Pickle awakes from his slumber inside Iggy's stomach. Still clueless about what is happening outside, he begins asking questions...
"Uhh, Iggy? Hello? Are we out of Timeline-2 yet?" Pickle asks amidst the silence.
"Nope. Long story short, Louie beat me yesterday and somehow, I'm awake." Iggy replies, cooking beef stew in the campfire.
"...What?" A confused Pickle blurted out.
"Anyway, Louie, Zachary told us that you're a dream guy. Does that have something to do with why we're all awake right now?"
Party Poppers pop around Iggy.
"You got that right!" Louie replies. "Dream creatures don't fall asleep during the reset! But actually, it's not just us that can do that..."
Iggy scoops up the meat from the campfire's pot and sips directly from the ladle.
"There are other beings that can do that too?"
"Have you heard of this place's angels and ancient beings?"
"Yeah... Pickle told me about the angels on the way here. But what are ancient beings? That's new..."
"Immortal guardians."
"...Of what?" Pickle autocompletes.
Knight Louie."Anything they swore to protect."
He clasps his hands.
"Now to the main point!" Louie poses. "The reason you're awake right now is because of my DREAM GUY ONERIC POWERS!!!"
Casual Louie. "It's enough to keep you awake for about 12 hours."
"...And how many hours did we already use?" Iggy asks.
"Two."
9 HOURS AND 58 MINUTES REMAIN.
"That's enough time to escape Timeline-2, then!" Pickle utters.
Holding a stop sign, Louie blows a whistle out of nowhere.
"Oops! I'm afraid I can't let you do that!"
"WHAT!?" Iggy and Pickle both complain at the same time.
"I chose to wake you up with my powers because we have the same interests: Heaven." He says. "Hey, stomach!" Louie calls.
"UH~ who? Me?" Pickle asks.
"You say you can't detect Massacre right now, right?" He says as he leans his head over Iggy's full belly.
"Uh, yeah. I can sense his presence every time until... Iggy asked me to track where he is."
"...Then he could've arrived at heaven yesterday."
"..."
Louie stands up and pulls out a whiteboard, his golden-laced quill, and an illustration of heaven.
"You see, heaven blocks out all earthly signals, including those outside Timeline-2. This prevents EVERYONE from EVERYWHERE from intercepting whatever is going on there." He explains. "And since angels are rampant in heaven..."
"...Then he's being kept awake by the angels?" Iggy theorizes.
"That, or they could be held at gunpoint."
MEANWHILE, IN HEAVEN...
Chaos inside the Garden of Eden; a massacre of angels. There is a swarm of abstract eels drawing all around the gardens...
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
And they are all led by Massacre himself.
"Why isn't he asleep yet!?" One of the angels screamed out.
"The natural energy we supernaturals omit..."
Massacre walks closer to the Tree of Knowledge and plucks an apple off it.
"...It's keeping him awake!"
Massacre begins to talk.
"Life, Death, Inanimacy. The three things keeping the world of Timeline-2 afloat..."
He takes a bite out of the apple.
"I wonder what will happen if one of those things were to fall apart..."
"...Then Timeline-2 will end." An angelic voice from behind him says...
Her name is Cider.
There's a faint aura around her, scratches everywhere like she just barely escaped a fight.
"I thought our negotiations had broken down, Consul-General of Life, Astasektu Cider. Massacre says in contempt. "I warned you not to tick me off."
"I can't possibly agree to your terms. People here choose what they would like to be. If they want to be boring or uncreative, then so be it; that's what they want!"
"Is that so?"
With a snap of his finger, he collapses the rest Garden of Eden, and into the fiery pit of lava...
He had drawn a large glyph around the garden.
Cider shivers at such a huge loss. "The birthplace of sin..."
The fallen garden gate melts at the lava's intense heat.
"...And it will keep getting bigger from here, Cider." Massacre says.
The ground begins to shake...
A ginormous black eel jumps out of the lava pit's surface, splashing molten rock everywhere.
Massacre seems to pay no mind.
"Kill everyone from the Industry and purge this world of uncreativity during the pause. I don't care if it takes three days or 47 years."
"Else, you'll see the paradise you call heaven burn to the ground."
"So much for that... I still have things to attend to in Nyar Har Island." Massacre walks afar and into the foggy clouds...
Cider has no words. Her shaking hands reach for her ears. Tears are falling from her eyes.
"Tell the angels... Eliminate everyone from The Industry, and eliminate all traces of uncreativity in this world."
She herself can't believe such words are coming out of her mouth.
"...B~ Bring them here... and burn them all."
Power City...
Trinity Town...
Yoshim's Cafe...
Pie's room...
The subjectiveness of creativity and the colossal amount of creatives in the place...
It's only a matter of time before a person is wrongly judged for uncreativity.
BACK AT THE CAMPSITE....
Pickle's senses pick up something...
"Massacre's going to Nyar Har Island in seven days."
"Wait, you can sense him again?" Iggy asks.
"If the Dream Guy is right, then he must've left heaven by now." Pickle adds to the conversation.
Louie flicks his nonexistent goatee.
"...Perhaps it's business closed with the angels." Louie thinks.
"What could they have agreed upon?" Pickle wonders.
"I don't know..." Louie says, who now has a goatee out of nowhere.
"But we'll learn based on their actions later! For now, we do what I do best!"
S T A L K I N G T I M E !
A radical sound from out of nowhere.
Silence.
"Stalking the angels like you stalk Pie?" Iggy asks.
"Insensitive question!" Louie points out with an emcee's intonation.
"Right, sorry..." Iggy replies.
"...And there come two right now!" Louie enthusiastically points out to...
Two angels, Lorde and Royal, are walking to the Farmer's Market. They seem to have failed to notice Louie and Iggy; their bodies concealed by the sack they're holding.
"Uncreative people, right? That sounds too broad of a term..." Lorde complains, holding a sack.
"And we even have to carry them all to heaven to stop some stupid fire pit from growing..." Royal adds.
Iggy and Louie sneakily follow behind them...
Or should I say, casually walking behind them.
> "So, what did you have for dinner last night?"
>
> "Vegetables with faces. You?"
>
> "Porkchop and Lobster stew."
>
> "Dummy! You can't eat those, you're an angel!"
Iggy and Louie look at each other and shrugs.
"That's a violation of the Leviticus Code!" Royal exclaims.
A WHILE LATER...
Lorde and Royal unknowingly welcome themselves into a printing studio. Many dozing artists are inside, drawing what seems to be art related to graphics design. They fell asleep flat on their digital typewriters.
"So they're tasked to bring along uncreative people..." Louie whispers from outside.
"It couldn't be that bad, right?" Pickle says.
Royal looks at everyone's work...
"Ew, digital art. That's uncreative, right?"
"Yeah, they're too dependent on undo. Let's take them away."
Pissed Pickle.
"Oh, hell no. No Motherfucking way did they just say that..."
"I'M PISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDD!!!"
Water. Earth. Fire. Air.
Blue smoke excretes all around Iggy's body.
Iggy's eyes begin glowing white and decimates the nearby wall.
An openly shocked yet expressively broken face from Louie...
Iggy had just entered the Ong State.
He makes his way inside the studio. A nonchalant Royal greets him.
"Who the hell are you?"
EARTHBENDS THE WALL.
The two angels get kicked back to the door, with Iggy catching the two angels perfectly.
WATERBENDS THE TROUGH.
He violently throws the angels along the road and encases them in a permafrost cage.
AIRBENDS THE BREEZE.
Iggy blows extremely cold air into the angels, giving them frostbite. They begin screaming in pain.
The wind carefully freezes them inside out...
....And they stopped screaming.
Louie takes his prized quill out and adds a checkmark to Pie's kill list, which happens to be on his clipboard.
"People who think digital art is not real art..."
"Check!"
- 9 HOURS REMAIN -