PREDAWN
Iggy is in the Ong State. His hands are shaking from his attempts to cool the lava pit. It comes to a sudden halt; Iggy is exhausted.
"I can't lavabend it all, there's way too much lava." He complains.
"So, we can't bury it since we don't have much gravel, we can't use water cause it'll explode, and we can't lavabend it because there's too much lave!" Pickle says. "We're back in a corner here!"
"We can... funnel the lava away?" Iggy suggests.
"Don't be silly, the distance of Mount Sinai's entrance to First Gate is over a kilometer across!"
"God... We woke up earlier than expected for nothing." Iggy disappointingly grunts.
"If we can't remove the lava pit, how about we focus on the giant eel underneath that thing first?" Pickle tells Iggy.
"But how? It only comes out when food is served... Maybe a giant mechanical fishing pole?"
"What? We can't build that!" Pickle complains.
"We can't... But Gaia can."
Pickle thinks what Iggy's thinking.
"Iggy, that's ACTUALLY pretty genius!" He exclaims. "She's a self-insert in a comic book, right? Maybe she's here..."
Pickle carefully searches the catalog. "Oh, there she is! But she's no item nor a body... She's a soul."
Iggy asks him in curiosity. "So we're gonna have to swap souls?"
"...Most certainly."
Pickle looks at the frozen bodies in line near the lava pit. "Or we can use one of the bodies over there..."
Iggy suspiciously looks left and right, but no one's there.
"T~they're not gonna die in the process, right?" Iggy whispers.
"Would the director give us this weapon if it was unsafe!?" Pickle angrily counters.
"Alright, alright!"
Iggy and Pickle browse the hundred sleeping Industrials.
"I don't recognize any of these faces..."
"Only if the mantis bitch didn't die, we would've used her body out!" Pickle blurts out.
Iggy and Pickle make their way to a person in eyeglasses: A creative named Scott.
"Scott? As in Gaia's boss? What is he doing here?" Pickle asks as he examines his body.
"Oh, that's... Scott? I... kinda imagined him differently..." Iggy realizes.
Silence. Iggy and Pickle stare at each other and smile, reading each other's minds again.
A FEW MINUTES LATER
Iggy had stationed a sleeping Scott on the chair, his right foot at rest on the other; his head resting on his right hand.
"What do you think, Pickle? Intimidating enough for Gaia's first pose?"
"Hmm... yeah. He looks exactly what I think Gaia should look like!"
"Okay then! Smoke it out, Pickle!" Iggy commands him with excitement.
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And so, blue smoke levitates out of Pickle and into the air. The smoke seems to have taken the shape of a woman. Iggy places himself behind Scott's chair and pushes the chair directly into the smoke.
...And comes in contact with Scott's skin.
The smoke violently enters Scott's body, his skin turning blue as he glows brighter and brighter as his body transforms into that of a woman.
Golden hair, blue eyes, and a red coat.
The body was no longer like Scott's, It was Gaia's.
Alas, the transformation has ended. A final beam of smoke comes out of the transformed body. Gaia retains Scott's pose.
She wakes up and looks at the distance, speaking her first words.
"I'm going to fucking kill you."
Iggy, hugging Pickle, watches her with stars in his eyes. "There she is..."
A groggy Louie, gargling his mouth clean, scratches his eyes and comes to the lava pit.
"Good morning Iggy~ UHYEGFLK" He spits, the back of his head spiraling in confusion as to what he had just witnessed. "G~ GAIA!?"
Gaia looks behind her and spots Louie. Her emotionless face intact, she focuses her eyes on him.
"Sorry, but do I know you?"
Iggy and Pickle awkwardly look at the two of them at Louie and Gaia stare at each other in confusion.
"Iggy, haven't I told you not to play with zombies?" Louie says in a reprimanding tone.
"She's not a zombie, we summoned her because she's a self-insert!" Pickle explains.
"Oh... So, the comic book Gaia?" A weirded-out Louie inquires.
Iggy replies. "Yeah! And the last time I read that book, there was no... mention of you."
"What story? Can someone fill me in?" Gaia asks, curious as to why she ended up here, and what is happening.
...
"I know this is a weird thing to ask you about and that you have many questions... But... can you build us a giant lava-resistant fishing rod?" Iggy asks Gaia.
"...I'm not a fisheries graduate."
"No, I mean a robotically controlled one. We're pulling out a giant eel in the lava pit."
He points to the humongous lava pit, with such gestures directing Gaia to walk closer to see the pit in its full glory.
"Where's the eel?"
"It only comes out when food is there." Iggy explains. "It spends the rest of its time bumping its head and worsening the hole."
"You trying to save this place from hellfire?" She questions Iggy and Pickle to which they nod in agreement.
"..Just great." Gaia replies, looking everywhere.
Gaia executes her first command, snapping her fingers. "Rocks."
No one seems to be taking her command.
"I said rocks." Gaia reiterates.
Louie obliges and picks up a big pebble from the sidewalk. After offering it to Gaia, she throws it into the open sea of molten rock...
It splashes easily.
"The lava's not that viscous." She says. "This is at most 2200. A rope made of carbon fibers can pull that eel out." She added.
"Pulling a giant eel means you need a ton of weight support. A few winches will do, but pulling it out will require more than a hundred men. That is where my robotics experience comes in. Do you understand?"
She looks back at Iggy and Pickle; and the sudden crowd of angels gathering behind them, all in shock.
"I'll kill you all if you keep looking at me like that."
Cider fixes her glasses; are her eyes deceiving her? "Gaia???"
"...The hell are you?" Gaia replies neutrally.
"..."
"Anyway... For the next 24 hours, you all shall be my slaves. You want this place saved? Jot this down."
> Carbon fiber threads.
>
> A dozen winches.
>
> Color-coded wires.
>
> Two digital typewriters.
>
> Three Arduino Kits.
>
> A soldering machine.
>
> A welding machine.
>
> Two heavy-duty steel beams.
>
> Two high-torque heavy-duty servo motors.
>
>
> And a big-ass generator.
"Now move."
Every angel but Cider, still confused, immediately rushes out to the exit, desperate to scour for the said materials.
"Well, that certainly made them move fast..." Pickle says.
"Their reaction weirds me out. It's like they've met me before... I'd like to thrash their guts out of their bodies."
"Nnnh, Right." Louie replies.
"Kid." Gaia says, which makes Iggy grunt. "Something happened here, right? Involving me?"
"It's... complicated, but I guess you could say that." Iggy replies.
"...Alternate universe me created a stir? Hmph. Tell her I'm worse; I'm on my way to send my animatronics to a restaurant."
"Before she died, she said something along the lines of 'In an alternate universe, I would've killed you all.'" Pickle responds.
"So no blood? Neat. She must have a good therapist. My therapist failed me."
"Hey, I thought she was a self-insert, but why is her backstory inaccurate!?" Louie angrily protests, whispering to Iggy.
"...It does feel fun saving lives sometimes." Gaia added.
"You should try doing that more often." Iggy suggests to her.
Gaia smiles in content and looks at the sunrise.
"Too late."
Cider puts her hand beside her ear to contact the other angels. "Angels responsible for Timeline-2 maintenance, this is an announcement. Some angels are going down to scour for materials, drop everything that you're doing, and assist them all in bringing the materials here."
Iggy, Pickle, Louie, and Gaia are sitting down, watching the sun rise above the horizon.
Louie is still awkward about the situation. "So... uh... Are we staring at the sunrise now?"
"For a while." Gaia replies. "The solution's pretty simple, really."
She looks at everyone.
"We'll just have to wait for the ingredients to arrive."