, and I have brought you these relics like you once brought me yours. May you communicate through them? Speak through them to me? Let me hear your voice, what should I do, break free?”
Ezekiel stares out towards the altar before him, again not receiving any obvious response from the being he intends to receive out to, prompting him to stand up straight, getting off his knees and looming over the objects placed at his feet. Stepping backwards, awaiting some massive reaction about to happen any second now, Ezekiel chews at the exposed flesh of his gums in frustration that everything remained still, although stops himself from breaking into a fit again, shielding his eyes as his “eyelids” in this form were darkly tinged yet translucent, akin to nictitating membranes.
“You know what I strive for every day, to be a superior vessel, to represent you inside my realm.” Ezekiel blankets himself inside the darkness of his mind, completely blanketing out all memories of his surroundings so that nothing disturbs him and his thoughts, all but those few mental images of his own relics, the lens, the shard, the bulb, and the smoke detector. “My heart will beat for you and only you, because without you, I am left aimless. I am left purposeless. I am left only an empty soul that needs to be molded by a higher power.”
----
The lens. The shard. The bulb. The smoke detector.
The images spin around him, as if they were orbiting his mental being.
Taking pictures. Eating food. Lighting darkness. Sensing pollution. No, none were right.
Capturing moments. Preventing hunger. Seeing better. Avoiding danger. Again, not there yet.
Focusing. Consuming. Illuminating. Sensing. Perhaps, but those were merely just daily actions.
The answer must be already there, clear as crystal. They had to be dissected one by one.
The camera lens. Serves as a piece of complex technology. Innovation.
The ceramic shard. Made from combining certain earthen elements. Creation.
The fluorescent bulb. Embodies enlightenment itself, the occurring of ideas. Urbanization.
The smoke detector. Alerts owners to the presence of any hazardous elements. Preservation.
Innovation. Creation. Urbanization. Preservation.
----
“Don’t jest with me with juvenile humor, Etosdyochiliades! I fought tooth and nail for your honor!” Ezekiel demands with the lingering suspicion that he was only being played for a fool or trying to search for meaning where there was none, rather than being given the answers which he was desperately seeking out for himself, although still keeps his eyes shut, this time focusing on the four words themselves rather than their affiliated objects, frantically muttering under his breath in the struggle of comprehending what they mean together. “Innovation, creation, understanding, preservation, how do they answer my questions? Should I free myself from these self-imposed shackles or not?! Why must be it so cryptic, have I not done enough, what else could remain?!”
Innovating and creating, to make new discoveries and enhance them.
Understanding and preserving, to discover the unknown and ensure they last.
Innovating, creating, understanding, and preserving, all of them put together as one.
That was it. They represented them.
Ezekiel recognizes it all from only one place, one place one place that he has heard the name of endlessly over again and again despite his contrasting beliefs towards their causes and effects, which he vowed to forever avoid no matter the costs, for he believed that they were all agents against the existence of Etosdyochiliades, the Embodiment of Desolation herself. To them, Ezekiel was not her own vessel, but an anomaly that must be broken down and dissected apart.
“No, no, no, that cannot be the answers you have gifted to me! You can even speak their names without vomiting in your mouths?! They do not believe in you like I do!” Ezekiel cries out to his savior in confusion, eventually falling onto his knees, before suddenly groaning in his anger and lifting his fists up, before bringing them down with enough force to shatter his relics into pieces. “They think you’re a myth, a false prophet, an UGLY LITTLE STAIN inside the minds of even the most of your devoted followers, and now you mean to tell me that those COWARDS are the only ones that can help me from my CURRENT FATE?!”
Ezekiel screeches towards the darkness, demanding clarification for such undesirable answers, although in releasing his fury, the relit candles around them suddenly extinguish and blanket the church interior back in darkness once again. A furious Ezekiel immediately cowers and shields the back of his head with his hands, afraid of the punishment that may be inflicted on him for his emotional outburst against a higher power. The world around him remains completely silent for a long period of time, before he quietly continues his one-sided conversation.
“I fear them dearly. They’ll hurt me, they’ll tear me apart into little pieces. I exist as a symbol of your own image, your own artistry, can’t you see how beautiful you’ve made me? Wouldn’t you too feel rage and malice at the idea of these little specks crawling beneath me wanting to tarnish your very creations for their own SELFISH PURPOSES?!” Ezekiel cautiously leans back up in trembling fear, only for his voice to rise back in his throat, although out of passion rather than any aggression, before the candles suddenly ignite and illuminate through the darkness again. Peering down towards the broken relics scattered at his feet, he scoops up their fragments and examines them longingly, before finally cowering and bowing his head in defeat.
“I see. I am but an imbecile for even doubting you. I am hateful, and I am shamed. Forgive me.” Ezekiel remains in place before from the darkness, emerges a clawed three fingered hand that gently places itself atop his misshapen scalp, caressing his regrown hair before taking him by the chin and lifting his head back up as if to meet his gaze, although the mutant homeless man sees nothing before him, only having felt the brief sensations before their origin vanished into thin air, the comfort in which it gave him was still indescribable beyond the dark tears pouring from his orifices. “Bless you! Bless you! Bless you! I will redeem myself in your wicked name and make you remember why you trusted me as your voyager across these wastelands! I will not break the cycle, but bend it to my will, and I FINALLY know how! Godspeed, my divinity, godspeed to you!”
----
“Look, all that I’m saying is that it’s not going to be cheap.”
A frustrated Immanuel Baines leans against one of the walls of the inside of the mechanics shop he works within, having traded his distinguishing leather jacket for a stained denim jumpsuit with his first name embroidered on a nametag just above his left pectoral. Holding up a flip phone to his ear, Immanuel angrily pinches his brow and continues arguing with what was presumably a customer on the other end about payments, the former of which repeatedly gesturing towards the beaten-up skeleton of a not fully repaired motorcycle.
“Thomasina! Bike parts in good enough condition don’t just fall out of the sky from time to time! I’m doing everything that I can here, and you’re blowing up my phone!”
Immanuel aggressively taps his foot while letting his fellow crew member respond back to him.
“No, you can’t just get a discount! We’re not family, we’re not a veteran, they don’t work like that! Listen, Thomas- THOMASINA! I cannot stress that my boss will butcher me if he finds out that I’ve been smuggling these parts from the workshop, let alone the tools needed to make them!”
Immanuel briefly leans off the wall and paces around the workshop interior.
“Thomasina, I have a customer in the other room waiting to discuss their damage. If you make me stall for another second longer, they’re going to leave and that’s going to bite me in the ass! Thom- THOMASINA! Okay, that’s the last straw! I’m calling you after my shift!”
Immanuel holds the flip phone away from his ear as his accomplice snaps at him.
“It’s already settled, I’m ending the call! I’ll see you in a- I’ll see- I’LL SEE IN A FEW HOURS!”
Immanuel ends the call and clicks his phone, aggressively gritting his teeth as he storms off.
“The mouth on that woman. Won’t let me even finish my sentence.”
“I should probably come back another time, shouldn’t I?” A woman impatiently peers out through the wooden door leading into another room behind the oblivious Immanuel, an Early Bird rather than an Insomniac with her visible lack of any mutations, although he quickly assures her otherwise, a bit too frantically from what it seems,  “No, no, of course not! I wasn’t talking about- er, I mean- that was just an emergency call from my boss, and you know how it is about being on the clock! I apologize for the pause there, now, Ms. 'Ida Springall,' about the paint scratches, uh-”
“It says here that… you are covered with insurance, yes, covers general wear and tear and what not?” Immanuel briefly glances around before finally reclaiming a clipboard that gives him all the necessary information he has written down so far, to which Ida crosses her arms and annoyedly responds, “If that’s what you like to call obvious vandalism, then yes, indeed I am covered in that case. You haven’t even brought up the massive dent in my roof yet.”
“Ma’am, the roof dent is indeed a concern that will hopefully be covered, but I assure I’ve been working here the past couple months and have seen my fair share of accidents, NONE of which have been ever caused by malfunctioning Environmentalists.” Immanuel responds, although this only aggravates the young woman even more, exclaiming, “It will HOPEFULLY be covered? Is it not your occupation to tell me if it will and won’t be? My vehicle was damaged by a gigantic walking science project, and you’re saying it might have to come out of my pocket entirely?!”
“I did not imply that.” Immanuel sighs in annoyance, as she continues ranting about whatever these “Environmentalist” projects exactly were, and her gripes with the new revenue laws set in stone by the new city council as of recently, until she was nearly blue in the face, unaware of the glowing silhouetted figure phasing through the solid wall a dozen or so feet near Immanuel. Ida only catches her breath and stops herself upon seeing the silhouette reforming after rendering themselves intangible for a moment, “Does he work here? Is he your supervisor? Can I speak to him?”
“It’s me at the workshop right now, ma’am. Nobody else should be-” Immanuel follows her gaze and turns around, only to be thrusted backwards by a blinding energy explosion, hard enough to topple one of the heavy metal shelves, sending numerous tools crashing onto the ground below. The mutant homeless man swiftly advances towards their prone form, transforming his left arm into a gargantuan biomechanical claw that he uses to clamp down over the sides of Immanuel’s neck and lift him up into the air. “YOU-?!”
“Surprised to see my face again, Immanuel, or at least the bit of it that’s grown back since?” Ezekiel refers to his partial disfigurement from his incomplete skin regrowth, before turning away from the wall and holding Immanuel the opposite way, before discharging another energy beam from the inside of his metallic pincer, again sending Immanuel through the air, this time toppling over the unfinished motorcycle in the center. However, this time, Immanuel finally activates his powers, coating himself within shock-absorbent bone armor to lessen the impact altogether.
“Don’t smash the workshop up, you bastard! I need this job, and I need the money!” Immanuel pleas for the sake of keeping his current occupation, although Ezekiel ignores his regards and charges him with his massive claw, bashing him with his shoulder before lifting it upwards and stabbing into the concrete floor. Immanuel retaliates with several spiked punches, although he rotates his entire upper-body around a full three hundred sixty degrees, before swinging back and smashing Immanuel with his claw, cracking apart his facial armor and letting him collapsing on the floor below. “You fucking said it yourself that I weren’t ever going to see you again, what’s with the change of heart all of a sudden?”
“I lost patience with you and your goons. This whole schtick didn’t use to be as fun like it once used to be, but now I’m not doing it for me anymore, so let’s cut to the chase.” Ezekiel again scoops Immanuel up by the collar of his stained mechanic jumpsuit and holds him in the air as if he was a limp ragdoll. “All those things you showed me at the tavern, that photo, that piece of scrap metal, that fucking journal planner, tell me who gave them to you, before I start breaking your bones, inside and out.”
“Why the fuck did you even toss it back to me if you -?!” An annoyed Immanuel responds to him, although Ezekiel’s face horrifically distends and distorts in anger, wildly screeching and jostling him around, before finally slamming him against the nearest wall with the threat of crushing him flat against it with his clawed limb, “NO! I DON’T WANT THE DAMN BOOK ANYMORE, YOU IMBECILE! I WANT TO KNOW WHO HAD IT TO BEGIN WITH, AND NOTHING ELSE!”
“It took you a good month and a half to figure that out, huh, church boy?” Immanuel bites back, causing Ezekiel to further slam him against the wall hard enough to knock the wind out of him, while the latter transforms his other arm into another biomechanical claw in preparation to blast him with another energy beam, this time potentially having much more lethal results within such close quarters. “Alright, alright, loosen up! Let go of me! Let the fuck go, man!”
“START TALKING FIRST.” Ezekiel opens his second claw up and charges up the energy within, slowly forming a glowing ball between his sharpened pincers, as Immanuel frantically struggles and exclaims, “Okay! Alright! Don’t fucking kill me first! They call him ‘The Right Angled One,’ he’s this hermit who lives off in- in the depths of Yellowcake, all the way to the fucking barrier! He’s been privately hiring people like me and the rest of my crew to steal any of the valuable junk from the ‘Lead Mines’ with those brainiacs’ experiments, y’know, the ones that don’t work out so they toss them out and start again?! We- we found the journal buried in the there, I swear!”
“BULLSHIT! You mean to tell me that thing ended up all the way in the Early Bird dumpsters?! Are you taking me for a fucking idiot?!” Ezekiel rebukes his claims and prepares blowing off his head regardless, but Immanuel desperately insists otherwise, “I- I don’t know! I don’t know why it was there either, man! I’m not one to believe in that kind of stuff, just not my nature or my faith, but it just so happened that the rest of my crew knew who it probably could’ve belonged to, and lo and behold, we found you precisely where they expected you to be, inside that damn tavern! You two are chums, eh?! We’re chums too, that’s why the idea crossed my mind!”
“It wasn’t just the book, there was more you showed me back in that tooth, didn’t you?! Where did you get those from, HUH?!” Ezekiel interrogates him further, to which Immanuel responds, “That piece of metal was from the Right Angled One himself! He handed it to us, didn’t clarify, but I showed him the book beforehand so he must’ve known who you were too! That old timey photo, we ran out of our first few leads about where you were so we hired some goons to ask some of the more delicate questions to the boys in blue down at the station! They ruffled their asses up, but they snagged it back for us! Fitzroy wanted us to keep it, said it could be useful!”
“What is your obsession with jogging my memory? Do you know me better than I do? Are you supposed to be my lost long brother and I’m an unfortunate amnesiac with a drinking problem?” Ezekiel relaxes, lowering his voice and slightly loosening his grip on Immanuel’s armored neck, which the latter holds his hands out and exclaims, “I don’t know anything about that shit, man! The Right Angled One is the one interested in you, not us, we’re just the henchmen he pays to do all the dirty work, like any Insomniac normally would! Listen, listen, I don’t have that piece of metal anymore! That hermit lost his damn mind after we let you go, so he swiped it back and hasn’t answered back to us since, but the photograph’s at our hideout! You want it? You can have it! Just put the big ass metal crab claw DOWN for fuck’s sake!”
Ezekiel finally releases his grip and allows Immanuel to slide down the wall, the bone armor around his neck severely cracked as he groans in pain and retracts all back through his skin. Ezekiel retracts both of his claws before grabbing Immanuel by the back of his collar and lifting him up, his eyes glowing menacingly with the same energy he explosively hit him with earlier. “Let’s take a ride, shall we? You’re going with me to go fetch that photo, and then you’re taking me to the Right Angled One themselves, so I can finally figure out what all the fuss is about me… only then, like you said to me at the bar, we can put this behind us.”
“Can this all wait after my shift?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Fuck’s sake, man!”
“Cry me a river. I’m driving.”
“Yeah, like you have a license.”
Ezekiel suddenly breaks himself down into the energy radiating from his eyes, before suddenly bending and stretching upwards, before phasing right into the toppled over motorcycle laying in the middle of the shop. Glowing lines stretch across its barren metal frame, before energy tentacles shoot outwards from the lines and snatch any parts within their grasp, adding it onto itself until the motorcycle was fully compromised of scrap, but seemingly functional despite that.
A pair of large energy tentacles shoot outwards, grabbing and dragging Immanuel onto the seat, before wrapping around his waist to keep him in place. The handlebars slightly shift and move, as the engine suddenly springs to life and revs up, releasing exhaust before speeding straight through the garage door of the workshop, smashing through it and blazing down the street with Immanuel’s screams trailing off in the distance. Ida peers out from behind one of the metal shelves, before noticing she was alone.
"Whatever happened to a little sensibility?"
----
An exhausted Fitzroy Milburn-Gagnon lounges back in the repurposed kitchen of their hideout, reclining back on one of their old couches while watching some black-and-white sitcom on an cathode-ray tube television hooked up near the wall with a messy bundle of cables and wires. The nearing sounds of a motorcycle roaring outside causes him to look up in confusion, before slowly sitting upright with the realization that it was the familiar sound of one of their bikes outside, although it couldn’t be from Immanuel, as he was currently working his shift right now. Fitzroy nearly brushes it off, only to hear the sounds of crashing glass that instinctually causes him to rush out in surprise.
“You are the WORST DRIVER EVER!” Immanuel picks himself back up from the wreckage of the crudely assembled motorcycle having smashed through one of the restaurant windows and fallen apart, having covered himself with large patches of solid bone to prevent any injuries from the bumpy fall or broken glass everywhere. Ezekiel unmerges from the broken bike and regains his normal corporeal form, causing Fitzroy to go for his hip holster. Ezekiel takes note and fires off an energy bolt that knocks the firearm from his hands, before Fitzroy extends the cartilage of his finger joints in an effort to restrain him with his flexible constructs. “Hey, hey, we’re not doing this again, for fuck’s sake! Stand down, you two, stand down! I and Ezekiel have come to an unexpected arrangement, and we’re here to collect-!”
“There is no arrangement. You’re doing this or you die. Now, show me where you put the photo.” Ezekiel grabs the back of his jumpsuit and demands him to move, which he reluctantly does so despite Fitzroy’s scrutinizing gaze and malicious glare towards his adversary, which Ezekiel pays no mind as his hostage presses onwards. Entering into an abandoned break room deeper into the kitchen and rifling through piles of unattended laundry on the floor, Immanuel finally locates his prized leather jacket and reaches inside, pulling out what they were looking for before it was plucked away before he can even offer to hand it off to him. Immanuel finally exhales in relief, hesitantly asking, “Okay, there it is. Tell me what you know about it.”
“Hm?” Ezekiel grunts while examining it after such a lengthy period of time since seeing it last, to which an annoyed Immanuel stands up straight and asks, “The photograph! Tell me what that photograph is supposed to be! The cat’s finally out of the bag, Ezekiel! We’ve both been doing our fair share of lying! I know who you are, and you’ve confirmed it all yourself! You don’t think I’m curious either?”
“I never implied I knew anything more than I let on. I just wanted it back from you. Fitzroy out there implied it was important to me. I’m just taking your word on it, buster.” Ezekiel shrugs his shoulders and pockets it, causing Immanuel to sigh and rub his temples in annoyance, although the former makes sure that he wasn’t too comfortable yet, grabbing onto the sleeve of his work uniform and continuing, “Now, we’re getting the other one. Let’s move.”
“You smashed apart Thomasina’s bike, you fucking moron!”
“Exactly, I’m sure yours is in good condition. This time, you drive.”
“If it means you don’t wreck it either, fine, just lay off the uniform. My boss will kill me if I rip it.”
“Aw, wouldn’t want that to happen now, would we?” Ezekiel mockingly taunts him while pushing him out of the kitchen, passing by an extremely skeptical Fitzroy carefully observing them from afar, his hand resting at his hip at the ready to instinctually open fire on the person who nearly picked them off one by one, but Immanuel signals him to keep standing down, much to his visible chagrin. “I don’t know that one’s problem. I let him live.”
“I think you are under the misconception that people won’t REALLY trust you after you try and murder them, even if you didn’t mean to.” Immanuel remarks, with the two finally exiting their hideout after receiving what they needed there, with Ezekiel’s hostage throwing on his leather jacket over his work uniform, which Ezekiel takes advantage by again breaking back down into pure energy and possessing his jacket, causing it to become coated within glowing lines like before. Immanuel hesitantly mounts his motorcycle parked outside, finally given the freedom to drive, while Fitzroy secretly watches them from the windows, uncertain what his leader was doing together regardless of the fact he was essentially being held as a hostage.
Immanuel revs the engine upon inserting his keys taken from inside his jacket, before heading off up the concrete paths leading from their hideout. The glowing lines across his possessed leather jacket briefly fluctuate, before organizing into the shape of a two-dimensional mask on his backside, featuring almond-shaped eyes and a jagged mouth, from which Ezekiel’s voice comes from, as he says, “Tell me more about this angular fellow you mentioned.”
“Like I said, he lives on the ass end of Yellowcake, just up against the anti-dust storm barriers. I’ve never heard about him beforehand, but a few months ago, he approached me and my crew on a preposition that if we can trespass inside the Lead Mines, scrape together whatever that we can manage to get our hands off before the sirens went off, and bring it back to him, we’d receive a healthy sum, whatever we wanted, as long as he could build it.” Immanuel answers, to which Ezekiel asks, “He can build things? What kind of things?”
“Anything, Ezekiel, anything! Entropy reversal grenades! Anti-gravity drones! Dark matter guns! Radiation suppressing skin implants! Fully functional prosthetic limbs capable of tactile sensation and technopathic interaction, anything your mind can even think of, those geniuses at the Lead Block probably threw out for the Right Angled One to pick up and piece together! It’s a matter of jumping over the fence and grabbing whatever is in arms’ reach, whatever can be recycled from scratch!” Immanuel laughs, although an irritated Ezekiel only scowls in response to all the praise directed towards them. “Thomasina wanted a robot husband, like that’s even possible.”
“You act like they made it all themselves. They’re not the only ones who recycle.” Ezekiel bitterly responds, to which Immanuel raises an eyebrow and responds, “Yeah, because they did make it all themselves? What does that even mean? What are you, doubting them? You’d be blown out by all the garbage they throw out in the Lead Mines, when on the contrary, they’d make you pay a whole three, four, or even five figures for anything as basic as a prosthetic finger! They have no generosity! That’s why we didn’t turn down the offer to take all that technology for ourselves!”
“Trust me, they’re MUCH worse than not being generous. They treat like a bunch of parasites, thinking so dependent on technology after ‘The Blackout’ happened, when in reality, all they care is tear us down to study us for our mutations, the only things that we have that they don’t, because they wish to still live as the last few reminders of Old Mankind, that past era of failure! That pathetic city council should never have decided to favor the Early Birds, when it’s us, the ones who never sleep, who gets the worm!” Ezekiel rants, although a confused Immanuel does not grasp the passion of his words and merely brushes them off with a quiet, “Okay, then.”
Eventually slowing his bike to a halt after what feels like forever of driving deeper through the massive scrapyards, manmade junk structures, and forgotten memorabilia of the by-gone era, all of which taking up virtually all of northern Yellowcake, Immanuel descends down a steep hill that leads deeper into a noticeable valley, as the ground had partially collapsed from a sinkhole, as at the very center of its bottom, lays an enormous rusted shack that perfectly blended in the rest of the scrapyards that one would easily mistake it as one of the countless structures, and that nobody would be insane enough to try and live aside.
“This is our stop. The lair of the Right Angled One.” Immanuel carefully parks his motorcycle in walking distance of the shack and hops off, only for his leather jacket to constrict and restrain him from moving any further. Ezekiel separates from it and regains his human form, his hand locked tightly around his wrist as he further demands, “You’re not dropping me off so you can turn around and run. He may know me better than I do, but you’re his little henchman and I’m sure he’d let you in regardless if you brought a guest with you. Take me inside and show me where he hid that piece of scrap.”
“Man, you’re paying a really fucking dangerous game, Ezekiel, but sure, it’s only our funerals.” Immanuel breaks a sweat, but presses on without any other option, lest his captor pinches his head off with the mechanized claw he used on him earlier. “Since I’m the lead, listen to what I have to say for once. Don’t look him in the eye for too long, don’t make fun of the way that he speaks and articulates his words, don’t touch what you’re not allowed to, don’t talk to his sisters, don’t mention anything about his lil’ brother, don’t even stand still for too long! He hates people who idle more than anything in the world! Cut to the chase and ask what you came here for!”
Immanuel finally steps onto the rickety front porch and approaches the slanted front door, slowly raising his arm and extending his pointer finger towards the rusted button that seemingly serves as his doorbell. Sweating bullets by now in fear of pressing it during a time his presumed boss wouldn’t liked to be deserved, Ezekiel finally shoves him aside and forcefully presses it for him. Sounding like a Rube-Goldberg machine going off behind the enclosed walls, a series of beeps, bonks, and mechanical clicks, a sudden series of heavy footsteps follow soon afterwards, as the tarnished doorbell jingles open, although the door itself does not open. The two wait in silence for a few moments, before Ezekiel slowly pushes on the door and discovers that he had been unlocked, but whoever had done so had disappeared back into the shadows inside.
“This Right Angled bub doesn’t seem the slightest concerned with letting the first strangers that find his little rusty shack sitting in the middle of nowhere just walk inside, huh?” Ezekiel remarks, before dragging Immanuel alongside him as they force their way inside, before the former’s face suddenly enlarges and distends outwards, forming a large rectangular mass from his forehead that suddenly flickers and brightens into a highly bioluminescent organ. Immanuel experiences disgust at the sight, then immediately shields his face from the intense glow, while the two make the way through the dark house interior. Pointing his head like a flashlight and finding tables full of broken down machinery, completely contrasting with anything found in the scrap mountains outside, Ezekiel closely examines them further, seeing they were rather sleek white metal and expensive computer parts, the likes of which he hadn’t seen before.
“You really thought I was bluffing about the revenue, huh, eggplant? It’s the real deal, straight from the Mines!” Immanuel whispers under his breath, although Ezekiel reflexively elbows him in the sternum to shut him up before moving deeper into the house with him. Stepping into different rooms and being met with transparent cases full of reassembled gadgetry and gizmos, Ezekiel eyeballs them with fascination that everyone Immanuel said seemed to be true, before hearing a faint electronic garble within the room over. Carefully craning his head towards the nearby doorway and peering into what looks to be a living room, which seemingly contains only a beaten up recliner, and an old TV displaying nothing but pure static, Ezekiel glares towards the chair propped up in front of it, knowing for certain there was a person sitting in it.
“Be smart about this! That’s clearly not even-!” Immanuel tries warning his captor, although the latter ignores him and practically tears his way into the living room. Flipping the recliner around and blinding whoever was sitting it with his flashlight-like head, Ezekiel only staggers back when the lights above switch on, revealing it was indeed a trick, and that he was engaging a bunch of stolen prosthetic limbs and mannequin parts cobbled together into a vague humanoid shape. A large cannon peers out from the shadows, which the second it loads and takes aim, Ezekiel turns towards it and tries transforming one of his limbs, only to be smothered and slammed against the wall with an amorphous rubbery substance that glues him onto it. Ezekiel briefly struggles, only for a tsking voice to stop him from doing so.
“Nuh uh, aah wouldn't do that. That right there is, varmint, is a new batch of some of mah homemade pressure-triggered plastique. Squirm 'round a bit too much, ‘n there won't be much of ya left to scrape off mah walls.” The shadowed figure responds with a heavy Southern accent, causing Immanuel to glance around the corner, prompting the cannon to aim towards him as he recoils back in fear. “Don’t reckon aah see ya from there, ya little mutant! Ya got yourself a good a thray seconds to show yourself before ya join this one there up own the wall!”
“You’ll shoot me regardless, Rectangular Prism! I’m safe behind here!” Immanuel snaps back, before a sudden energy blast suddenly burns a fairly small hole straight in the wall above him, allowing the other to clarify after pocketing the tiny energy blaster he used to prove him wrong, “Still reckon so, huh, Marrow? Ya better tell meh why ya brought this here walkin' pile of grape bubblegum into mah holy place! Don't make meh fetch the plasma flamethrower from the back, lest ya wanna find out what happened to New York Strip ‘n Flat Iron!”
“You consider this a holy place? Please!” Ezekiel exclaims, prompting the disembodied voice to aggressively discard his shoulder-mounted weapon and finally emerge from the darkness, revealing himself as a slender humanoid with bright gray skin and simplified facial features, including solid black pupils without any irises and no nose nor lips. Wearing a sleeveless flannel shirt, loose-hanging jeans, steel-toe boots, and a bandana wrapped around his neck, the Right Angled One reveals himself as someone who wasn’t an Insomniac, nor even Human to begin with, rather instead a being from out of this world, something which seemingly does not occur to Ezekiel whatsoever.
“Yeah, and who's asking, ya melted prune?!”
“Really? You’re supposed to be the Right Angled One?”
“Aah ain't supposed to be, aah'm! The name’s Rectangular Prism Vreedle!”
“Okay, without a doubt, there is no shot that is your real last name.”
“Marrow boy, aah'm gettin' upset ‘n it's your fault! Ya better start flappin' your lips before aah start shootin' out your teeth as targetin' practice!” Rectangular Prism finally snaps and points to Immanuel with the same powerful peashooter from before, who immediately proclaims in shock, “Wait, goddamnit, that’s him, Rexy, that’s him right there! That’s the one you wanted us to find, you said it yourself! Ezekiel Elsegood! That’s Ezekiel stuck on your wall!”
Rectangular Prism hesitantly unprimes his peashooter and pockets it again, before turning back around and examining the homeless man’s severely mutated complexion further, before leaning away and placing the back of his hands on his hips in surprise. “Well, aah'll be darned, Ezekiel! There really ain't much left of ya, ain’t there, huh? Another year or two, ‘n ya'd probably look lak a big ol' pile of hamburger meat by then.”
“Piss off.”
“Watch how ya talk, boy!”
Ezekiel immediately spits in his direction. although the distance between them wasn’t enough for it to even land in his face. Rectangular Prism angrily grumbles at his disrespectful attitude, closely examining the extreme imperfections of his mutated appearance in fascination of how far gone he really was by then, before pointing his finger and warning him, “Most of mah blades are rusted, so if aah need to cut somethin' off, it ain't gonna be pretty!”
“That piece of scrap metal you gave Immanuel, what does it do with me?”
“Ah, that old thing? Figured ya'd be interested after all.”
“What the FUCK do you want with me?!”
“Aah sayd, watch how ya talk!”
“This was your plan, Ezekiel? Kidnap him from my job so I can drive here and you two can sling verbal insults at each other?!” Immanuel critiques him for getting not anywhere, before turning towards his extraterrestrial employer and calmly stating, “Listen, it may not seem like it, but he means business, enough he beat me senselessly during my shift today. He wants that scrap piece you took away from the rest of us when we told you that our interrogation was a flunk.”
“Rough cylindric shape, six inches en length, two 'n three-four quarters inches en width, almost looks lak a broken piece of pipe if ya squint your aahs a fair bit? Yeah, thought so.” Rectangular Prism Vreedles ponders for a couple seconds, before finally declaring and gesturing towards the two of them in the process of stepping out of the cramped living room, leaving them a warning before disappearing around the corner, “Ya two wait one moment here then. Feel free to gander at the merchandise nearby, but don't you touch nothing important, only if you wanna end up like Marrow boy’s older boys, York ‘n Flats.”
“Too soon.” Immanuel vaguely mutters under his breath while nearly clutching at the side of his chest in heartache, before looking towards Ezekiel stuck on the wall, only to see him rewinding the time around him and reverting the plastique back inside the discarded cannon, as if it hadn’t been fired to begin with. Curiously looking at the dummy of scrap he left in the old recliner chair, before stepping into the other room, Ezekiel digs through the tables of high-tech junk and debris scattered about, clearly intrigued on what the Skeleton Crew supposedly managed to get their hands on by themselves. Immanuel wanders after him, proudly saying, then sternly asking, “Checking out all the loot, huh? I wouldn’t brag, but as the person with the power that lets them shrug off their fair share of laser fire- hey, okay, maybe keep your hands to yourself? It’s not like you’re here to buy! Not even the Right Angled One knows what germs you might have brought!”
“Are you aware?”
“Am I aware of what?”
“Your employer is not even human?”
“Uh, sure, he doesn’t have a nose. You barely don’t either.”
“That gray-skinned country bumpkin in the other room is an alien.”
“Oh good lord, I have eyes, Ezekiel.”
“That’s the funny thing, so you ARE aware of the truth about the presence of extraterrestrial refugees hiding out in Yellowcake like I have been going on for years now, and yet you STILL believe that those gifted minds living out their days within their precious manmade paradise are these flawless denizens that can do no wrong! How could they when it’s THEIR idea to fix every problem that confronts themselves with inventions they can call theirs, right, and not just stolen artifacts robbed from stragglers of the COSMOS?!” Ezekiel begins ranting once more, only more psychotically fueled than before, cornering the increasingly frightened Immanuel, who defensively armors his hands and holds them up. “Those bastards in the year 1947, decades before everything went south, all made off like bandits! Roswell wasn’t a damn balloon, it was a fucking SAUCER, and they got to enjoy the luxuries of stolen labor while we struggled to make ends meet by ourselves! You call the Lead Block full of genius minds? All they are are the old relics of Old Mankind. That’s why they’re STILL nothing but pathetic EARLY BIRDS.”
“You’re freaking me the fuck out, Ezekiel! You really are off the deep end! Back off!”
“Wrong, I have lost patience, that’s what I told before. I’ll make things bend to MY will even if I have to do it with my own bare hands.”
“Man, If I knew you were this much of an emotional rollercoaster, I would’ve never bothered with you, maybe nobody would’ve. That alien over there was the one who told me everything I knew about you, that you believe yourself as this victim to social norms while you casually cheat and threaten everyone around you.” Immanuel keeps his hands out to put a barrier between the two of them. “Don’t you think it’s the slightest bit ironic how the person most obsessed with wanting us all to avoid the consequences of Old Mankind seems to act the MOST SIMILAR to them? Hm? Did that ever concern you once, Ezekiel, even though everything seems to?”
“ONE MORE WORD OUT OF YOUR MOUTH AND I’LL PERSONALLY-” Ezekiel grabs him by the collar, although an unflinching Immanuel reels his armored fist and punches him in the face, no longer intimidated despite the dangerous powers he has at his disposal, sending the mutant homeless man crashing against back the table of stolen equipment. Immanuel watches him weakly get back up, only remarking, “I’m getting real sick of you doing that shit. Listen, REALLY listen to me for once… I’m sorry you are like this, I’m sorry about your condition, I’m sorry there’s nothing that can be done it, but you know you’re only making things worse. Your suffering is becoming your own upbringing. You’re this miserable sap, just an awful person who might not ever change.”
“You think you have some leverage over me? You think you’re an angel?!” Ezekiel growls while wiping black blood from the side of his face, to which Immanuel responds, “Definitely not, but I am where I am is because of my own choices. There was where my heart led me. Maybe yours is still in there too. Maybe you can figure it out how it works so you can make your own. Tell me, what was that you said to me back then, your mind is deaf? The deaf can learn other means of communication. It’s just a matter of learning not to push away those who want you to go and seek help. Everything isn’t hopeless as you think, Ezekiel, no matter how long that it has been. You aren’t worthy of anything, but there’s nothing saying you can’t ever it somehow.”
“You speak nothing but sentimental nonsense. It doesn’t matter, nothing matters. I’ve embraced what I’ve become, and when I get that piece of junk from your contractor, I’ll not rest until I find out my origins, find out the people who abused me forever ago, and find the strength inside me to TEAR THEM INTO PIECES!” Ezekiel roars in response, crouching downwards like an animal ready to pounce, causing Immanuel to defensively cover himself in spiked layers of bone armor. However, before either engages, from the nearby darkness, rolls out a disc-shaped object that slides between them, which upon one of them taking a step, releases a massive vibration pulse that instantly disrupts their equilibrium, causing them to limpily fall onto their sides.
“Disequilibrium landmine works lak a charm! That'll treat ya home intruders to try ‘n break into our humble abode!” A female Southern voice speaks from the darkness while the two writhe on the floor and hold their eyes in pain. Ezekiel manages to look up towards the origin of the voice, knowing that although they share that distinguishing drawl, it was clearly not even someone with a masculine tone. Stepping from the darkness once the two had been incapacitated on the floor, was instead one of Rectangular Prism’s siblings, “Hemisphere Vreedle,” a long-haired brunette with curtain bangs, wearing a tied up buffalo plaid shirt with exposed midriff, torn denim shorts, and numerous broken wristwatches down the length of her left arm and parts of her right arm. “Now, y'all stay put if ya know what's good for ya, m’kay?”
“One of these times, you’re going to give me tinnitus for life, Hemy! You know me!”
“Oh? Bone boy? What's a sophisticated fellah lak ya doin' riflin' around?”
“I’m here speaking with your brother, like always! Was that really NECESSARY?!”
“Daw, mah mistake, sweetums. Ya know how am aah.”
“You…” The enraged Ezekiel rises up onto his feet, although before he can do anything, a sharp pair of metal prongs suddenly jab into the back of his head, before a massive surge of electricity causes him to violently convulse and spasm. His biology uncontrollably bends and stretches, his limbs zigzagging and head elongating enough that it nearly seems to separate off his neck itself, before finally stopping and letting him crumble onto the floor again. Immanuel keeps out of it, ensuring that he was still armored using his powers. “...ouch.”
“Superionic charged taser works lak a charm! That'll treat ya home intruders to try ‘n break into our humble abode!” Another female Southern voice proudly exclaims before emerging from the shadows, this time holding a massive stun gun the size of a rifle within her hands. Finally revealing themselves as another one of Rectangular Prism’s siblings, “Icosahedron Vreedle,” notably taller than her sister with shoulder-length tousled hair, instead wearing a buttoned gingham blouse with hole-ridden jeans and a necklace of broken clockwork pieces, namely cogs and gears, wrapped around her neck.
“Always with the lethal force, sis! Ya wanna git the fuzz knockin' own our door after ya blew that pocket-sized particle accelerator through our roof?!”
“Ya keep own yellin' lak that, Hemy, knowin' if Ellipsoid wakes up from his nap upstairs, then it'll be nothin' but pandemonium! He gets especially cranky this late en the day!”
“Icosa! Icosa! Icosa! How has the time been treating you? Speaking of which, is that your new necklace that Rexy told me about? I bet he’s so jealous about how BEAUTIFUL it looks on you!” Immanuel immediately asserts himself between the two arguing sisters to forcefully de-escalate any further situation, flattering the newcomer enough that she tosses aside the huge stun gun like it was a paperweight, who responds, “Dawww, ya mean it? Aah could've swore that Rexy sayd it looked ridiculous own meh.”
“She ain't your type, suck up.” Hemisphere scolds Immanuel, before looking towards and seeing the weakened, slightly smoking Ezekiel crawling towards her, trying to grab hold of her ankle to get her attention, causing her to instinctually leap back in surprise. “Ick! What happened to ya?! Your face done drippin' off your skull!”
“He’s a uh, friend from work, of course. Don’t worry about his looks, the genetic lottery was a lose-lose situation for him. I brought here to personally talk with your brother, important matters and such.” Immanuel lies in response, keeping the exact details of their business with Rectangular Prism private. Ezekiel slowly helps himself up, coughing up black fluid onto the floor and causing Hemisphere to recoil in disgust.
“Always with that one bringin' strangers en here, no offense, but ya too make it quick, ya hear?” Icosahedron responds, although Immanuel can only nod in response as Ezekiel grabs him by the wrist and aggressively drags him out of the room, preventing him from speaking any further. Scanning through the still illuminated living room and tracking which way that Rectangular Prism had presumably disappeared upstairs, the mutant homeless man quickly passes through the darkness and comes across a rickety staircase leading as expected, walking up with Immanuel still being pulled behind him. The biker manages wrestling around his iron grip by the time they pass the final step, revealing only a dark corridor that leads towards a barely open bedroom door.
“You look like if a bunch of bull intestines came to life, but damn you got one hell of a grip, man!” Immanuel responds, before Ezekiel cautiously enters the corridor and approaches the incopious bedroom door, completely uncertain what would be behind it, but knowing that it might not be what he desires upon taking Rectangular Prism’s previous trickery into account. Immanuel tries reaching for it, only for Ezekiel to transform his left forearm into a larger appendage, the middle of his forearm segmented with glowing chainlinks. Reeling his fist back and launching it forward with incredible might, he punches the door right off its hinges, revealing nothing but junk inside, although with a familiar figure standing in the exact center, oddly clear despite how dark it was.
“Now, now, now, no need to put your fists up. Aah got what ya want right here en mah hand.” Rectangular Prism lifts his closed hand outwards, preventing Ezekiel for immediately lunging in and tackling him. “However, aah'm afraid to say that it might cost ya one pretty penny for makin' meh fetch it for ya. Aah'm sure ya don't find that there unreasonable.”
“You’ll hand that over knowing damn well if you don’t, I’ll make you into a fine red mess on the wall behind you.” Ezekiel aggressively retracts his extended chain and reattaches his separated arm back together, to which Rectangular Prism ominously chuckles in response, complimenting him, “Ya got spirit lak aah haven't seen, Ezekiel. May your ceaseless cycle never stop ya.”
“GIVE ME THAT RUSTY SHIT IN YOUR HANDS, RECTANGULAR PRISM!” Ezekiel steps into the room and prepares another punch, this time straight into his skull, only for many glowing red lasers to suddenly emit from the sides of the broken doorframe behind him. What little hangs on from the door itself immediately burns and smolders from the lasers burning through it, forming into an intersecting grid pattern that prevents him from leaving back out.
“It's a damn shame ya learn, then forget it, lak clockwork.” Rectangular Prism scratches his chin, before Ezekiel immediately whips around and slams his massive fist into him, only for his arm to instead go straight through him, briefly electronically distorting as his arm instead hits the empty wall behind him. Rectangular Prism laughs as his holographic form repeatedly blurs and warps, revealing the projector embedded within the stained carpet, finally telling him, “Daw, but don't ya fret though! Aah left ya somethin' better en there for ya!”
Slowly rolling out from the junk scattered around the floor. Ezekiel retracts his arm and stares down at what resembles a baseless plasma globe covered with exposed circuit boards and electronics. Shooting out small bursts of electricity from its translucent plastic shell, the orb suddenly rattles back and forth, before the electrical currents enlarge in size and begin magnetically affecting the surrounding debris, particularly any lesser rusted metals. Immanuel yells out from behind the laser barrier, exclaiming, “EZEKIEL, GET OUT OF THERE! THAT’S A LIVE ‘ECO-ORB’!”
“As much as Marrow boy probably told ya otherwise, aah honestly couldn't give much of a damn about who ya are. It's what ya got deep inside, all that alien DNA those fanatics injected ya with, now that's worth all the effort there. Look own the bright side, ‘Zeke, ya finally have a purpose to serve after all.” Rectangular Prism continues as the activated Eco-Orb magnetically attracts all the metallic debris in the room towards itself, forming an increasingly thicker and denser shield that slowly shapes into basic limbs. “It's a pity ya will be too dead to be happy about it.”
Eventually articulating into a headless humanoid form, made entirely out of fluctuating pieces of discarded metal, some larger broken fragments and some razor sharp shrapnel, Ezekiel comes face-to-face with a rouge Environmentalist, one of the Lead Block’s failed efforts to properly try and extract all the rubble surrounding the edges of Yellowcake, many of which coming from pieces of reinforcements that had fallen off the anti-dust storm barriers, inevitably scrapped for their unpredictable behavior and tunnel vision only geared towards eliminating any filth in its radius, the exact kind of filth that Ezekiel, a homeless man, was entirely saturated with.
“Lutum. Ninety hundred percent purification. Leave some pieces left for me to play ‘round with.”
“LIKE I’D LET YOU HAVE SQUAT!!!”
“Priority correction. Ninety-five percent purification.”
Immediately enlarging and segmenting both his arms apart, Ezekiel reels them back and brings them forward against them with all the strength he can muster, attempting to land two powerful punches against the scrap behemoth, only for Lutum to grab onto the extended chainlinks of his transformed arms, whipping him around like he barely weighed anything, before twisting around and smashing him straight through the opposite wall from the doorway. Falling onto the ground below outside, surrounded with debris, Ezekiel skitters to a stop and transforms his arms back to better grip onto the ground beneath him, as the Environmentalist leaps out the gaping hole in the shack after him, clearly intending to pursue him until he had been eradicated.
“COME GET SOME, YOU HERETIC INVENTION!” Ezekiel quickly recovers and braces himself, as Lutum lumbers towards him, reeling its makeshift arms up and slamming them on top of him, seemingly flattening him agains the ground, only to reveal that he had taken on the preporties of a shadow, becoming completely two-dimensional while Lutum repeatedly swings and strikes in repetitive attempts to punch apart his flattened image. Ducking between his legs and leaping out from the ground, rendered three-dimensional again, Ezekiel sprouts numerous additional limbs made from extended flesh from the sides of his exposed abdomen, binding them all around the torso of the Environmentalist in an effort to slow its movements.
Focusing all its sharpened points into its backside and impaling him, forcing him to retract most of his limbs and let go, Ezekiel regenerates the punctured holes before elongating his legs and jumping backwards to avoid their downward punches. Sharpening the fingers of his remaining limbs into claws and lashing out at Lutum, he was unceremoniously elbowed away, not before being grabbed by the ankle and thrown once again. Switching gears and manifesting rainbow colored energy from his palms, Ezekiel concentrates them into focused beams that he uses to keep the scrap golem at bay, although whatever pieces he manages blowing off were quickly mended through the Environmentalist absorbing any rubble in its reach to restore its mass, although not more than it previously had, forced to remain at a certain size.
“I need to break that core somewhere in the center!” Ezekiel exclaims to himself, repeatedly flinging energy blasts in their direction, before Lutum finally learns and elongates one of its arms outwards, grabbing hold of Ezekiel before turning around and slamming him against the ground like a ragdoll, pummeling him over and over again. Through dispersing his energy and boosting his resistance to pain thanks to his current powers, Ezekiel continues firing off energized bolts from his hands, giving it everything that he has, although his injuries were only becoming more grievous by the second. With the intent of trying to reach inside its mass, Ezekiel discards his energy blasts in exchange for matter absorption, slowly absorbing and mimicking the preporties of the various metals that make up Lutum, before being magnetically drawn in.
However, the Environmentalist merely forms a barrier from numerous sheet metals, preventing Ezekiel from reaching in, before reshaping its opposing fist into a massive spiked mace that it uses to swing overhead and slam him into the ground with enough power to fracture the rusty ground beneath them. Lutum lifts the weakened Ezekiel back up, before transforming its other arm into a clustered mass of motorized blades that it animates like chainsaws, which the latter just barely manages to block using his absorbed arm, although it soon breaks through that too with enough applied force. Breaking it off one of his arms and revealing bleeding flesh beneath, Ezekiel takes advantage of this through accessing his energy projection, releasing an electrical blast that causes him to jolt backwards, releasing Ezekiel in the process.
----
“The bastard made a break for it.” Immanuel finally realizes after having barraged into each of the rooms within the corridor that had led towards their second trap, surely enough either being completely empty, or entirely full of unusable technology still too precious to be known away. Rushing back downstairs, attempting to find any windows or secret exits he might have slipped through, Immanuel’s feet instead go straight through the rickety steps of the staircase, although he forcefully armors his arms and punches straight through the nearby walls, forcefully stopping his face as the rest of the old staircase caves in, revealing a massive pit of complete and utter darkness leading downwards. “What the fuck?”
Swinging to safety and hopping downwards, Immanuel examines the staircase closer and finally noticing the concealed door within its side, notably locked when he tries forcing open the knob. With a few shoulder bashes, he caves it in and watches the broken door slowly slide down the stone staircase hidden inside, leading into the aforementioned pit. Arming himself with the first thing he can grab and hesitantly heading downwards, Immanuel cautiously times his steps with the foresight there might be tripwire or some laser detection that would go off with his presence. As the solid darkness finally manifests, before dispersing in favor of a flickering yellow from the glow of artificial lights, Immanuel finally reaches the bottom, discovering a crooked metal door that was left slightly ajar. Fully armoring himself and kicking the door open with one hard blow, he finds nothing but an abandoned workshop stripped of its equipment, and most strangely of all, out of all people, Fitzroy himself standing in the exact center.
“Fitzroy? What the hell? How did you even get here, let alone down here?!”
Fitzroy statically waves in response and excitedly gestures Immanuel to step forth, who nearly does so before glancing upwards and downwards, searching for any holographic projector, but finding none. Not buying the trickery, Immanuel instead aims the stun gun which he had taken and fires it, impaling the fake Fitzroy with its prongs and causing him to deflate as if he were an inflatable balloon, leaving behind only a rubbery suit of loose skin on the floor. Immanuel steps in and kicks the fake suit around, before searching around in the darkness for wherever that his employer was hiding within, pointing the stun gun at the ready.
“I never agreed to letting you killing the church boy, Rectangular Prism! Show yourself!”
“Catch, Marrow boy.”
A single spherical explosive bounces out from the shadows, quickly releasing a smokescreen the second that Immanuel faces its direction, blanketing his surroundings and lessening his field of vision even further than it was within the limited lighting above him. Immanuel stays armored and frantically spins around, searching for any disturbances within the gas that would tell where Rectangular Prism would emerge from, unaware of the very light around him distorting as if it were a warped reflection. Pulling off their invisibility cloak and announcing their presence with a single tsk, Immanuel spins around and prepares to fire, only for his adversary to force the cloak over his head and obscure his vision. Ripping the weapon from his hands and bludgeoning him with it hard enough for his head to bounce off the nearest wall, Rectangular Prism pulls out its prongs and breaks their wire, before tossing the broken weapon aside.
“Ya agreed to mindin' your own business, Marrow boy. Seems lak ya're the forgetful type too.”
Rectangular Prism reaches onto the nearby workshop table, grabbing hold of an old wrench and menacingly smacks it against his other palm.
“Unlike that rotten plum out there, if aah'm the one to teach ya a lesson, aah'll make sure ya remember it. There’s a reason why there’s only five of ya now.
Immanuel manages prying the invisibility cloak off him, pushing himself up using the wall as leverage, while gritting his teeth in pain and anger.
“You keep York and Flats out of your nasty mouth.”
----
Severely bleeding from the countless cuts against his malformed skin and flesh, Ezekiel leaps to the side and avoids another downward punch, before breaking back down into energy that tries taking control and possessing his inanimate anatomy to try and break him apart from the inside, only for the increasingly intelligent Lutum to isolate whichever parts he has melded with, before forcefully ejecting them outwards. Ezekiel unmerges and allows Lutum’s thrusting blows to phase through his incorporeal form, before transitioning back into his multicolored energy and placing his hands together for one massive blast, which now hardly phases the Environmentalist now, quickly separating parts of themselves to dodge, then reforming faster than he can fire again.
With the surprise dodge, Lutum strikes Ezekiel with an upward blow, hitting him hard enough to rip the recently regrown skin off the side of his face, brutally tearing it off his skull as black fluid sprays out from his bleeding gashes and cuts. Dispersing his energy and lessening the pain, the Environmentalist continues wailing on him, although Ezekiel has finally begun losing the energy to fight back, withstanding one gruesome blow after another. As Lutum leans back and readies another blow, Ezekiel finally crosses his arms to block it, although the ensuing force still nearly breaks both his ulnas like they were twigs. Crashing onto the ground a couple meters away, Ezekiel wheezes and coughs, feeling his strength waning as the pain slowly settles back in.
“...Etos… Etosdyochiliades… lend me your strength… help me SLAY this machine!”
Ezekiel pushes himself up, bleeding uncontrollably from the severely torn side of his mouth and jaw where the edge of their sharpened fist had made contact with, before Lutum violently kicks the homeless man backwards, sending him sliding back against the rough ground and leaving behind a trail of darkened blood in his wake. Ezekiel quietly continues his prayers, struggling to stand once more as he was pushed further and further towards his limits the longer that he was seemingly ignored, causing his prayers to grow louder and more desperate.
“...ETOSDYOCHILIADES!! I AM IN NEED!! I DON'T HAVE THE STRENGTH ON MY OWN!!”
Ezekiel leaps out of the way of another kick, rolling onto the ground and barely managing to stay up on only one knee. Frantically trying to crawl away, before being snatched up by the shin and thrown up into the air, Ezekiel finally manages to aim his bruised hands downwards and blast the Environmentalist with his multicolored energy, hitting him in the dead center of their torso and causing them to drop them as they smolder from the blow. Harshly landing onto the ground only a few feet away, the homeless man gasps and groans, being weighed down by his internal injuries as fluid rapidly fills his lungs. One of his arms hardly able to lift up anymore, he forcefully releases all the energy he can muster from his opposite hand to stagger the Environmentalist backwards.
“...HEAR MY PRAYERS, FOR I AM YOUR VESSEL!!!”
----
Catching the wrench between his armored hands and preventing its wielder from swinging down any further, Immanuel kicks Rectangular Prism back against the wall, forcing him to dig into his pockets and throw out several more miniature smoke bombs at him, which the former tries punching aside, only for them to all burst upon contact and again cloud his vision with smoke. Spending the precious few seconds he bought himself wisely, his adversary searches through the cabinets of their abandoned workshop, finally finding the uber-specific gadget that they were looking for once Immanuel finally manages passing through the smoke and regaining his sight.
“Ya really expected meh not to assume that any of ya goons would turn own meh one way or another? Contingency plans are always so cumbersome, but they make things so much easier down the line! Lo 'n behold, the Saikuartz decalcificator!” Rectangular Prism reveals the oblong weapon, like something between a dentist drill and a tuning fork, which he points and activates with a press of a button, discharging a corrosive spray of noxious chemicals that immediately lands onto and rots through Immanuel’s bone armor, revealing his exposed skin underneath, while additionally eating through parts of his mechanic jumpsuit.
“THAT COMES OUT OF MY PAYCHECK, YOU SON OF A BITCH!” Immanuel charges in anger, to which Rectangular Prism pulls out the powerful peashooter that he nearly used on him earlier, shooting him in the shoulder and causing him to collapse backwards, yelling out in pain from the laser burning it through like it was nothing. Rectangular Prism looms over him, pointing right for his head and warning him, “The next time ya try that, it will be between your aahs.”
“Moments like this really remind me why I didn’t feel the slightest bit surprised when those warm and friendly brainiacs in the Lead Block threw you to the curb!” Immanuel screams in response, prompting a frustrated Rectangular Prism to lift his steel-toe boot back and kick him in the face, before lifting it again and pressing it on the side on his neck, making sure that it really shuts it up, before saying, “Aah apologize for that spoiled jar of jam fightin' for his life out there bringin' ya down to his level. Ya wouldn't be here if he was less of a pain than aah thought he was, but sometimes, a man's got to do what a man's got to do, 'n that there includes dissectin' DNA rich freaks to make millions off their superpowered organs. Ya must understand.”
“When he smashes that Environmentalist’s Eco-Orb core out there, he’s coming back in here to rip you limb from limb, so I’d advise you to start running right about now! You want a head start, don’t you?” Immanuel strains through the pressure put on his neck, although Rectangular Prism only smirks and responds, “Those who are already ten steps ahead don't need 'em. That there doesn't sound too fair for everyone involved, does it? Unfortunate… for ya.”
Rectangular Prism kneels down and presses his peashooter directly towards Immanuel’s skull in preparation to finish him off for good, causing the latter to wince and twist his head to the side, bracing for what was to come, and thereby leaving him unaware of the animate invisibility cloak behind him, as an unknown individual equips it long enough to lift the discarded wrench up into the air and slam it over the back of the Right Angled One’s head, causing them to seize before collapsing on their side. Immanuel blinks his eyes open in surprise, seeing the fluctuating cloak before its wearer pulls it off their head and reveals themselves as Hemisphere herself.
“Can’t believe him! First, he welcomes strangers en, then he treats him lak this?!”
“You literally just saved my life right about now. Everything was starting to flash.”
“Ya can give your gratitude wipin' your feet own your doormat next time. You tracked sand on the living room carpet.” Icosahedron interjects from out of nowhere, taking note of his severe shoulder wound while helping them up. “Oh, he got ya good. Hard to believe aah was cloned from that sharp of a shooter, 'n yet aah can barely read without spectacles.”
“Do you have anything that can fix it?!” Immanuel desperately asks while wincing in severe pain from the literal hole through his arm, which she responds, Let's see, we've got a roll of gauze en the kitchen cabinet, a bit of rubbin' alcohol en the bathroom closet, an organic flesh rejuvenator bein' used as a doorstopper for the laundry room. Take your pick. Hard choice, aah know.”
----
Horrifically maimed beyond recognition, the unrecognizably beaten Ezekiel wobbles onto one of his legs while watching the Environmentalist in the process of restoring its vaporized mass using surrounding scrap metal nearby in its proximity, before finally standing back up on its own two legs again and advancing towards the bleeding and drooling homeless man. Failing to use his powers, as only a few rainbow-colored sparks emit from his twisted fingers, Ezekiel was grabbed by the neck and slowly held up into the air, nearly exact how he had done with Immanuel at his workplace.
“DAMN YOU.” Ezekiel sputters while beginning to choke and suffocate from his airways being pinched shut more and more, kicking and flailing what few limbs he can still move without any overwhelming pain. Dark blood pools down his chest and ruined undershirt, by now only a few rags hanging around his waist, seeping into the scrap metal below him. His eyes dilate as the world around him begins closing tighter and tighter in around him, slowly losing consciousness as Lutum continues crushing his neck in an effort to break through his spine and finish him off. Everything begins wildly pulsing white, like his life was meant to be flashing before his eyes, but there was absolutely nothing shown, just empty white where his forgotten memories once were.
“DAMN YOU!!!” Ezekiel screams and struggles harnessing his powers again, although they had been fully exhausted by then, and now nothing sparked out from his fingertips. Wildly thrashing as the world around him begins spiraling inwards, Ezekiel futilely stretches his hand outwards and smears his blood-soaked fingers onto Lutum's rudimentary lump for a head, unable to fight back anymore. The blinding light surrounding the sides of his deteriorating vision begin to darken, until it was like he was looking through a pinhole, as his ears begin to ring until nothing could be heard, not even the sounds of being strangled to death. It was all going black.
----
“You never answered me, did you?”
Ezekiel stands within a pitch black void, staring down towards a severely burned carpet beneath his feet, as the distant illumination of candlelight glows far off in the distance, like fireflies frozen with in midair. Although he was just as maimed as before, his ruined clothes were exchanged by a series of familiar black robes that shrouded his disfigured body from the neck down.
“I only reached a false conclusion, like always.”
Ezekiel stares towards the floor, seeing his earlier relics which he had smashed into pieces out of his anger against the Lead Block, which eventually degrade back into their shattered states before seeping into the carpet beneath his feet, slowly disappearing from view as where they once were begins to shimmer and ripple like the surface of a body of water.
“I suppose that’s only commonplace with me.”
Ezekiel shuffles slightly as the carpet beneath him begins sinking under his weight, slowly letting himself be sucked into the ground and only speaking again when it was entirely up to his knees. His robes slowly begin to sag and melt off his form, as if gradually melding into the liquid floor.
“I am an inferior vessel unworthy of such a wicked title.”
Ezekiel accepts his fate, seeing no way out, allowing him to be swallowed up to his hips, then up to his waist, as the candles in the distance begin going out one by one, further blanketing him within darkness just like the abandoned church he had devoted his existence towards.
“Please promise that you will keep a piece of me. Just to remember, what I could have been.”
Ezekiel solemnly lifts his arms up and clasps his hand in prayer once again, despite now being sunken as far as his armpits. He uncontrollably weeps darkened tears, although remains silent as he lifts his arms above his head when it passes by his shoulders.
“Have mercy, my beloved goddess of manmade ruin, my beloved Etosdyochiliades.”
Ezekiel’s deformed face finally disappears into the melting floor, as both his arms lift higher and higher up into the air, still tightly clasped together in desperate prayer, before they vanish above his elbows, then above his wrists, and then above his left hand as his arms eventually lose the strength to remain upright, leaving only his right hand desperately hanging in the air as it slowly disappears from view. The candlelight within the distance goes out, all but one, leaving what remains of him in almost complete and utter darkness. No weight, no sound, no anything, it was all gone. The world around him was completely imperceptible beyond the grave.
Elsegood had died.
However, out of nowhere, illuminated within the candlelight, a single three fingered hand clasps tightly onto his extended fingertips and prevents them from disappearing into the carpet below. The remaining candle slightly wavers and moves, its wick changing coloration, before suddenly erupting outwards into a massive explosion of red and blue light that spins and spirals inwards. Ezekiel’s final dying thought was that light, how its center only seems to deepen the more that it rotates more and more, like the center of a whirlpool. The flash of light rapidly spirals faster and faster, eventually condensing itself into two varicolored beacons that wrap around one another.
Inscribed into his veins. Etched into his bones. Written into his flesh.
The true answers were all in what made those materials. His genes, his molecules, his self.
Elsegood had died, so that “Elix” could live.
----
“L’GOON!”
Using his bare hands full of renewed strength and vigor, Ezekiel rips and shreds apart Lutum’s hand from off his neck, forcefully bending and breaking it like it was made of wet tissue paper, tearing it back into miscellaneous fragments and pieces again. With otherworldly power blessed upon him by his goddess of destruction, the transformed homeless man lands a powerful slash against the Environmentalist and brutally tears their torso wide open, finally revealing the Eco-Orb hiding inside, although Lutum manages hastily shielding it before he can reach and pluck it out. With a hard kick, they knock Ezekiel backwards, although unlike before, he remains on his feet, barely sliding off to the side. It wasn’t until then it finally became clear that whatever being was standing in the vagrant’s place was not the same hideous human as before, rather a muscular ancient gillman with his face covered with protective bone. A large dorsal fin extends from his back, while his extremities end in sharpened claws separated with webbings.
The transformed Ezekiel sprints, before leaping and lunging onto the hulking pile of scrap metal, ripping into his fluid form and tearing out chunks of his mass, before widening his massive jaws and clamping them down in his rudimentary head, completely ripping it off with one fluid motion. Losing the needed mass to protect their core, Lutum stretches itself where its neck once was, shoving L’Goon off itself, although he hangs on using his vice grip jaws. Digging his feet into the ground and preventing himself from being thrown, L’Goon was suddenly consumed with glowing red and blue helical patterns, before the enormous flash again surrounds himself. Before Lutum can try and counter, several metallic pipes stirred up from their scuffle telekinetically lift before forcefully embedding themselves into his exterior. The psychic effect slowly extends through his entire form, causing the Environmentalist to start uncontrollably lift into the air.
“POLE MANCER!”
Having fully transformed again and taken an unusual animalistic form, reminiscent of a jaguar several times its ordinary size, featuring the fangs of a snake and the feathers of a bird running down his backside, the transformed Ezekiel gains the power of literal polarity, mentally attracting and manipulating all poles and pole-shaped objects within his immediate vicinity, impaling Lutum again and again before using his telekinetic exertion to thrash him around like a ragdoll, steadily breaking off more and more pieces with every downward slam into the ground. Anytime which they try shifting its mass or ejecting the poles, Pole Mancer only skewers them with more and prevents them from properly adapting in response. Tossing him down and mauling him with his teeth, ripping through his back in an effort to grab its core, Lutum spawns a third arm from his backside, pushing him just out of reach of it. As Lutum finally restores enough mass, Pole Mancer again begins transforming again, not before he was shoved backwards by one of the Environmentalist’s elongated arms.
“RINGLEADER!”
Suddenly metamorphizing in another flash of light, the transformed Ezekiel this time becomes a large anthropomorphic bull with disproportionately shaped limbs, his outstretched arms nearly three times as long as his legs, covered with bulging veins and each ending with cloven hooves. Lifting his head up and revealing not only his small, curled horns, but the glowing helical symbol embedded into the center of his forehead between his eyes, Ezekiel boils over with anger and prepares himself, puffing smoke out of his nostrils, before slamming his front hooves into the ground as hard as possible and charging with killer intent. Even though Lutum manages to successfully shield itself with its restored mass in the nick of time, Ringleader’s brute strength easily surpassed L’Goon and Pole Mancer’s own combined power. Slowly shoving back while repeatedly digging at the ground and anchoring himself down, Ezekiel’s eyes bulge and teeth grind from the primordial rage coursing through his veins.
Ringleader’s vestigial horns notably shift and creak in place, beginning to bend upwards before slowly enlarging in size in response to the immense anger which his current transformation lives and breathes off of, with the harder he shoves, attempting to trample the Environmentalist down, the bigger his horns become, unfurling into sharpened masses of bone which Ringleader begins using to his advantage. He lowers his head downwards, aiming straight for the center of his core where the Eco-Orb was suspended inside, while Lutum strains in his inability to overpower the unstoppable beast. Gritting his teeth harder and eventually roaring with rage, Ezekiel again feels as if his lives were flashing before his eyes, feeling like his head and heart were about to burst any second now, although this time, he could swore within his restless rage, he could make out a few vague shapes in the mental flashes.
A lump of strange white blubber.
A decrepit church confessional booth.
An operating table covered with dark stains.
A heavenly gold pool full of an unfathomable liquid substance that sparkled like liquified gold.
Screaming his lungs out, Ringleader’s horns dramatically increase in length and pierce straight through the rusted armor of the Environmentalist, dislodging and partially puncturing through its sensitive core. Hesitantly trembling within place, before instantly discharging its magnetically held mass outwards into the skies, the damaged Eco-Orb falls onto the ground, its damaged electronics sparking, as it rattles and shakes, before without the slightest hesitation in doing so, Ringleader crushes it beneath his hoof, again and again until it was reduced to a heap of broken plastic and wires.
The transformed Ezekiel merely bellows in victory, venting his frustrations before his howling roar breaks down into a series of harsh coughs. His fur suddenly sheds off his flesh, his hooves crack and elongate back into proper digits, and his massive horns twist and crumple off his skull. Ridding himself of his form, the weakened Ezekiel lays within the pile of alien viscera surrounding him, his normally lethal injuries looking like they had been seared and burned shut with black webbing. Slipping in and out of consciousness, the near-dead Ezekiel stares up towards the bright skies hovering above him, the blindingly bright orange sun, the pungent dark gray clouds, in victory.
“I promise… I’d make you proud…”
The mutant homeless man lets his head weakly fall to the side, his vision becoming hazy and unable to make out the blurry pair of figures approaching and sprinting towards him from afar.
“...anything for you, my goddess.”
----
“Ever since we first formed this organization for one goal in mind, I would’ve never guessed that I would ever end up seeing another living and breathing Narcoleptic in the flesh, especially one that was supposedly living under our noses?”
Ezekiel stirs back to consciousness, forcing his eyes open and seeing that he can’t properly see through his left one, which was tightly wrapped with stained bandages that obscured his vision. A disembodied male voice speaks within his earshot, slightly muffled behind a nearby wall, which Ezekiel tries focusing on in conjunction with squinting and focusing his uninjured eye, although he could see only blinding whiteness before him. His gaze soon focuses and increases in clarity, realizing that he was staring up at a white tiled ceiling above.
“Obadiah… Obadiah! The specimen!”
“What’s happening, what’s going on?!”
“Higher fluctuations in brainwave activity! They’re starting to wake up!”
A female voice urgently calls out with the realization to Ezekiel beginning to awaken, wherever he actually was, causing several others of indeterminate sources to frantically chatter amongst each other. Ezekiel restrains moving his head or twisting his neck, although his lasting injuries and what feels like mechanical restraints keep him from moving anything beyond his singular eye lest he hurts himself further. Mechanical whirring and grinding becomes audible inside the walls as he was slowly elevated upwards, realizing that he was strapped onto a large platform.
“Should we engage so soon?! We don’t know if how they might react!”
“Head Researcher Engelhardt requested it herself! What she says goes! Open the windows!”
The platform in which Ezekiel was secured onto suddenly rotates to the right, eventually facing a massive metal wall segmented down the center, which separates and reveals an enormous tinted window separating him from whoever was on the other side, dark enough that he couldn’t make out any distant shapes from where he was. A speaker intercom in the top corner of the chamber buzzes on, before another masculine voice cautiously speaks to the individual inside.
“Excuse me, am I audible? Am I clearly understood from there?”
Ezekiel tries adjusting his gaze towards where the speaker was, although his neck restraints still prevent him from moving his head very much, leaving it just barely outside his peripheral vision.
“Are you in a communicative state as of now? Can you speak? Do you understand English?” The voice curiously asks, before roughly translating, “¿Entiendes el español? Verstehen Sie Deutsch? 일본어를 이해하나요? 韓国語がわかりますか?”
“What are you saying?” Ezekiel briefly fights his restraints. “Who are you?!”
“English, indeed. Let’s see, you are the ‘Ezekiel’ we have been instructed about, yes?”
“LET ME OUT OF THESE FUCKING SHACKLES!!!”
“Calm yourself, calm yourself, calm yourself! We mean no harm! You are restrained for safety’s reason regarding your psychological condition and the residual effects which they might have had on your current mental state! Your restraints are to keep everyone here safe, you and us!” The voice immediately exclaims in response to his explosive shouting. “Let’s take a few steps back, take a few deep breaths, calm ourselves. My name is ‘Cornelius Kilcommon,’ and that means you must be ‘Ezekiel Elsegood,’ yes? Am I correct that your name is?”
“I… I don’t remember where the fuck I was, or where the fuck I am now… but yeah, that’s me.”
“Do you know your favorite color?”
“Wha… ummm… orange, I guess… why do you care?”
“Do you know your favorite fruit or vegetable?”
“Well… just… whatever I can afford let alone get my hands on.”
“Do you remember how old you are? Do you remember your date of birth?”
“I’m… twenty… something… born on January… wait, what does any of that mean to you?!”
“Don’t strain yourself. Answer only if you can. Do you remember your mother’s maiden name?”
“N- No! Of course not, why would you assume that I would, let alone retain that information?!”
“Do you remember your mother’s first name?”
“I…”
“Do you remember your father’s first name?”
A confused Ezekiel mutters under his breath, left at a lost of words.
“Minimal progress made. Lights on, please.”
Immediately causing whatever dark tinted filter that was preventing Ezekiel was seeing whoever was monitoring him from outside the chamber to disappear, as if a separate layer of glass lifted from view, the observation room becomes clear, a laboratory full of strange medical equipment and multicolored screens. Four individuals dressed in matching stark white laboratory coats, accented with dark yellow symbols, stand side by one with one another before the window, consisting of a portly man with a receding hairline and trimmed facial hair, a slender man with a cybernetic implanted in his right temple where his hair was shaved, a tanned woman with goggles over her forehead, and a dark skinned man with a cybernetic prosthetic left arm.
Co-Head Researcher “Obadiah Passmore.”
Researcher “Cornelius Kilcommon.”
Researcher “Amethyst Shepherd.”
Researcher “Tobiah Moncrieffe.”
“I rest you assured, Mr. Elsegood, that despite how peculiar these circumstances may appear, you are guaranteed to be in safe hands.” Obadiah takes hold of the microphone from Corenlius’ hand and speaks into it, having quite the gentle tone despite his extremely serious appearance and more detailed coat that stands out amongst the others standing nearby. Ezekiel glares at them before his eyes only widen in response, letting the gears in his head spin long enough to finally put all the pieces together. The pure white walls. The cramped chambers. The metallic restraints. The men in coats, all free from mutations. “Now, if you have any questions to-”
“I’m in the Lead Block…” Ezekiel interrupts him with his horrified utterance, before his disfigured face further contorts in fear underneath his heavy bandages wrapped over one side, before his entire head begins spasming uncontrollably and aggressively thrashing against the slanted table he was restrained onto. His jaw bulges outwards and sprouts mandibled spikes, then retracts into an extremely skinny animalistic snout, then shoots upwards into crystalline horns made out of multicolored gemstones, then combines into an enormous smoke stack that billows from the light gray wisp atop his skull. “...I’M IN THE FUCKING LEAD BLOCK! AAAAAHHHH!!!”
“Oh dear, oh dear, ummmm…” Obadiah severs the intercom connection during his panic, shared with the rest of the researchers, who hadn’t at all expected them to immediately break down into hysterics with the discovery where he was. Tobiah scans the control console before the window, before hitting an emergency button that reveals several sprinklers in the chamber, immediately releasing a sparkling mist into the air. Ezekiel’s screams only continue until the mist finally floods the entire chamber itself, slowly subduing his screams and causing him to relax against his will.
“Already with the Chromaquaw emergency mist. We’re off to a great start, not like I warned you all otherwise.” Amethyst passive-aggressively comments, although Obadiah merely huffs and ignores her, before grabbing onto the microphone again and speaking to the pacified Ezekiel, “Yes, you are indeed located inside the facility you label as the Lead Block, but let it be known that you are not in any harm’s way. You are not a prisoner, you were intentionally brought here. Let me repeat that for you, you are not a prisoner, you were intentionally brought here.”
You are not a prisoner, you have been intentionally brought here. Let me repeat that for you, you are not in any harm’s way. You are not a prisoner, you have been intentionally brought here.”
“Don’t tell me shit, you fucking Early Birds! You’re here to cut me up and sell my organs on the black market so you can invent flying cars or whatever the hell! I know what you want from me, and you’re not getting anything besides my nails dug into YOUR EYE SOCKETS IF YOU EVER SPRAY ME WITH THAT SHIT AGAIN!” Ezekiel vehemently spits in anger, having resisted the effects of the pacifying mist, thus getting quite the taken aback response from the rest of the researchers. Obadiah covers his hand over the microphone and asks them, “What is an ‘Early Bird’ even supposed to mean? Is he saying something inappropriate?”
“It’s a slang term for an Insomniac without any external disfigurements. I suppose we fit the margin from looks alone.” The shocked Cornelius clarifies, before Obadiah hesitantly uncovers the microphone and resumes his conversation, “Well, I can also assure that we have no intentions of doing anything along those lines, or anything remotely similar, as a matter of fact. We together are known as the Humanitarian organization, responsible for the environmental cleanup and pollution within the past few years here in Yellowcake, which includes the remnants of that particular machine that engaged with you. Unfortunately, it was just one of many stolen prototypes that ended up in the wrong hands, and we apologize for any trouble that it caused.”
“You apologize for personally allowing that wretched machine that nearly strangled to death to come to existence?!” Ezekiel snarls in anger, prompting an exasperated Obadiah to whip sweat from his brow and continue, “Please try and be cooperative, Mr. Elsegood. If we know exactly how one could modify it to be capable of such, we would not have invented it. It was only for the sake of further improving the state of wellbeing in Yellowcake, nothing more, nothing else. We as the Humanitarians are dedicated solely towards restoring hospitable life and returning things back to how they once were in the past few decades.”
“Why would you ever want to make things as drab and as miserable as before the Blackout?” Ezekiel asks in disbelief, which a deeply flustered Obadiah struggles articulating an response to, biting his tongue as if trying to put all together in his head first, during which Tobiah apathetically remarks with crossed arms whilst staring down at the confused Ezekiel, “I’m getting sick of the mouth on him. I was expecting someone who was completely delirious, instead it’s like he’s not even bothered by the fact he’s a dead man walking.”
“I can hear you, and for the record, you should not concern yourself with other’s appearances, definitely not in this era!” Ezekiel mishears, again struggling to turn his head in their direction, although the annoyed Obadiah finally continues, this time his much more scolding than before, “Please be civilized, Mr. Elsegood! We are not enemies here, definitely not yours, definitely not anyone in particular. You have been unexpectedly brought to our attention after your incidental encounter, and we want a propose a preposition that may help the both of us out here.”
“I’m hardly listening, but do go on. It looks like I have nowhere more important to be after all.” Ezekiel evidently ignores him in his anger, although as Obdaiah pushes the frame of his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, the oncoming sounds of clacking heels distracts the researcher towards the sound of an approaching figure outside of Ezekiel’s limited field of vision, unable to make out their muffled conversation due to their clear efforts to whisper and keep the other from overhearing them from inside the chamber. “Huh?”
“If he’s wide awake and being a smartass regardless of the concussion he received, then I want to speak to myself!” Another female voice aggressively demands the researchers to part ways and resume whatever work they were tending to from inside the observation room, before snatching the microphone from Obadiah’s hands and aggressively gesturing them away. While each of them disappear back into their work and escape Ezekiel’s eyesight, a near elderly woman with wrinkled skin and gray curly hair peers in through the window with unblinking eyes, her lab coat more intricately designed with yellow-purple gradients. She clicks the microphone on and merely states, “Lord, you are ugly.”
“Says the bitter old hag?” Ezekiel sarcastically asks, although she continues whilst ignoring his sarcastic remark, “I will disregard any and all introductions under the assumption that you have already been brought up to speed on who we are, what we do, and where you are, and cut right to the important information. You are an advanced form of a so-called ‘Insomniac’ with a roughly approximate ninety-six percent mutation rate, meaning only a mere four percent of your biology retains non-mutated cells, as you might be able to tell yourself. Tell me, Mr. Elsegood, do you remember at all where you slept last night?”
“I didn’t sleep anywhere last night.”
“Really? Then perhaps, the night before that? Maybe, the night before that one?”
“No, no, they haven’t let me in the homeless tents anymore for a long time now. Told me I make everyone there uncomfortable, not like I care. I’ve been awake for who knows how long now.”
“That’s incredible, isn’t it? All that energy? It feels like it’s been forever, hasn’t it?”
“Indeed. To be honest, I’ve certainly felt better though.”
“Then, do you know what happens to the fragile mind when it DOESN’T SLEEP ENOUGH?” She suddenly exclaims, before immediately counting off the reasons using the figures of her other hand. “Diminished cognitive brain function, higher difficulty in long-term memory recollection, increased risk of inflammation, reduced immune system function, and prolonged deprivation can raise the likelihood of developing a chronic disease. Only in recent times has our species began unnaturally evolving against these risks, but in the end, we are still flesh and bone. Bits and pieces of those limitations are still put in place, and that makes you quite the peculiarity, because you break them entirely.” 
“I… the… the ceaseless cycle, you mean?”
“You don’t remember your birth, you don’t remember your parents, and certainly if I were to ask you right now, you wouldn’t remember how long you’ve looked like this. Full-body mutations like that don’t just happen overnight, do they?” She scans the contents of a clipboard held earlier by Amethyst, before returning her attention back to him. “We label it the ‘Sleep Cycle’ for prosperity's sake. Every few days, the average human with sufficient genetic changes must rest every few days, that being a minimum of at least forty-five hours. The longer you remain wake, the deeper it will be, think of it as you’re an animal hibernating in wintertime. It doesn’t matter if you think you can stay awake forever, your brain will shut down given enough time, so it’s our responsibility to maintain that essential necessity of life, then and now.”
“You, on the other hand, whatever switch that flips in your brain, it doesn’t work quite right now, does it? Your brain believes it has more stamina than it actually does, so then, what happens if it exerts more than it does? Does it correct itself, or does it maintain its confused state?” She goes on and on, occasionally gesturing and glancing back towards the nervous researchers trying to hover behind her, while Ezekiel only stares back in horror. “To make a tedious explanation short, you are harmfully overstimulated, and are exponentially suffering from brain damage. Your irregular brain shape, your irregular appearance, your peculiar secondary mutations you experience, nothing knows when to shut itself off, so it burns energy where there isn’t any left, so it ends up burning something rather important up in there.”
“Therefore, that’s where we come in.” The near elderly researcher smiles despite the severity in her words, before clarifying further, “We’ve heard all kinds of rumors of such an individual like yourself supposedly roaming out in there in the outskirts of Yellowcake, but we never had the interest to look further into it, not until you were unexpectedly handed to us on a silver platter. Only then did we realize all those childish rumors were true, that you are Ezekiel Elsegood.”
“I don’t understand you, ma’am.” Ezekiel finally speaks up, causing her to sternly correct him. “Pardon, but it’s not ‘ma’am,’ I am the head Humanitarian researcher Malakai Engelhardt, but I suppose that makes me your personal guardian angel, perhaps even your fairy godmother. Your preposition, the one these ones near him mentioned earlier, let’s make this quick. You stay here as a place of residence, let us closer examine your advanced condition and what exactly makes you retain your stability, why you aren’t the incoherent wreck we hypothesized someone like you above the critical ninety-five percent rate would be, and in return, we shelter you, help cure your affliction, and develop a means how you can willingly suppress the emotional aspects behind your secondary mutations, understood so far?”
“I’m… not dying, am I?” Ezekiel blankly responds, his facial features briefly warping in shape as he manages to gather himself again. “Is that what this is? I’m just a living scientific breakthrough waiting to happen? You only have the slightest bit interest in me because you want to accelerate your research, doesn’t that just make me a guinea pig?! How are you certain that you can cure what’s wrong with me, how one does one come back from starting to lose their memories?! No, no, I’m being fed lies! There’s nothing wrong with me! I’m perfect! I was made perfect!”
“Who?”
“Wh… what?”
“Who made you perfect?”
“The… the… teeth in the skies?”
“Tell me, then why would they make your brain like such?”
“They… made an error, that’s all… an error I can rectify through faith and dedication.” Ezekiel again thrashes against his restraints, although clearly wincing and trembling in his head as he struggles remembering anything about the events of this morning inside the abandoned church, let alone yesterday, or the day before that. Malakai looks down, almost with a look of pity, before stating, “Your definition of perception is warped beyond comprehension, because ‘teeth’ would not make you suffer like so. That’s where we exist, to help the forsaken and the abandoned.”
“I’m… not perfect?” Ezekiel resists weeping, blinking his eyes uncontrollably and lowering his gaze towards the ground in defeat with the realization that he got his answer, his prayers to his goddess worked, and although he maintained his faith towards her, finally reaching his answers completely challenged everything he knew, the knowledge that he was a flawed creature made in a flawed world. Malakai seems to frown slightly, before responding, “Perfection is subjective, and if you wanted my views… I see a future prodigy hiding somewhere deep down in there.”
“Me… a prodigy?” Ezekiel almost lifts his gaze back up. “I… I want to be a prodigy.”
“I won’t urge you to make your decision now, but… if you’ve considered it already… we’ll start small, shall we?” Malakai operates the control console, individually unshackling his mechanical restraints, letting him nearly slide onto the floor below, and unsealing the containment chamber. By the time that Ezekiel manages helping himself to his feet, wincing in response to the injuries covered up by heavy bandaging, emerging from the opened door behind him were his rescuers from the scrapyard themselves, none other than Hemisphere and Icosahedron, both of them wearing matching lab coats, thick-rimmed glasses, and messily tied hair buns.
“Hiya! ‘Zeke, right?” The Vreedle sisters immediately welcome him at the same time, as Malakai instructs them before departing from the observation room. “Get him properly dressed and place him in one of the holding rooms for now. He needs a more in-depth medical evaluation now that he has regained consciousness, then we can begin with sessions. From what it seems, he's got quite the long way to go, and he might be able to make it unlike the last one.”
----
Deep into the middle of the night, Rectangular Prism groggily reopens his eyes and slowly stirs back awake, hardly able to remember what he was doing before he somehow was knocked out and rendered unconscious by who knows how. Struggling to shift his arms and realizing that his wrists were tied together behind his back with rope, he observes his surroundings, realizing that he was most definitely in the middle of nowhere, seemingly just somewhere among the northern scrapyards which he lives within. A campfire made out of burning garbage barely illuminates his face, as the familiar form of Immanuel watches him from afar and eventually gets his attention.
“Surprise, surprise. Looky what we have here.” Immanuel holds up the broken fragments of the shattered Eco-Orb, before tossing them into the fire and letting them melt into nothing, before stepping from the darkness and revealing the large bandage wrapped around his shoulder from when he had been shot. Rectangular Prism scowls in response, before chuckling and trying to intimidate in response, “Daw, ya're gonna break mah heart, junior, but aah know for a fact that ya ain't got the balls to do nothin' about meh.”
“Yeah, I really don't have that in me, but I just so happened to know exactly someone who does though, someone who isn’t too happy about what went down with New York Strip and Flat Iron.” Immanuel proudly smirks before gesturing behind him, stepping aside and revealing the furious FItzroy standing behind him, carrying something massive in both his hands. “Sorry, Rexy, but I promised him he’d get even one day, and he doesn’t mind settling me for it being at night.”
“Now, just wait one second! Ya don't reckon aah've other henchmen?! if ya git rid of meh, they'll be after ya, Marrow boy, 'n the rest of your little idiot crew!” Rectangular Prism visibly panics at the sight of Fitzroy, although Immanuel shrugs and responds, “Why, because you won't be there to pay them? You got a whole shack full of gadgets I'm not sure they'd be happy to take as payment. You and Fitzroy play along now. I got work in the morning.”
“Hey! Don't ya do anythin' rash, cartilage boy! Hey, hey! Now hold own, wait just a second there! Aah'll pay ya double, triple, quadruple what aah give all ya combined! your missy still want that robot husband, doesn't she?!” Rectangular Prism frantically begs for the mercy at the sight of Fitzroy slowly advancing towards him with a thousand-yard stare, before flipping over a rusted welding mask over his eyes as to not damage his eyes from what was to come. Immanuel hops on his bike and revs the engine in preparation to drive out of there, remaining oblivious towards the distant sounds of frantic pleas of a starting flamethrower as he drives off into the distance.
“NOT THE FLAMETHROWER!! ANYTHIN’ BUT THE PLASMA FLAMETHROWER!!! NO, NO, NO!! NO, NOOOOOOO!!!”
==Noteworthy Events==
===Major Events===
*Rectangular Prism Vreedle, also known as the Right Angled One, and many of the Humanitarian researchers, including Malakai, Obadiah, Cornelius, Amethyst, Tobiah, and Rectangular Prism's younger sister clones, Rhombohedron and Icosahedron Vreedle, all make their first appearances.
**Rectangular Prism's presence heavily implies the existence of extraterrestrial life taking refugee in the depths of Yellowcake, while Hemisphere and Icosahedron's affiliation with the Humanitarians confirm they are indeed aware of such extraterrestrial life.
**Rectangular Prism is presumably killed, or at least horribly maimed, in vengeance for betraying Immanuel for his neutral stance towards Ezekiel and supposedly killing past members of the Skeleton Crew.
*L'Goon, Pole Mancer, and Ringleader all make their first proper debuts through Ezekiel temporarily mastering his powers through sheer near-death adrenaline.
**Time Relapse, Spirit Bomb, Claw & Order, Brightceratops, Arm'd Lobbery, Big Dig Energy, The Implication, Crystalcoatlus, and Smoke Stack all make their debuts, although only as partial manifestations.
*Etosdyochiliades, the so-called Embodiment of Desolation, is established as a mysterious godlike being whom which Ezekiel is dedicated to, proclaiming himself as her vessel on the mortal realm and believing that his unique genetic powers were a blessing from hers. After losing faith within himself after his fight with the Skeleton Crew, he asks her for answers on what to do with himself, reaching the conclusion only the minds behind the Lead Block can give him purpose again despite his deep-seated hatred for their apparent anti-Insomniac beliefs.
*Immanuel reveals under interrogation the origins of the items he previously showed Ezekiel at the Wilted Root, how the journal planner had seemingly been thrown into the Lead Mines, which house the Lead Block's failed projects and experiments, how the photograph was originally in the possession of the YPD, and how the scrap was in the possession of the Right Angled One himself. Ezekiel claims only the photo, with its contents still kept mysterious.
*The Humanitarians are established as the scientific organization within the Lead Block responsible for its scientific discoveries and inventions within the Lead Block facility in the center of Yellowcake, having formed for the goal of maintaining the degradation of humanity from its mutations. 
**The Environmentalists are established as one of the Lead Block's scrapped projects in order to manually minimize and remove the amount of trash and debris scattered through the edges of Yellowcake, represented through one of the few remaining prototype models, nicknamed "Lutum," stolen by the Right Angled One and sent after Ezekiel until he was successfully destroyed their core.
**Ezekiel is captured and placed inside the Lead Block, begrudgingly accepting the terms of the Humanitarians for them to accelerate their research of the Insomniacs if they would finally help Ezekiel fix his "Sleep Cycle," revealed as his severe condition meaning that he does not share the same nocturnal behavior of the average Insomniac, causing him to suffer from long-term memory loss and mental deterioration.
===Minor Events===
*Ida Springall makes her first appearance as one of Yellowcake's civilians.
*Immanuel hints that the contents of the journal planner are religious in nature, presumably tying into Etosdyochiliades herself, although Ezekiel refuses taking it back and reveals although he briefly stole it for reasons still unknown, he surprisingly had no intentions of destroying it.
*Ezekiel briefly mentions a mysterious event only known as "The Blackout," supposedly separating the era of New Mankind from Old Mankind, hinting that it may have been cataclysmic and increased the populace's dependency on technology despite settling with rudimentary substitutes, such as flip phones.
*Ezekiel experiences several strange visions while finishing off the Environmentalist, including a lump of blubber, a church confessional booth, a bloodied operating table, and a pool full of an unknown golden liquid, although seems to not remember them after losing consciousness shortly there after.
*Malakai alludes to having previously encountered an unknown Insomniac just as mutated as Ezekiel, although only specifies that treating their condition did not end well, and hopes that won't repeat in Ezekiel's case.
==Characters==
===Protagonists===
*Ezekiel "Elix" Elsegood
*Etosdyochiliades, Embodiment of Desolation (debut, vision)
*Ida Springall (debut)
===Humanitarians===
*Head Researcher Malakai "Malky" Engelhardt (debut)
*Co-Head Researcher Obadiah Passmore (debut)
*Researcher Cornelius Kilcommon (debut)
*Researcher Amethyst Shepherd (debut)
*Researcher Tobiah Moncrieffe (debut)
*Researcher Hemisphere Vreedle (debut)
*Researcher Icosahedron Vreedle (debut)
===Neutral===
*Immanuel "I.M. Marrow" Baines
*Fitzroy "Filet Mignon" Milburn-Gagnon
*Ellipsoid Vreedle (mentioned)
===Antagonists===
*Rectangular Prism Vreedle, "The Right Angled One" (debut)
*The Environmentalist Prototype Model - "Lutum" (debut, death)
*Thomasina "Tomahawk" Hawkings (mentioned)
*"New York Strip" (mentioned, presumed dead)
*"Flat Iron" (mentioned, presumed dead)
===Entry Mentions===
*Unknown Journal Writer
*Eden Pond Churchgoers (first mentioned)
*The Preacher In Ashen Black
*The Priests In Ashen Black
==Aliens Used==
=== Fully Used===
*L'Goon (proper debut)
*Pole Mancer (proper debut)
*Ringleader (proper debut)
===Partially Used===
*Time Relapse (3x, debut, second time unintentional)
*Spirit Bomb (4x, debut)
*Claw & Order (debut)
*Brightceratops (debut)
*Arm'd Lobbery (2x, debut)
*Shady Nasty
*Brawnworm
*Entropic Punch (2x)
*Matterialize
*Big Dig Energy (debut, unintentional)
*The Implication (debut, unintentional)
*Crystalcoatlus (debut, unintentional)
*Smoke Stack (debut, unintentional)
==Trivia==
*The episode was tentatively titled "At Least Just Not That Is" in reference to the previous episode title, together calling back the opening introduction of Ezekiel himself, assuring that he wasn't much to him despite being the main protagonist, just not yet, foreshadowing the next episode's plot.
*Rectangular Prism Vreedle was originally conceptualized as an intelligent Insomniac with an affinity for geometry and numerical order, although with the realization how much the former coincidentally tied into the namesakes of Vreedles, and to help introduce extraterrestrial elements as soon as possible, he was accordingly made into one.
*The Environmentalist prototype's nickname, "Lutum" is a reference to the early placeholder name of Yellowcake until the series name had been properly decided.