"Uuuughh..." He moaned, "My body hurts all over."

The difficult battle he had just experienced made him weary. Hats was still well within the zone of petrification, and the longer he dawdled, the further out he'd have to travel in order to escape it. Even now, the only thought occupying his mind was that he shouldn't disappoint Migu.

"I gotta keep moving." He resolved, "Urk. But my legs are too heavy..."

By this point, each step would feel like walking in hardened cement. In that sense, he couldn't really lift his legs at all, much less move around deftly with them being so disabled. The next best step was to find a way around it. Another mode of transport.

"If only I had wings..." He muttered to himself, "Maybe if I slide around?"

Possibly, he reasoned, if he never had to lift his feet off the ground in the first place, he could move whilst preserving most of his energy. Despite his initial tester along the wooden plank floor of the house he was in proving successful, he quickly had to rethink his plan once he moved outside.

"Gah!" The friction of the clouds put him to an immediate halt, "Not gonna work, huh... The clouds are too grippy, the boots just fall through."

Soon enough, another set of trumpets would go off, and if Hats didn't have a plan by then, he feared he wouldn't ever be able to leave the area. Just then, an idea blinked in his mind.

"Wheels turn!" He churned back into the house to find something suitable to use, "Plates? Coffee table top? Ugh, none of this will work the way I want it to!"

That being the case, his luck had turned around when out of the corner of his Eye he spotted it—a duffel bag. As foreign and odd of a container he had found it, Hats wasn't one to ignore an opportunity. Checking inside, he found a few oddities. Goofy looking shoes, some container that had a weird grease in it, fingerless gloves, a napkin and..."

"Whoa!" He could barely lift it in his hands, "A heavy ball!"

Unbeknownst to him, he had stumbled into the home of a bowling hobbyist. The ball with three holes on it was to be used to knock down pins originally, but in Hats' hands, it held a more profound meaning.

"I can stand on it and it'll roll me to my destination!" He proudly dropped it on the ground with a loud thunk.

Alas, Hats wasn't a circus clown, so his balance wasn't at all up to par. As quickly as he had climbed atop it, so too did he immediately slip and fall on his back. For a moment he contemplated crying, but recalled the trust placed on him to save everyone.

"Heroes don't cry!" He wiped the tears away, "I gotta try another way."

Indeed, giving up wasn't an option. Not after he got this far. After finding one bowling ball, finding a few more wasn't that difficult. Having found the four necessary balls, he looked around for an adequate "body".

"The coffee table from before could work..." He thought, "No, I need something I can easily attach the balls to."

The coffee table was scrapped a second time. If it had emotions, it would surely cry; but Hats didn't pay that too much mind. Instead, he looked for an alternative. One which had proper weight distribution and symmetry to avoid having him fall off a second time. The ride was to be smooth, which led to him finding the answer in... a door, of all things.

"Hyup!" He ripped the door off of its hinges, "This'll work!"

"Now, how do I attach the balls...?" He stole a glance at the coffee table a third time, "Ah!"

Ripping the poor table's legs off one by one, he had made good use of them by shoving each end into the bowling balls' hole. Thus, he placed the door on top of the mechanism, creating a sort of land raft. Painstakingly moving to the outside, he had given it a push, and...

"Success!" He heard the trumpets shriek in the distance, "Oh, gotta hide. But after this, I can finally leave!"

It took less than three minutes before the trumpets had stopped once more. Immediately, Hats left his hiding spot inside the house and trudged to his newly created vehicle. Though not really efficient in pushing him along the ground, it did serve its purpose of moving him along slowly but surely. With this, he can zoom on out of the petrification zone in no time.

"Time to hide again." He took a detour to another empty house, "The trumpets are gonna sound again."

By this point, he had long since figured out the rhythm of the trumpets going off. He knew when to move and when to stop. Hats had effectively learned all the ins and outs of this Red light Green light game with the divine corpses. And after many painstaking minutes of rolling, stopping, hiding and wading through the thick clouds... He had done it.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Okay." He stared back at the direction he just came from, "The next trumpet sounds should be coming in three, two, one...!"

Nothing. No sound could be heard anymore coming from that side of Heaven 2.0. Not only that, but even Hats didn't feel any sort of petrification creeping up on him. He had succeeded in outpacing the petrification zone, and now it was time to move on to the next step of his plan.

"This place is...?" He turned to his left, spotting a large open yard with the remains of what appeared to be a mansion in its center, "The Gods' Abode!?"

Recalling its significance from the other party members, he quickly turned the DIY vehicle to enter through the yard's metal gates. Pushing them aside, he wheeled himself over to the marble remains. If there was any place in the world he could go to in order to find a way to fix all of this, then it had to be here.

"I'm sure, this is it." He stood up, if just barely, "There's gotta be something worth using in this place!"

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***

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Slower than a sloth, limper than a corpse, he dragged himself over to the ruins of the Gods' Abode if just barely. He didn't have much time to search the area, yet he felt that only made what little he had that much more important.

Walking through the rough terrain meant he had to briefly say goodbye to his little contraption, despite only just creating it. A bitter end to what was supposed to be a long lasting relationship, but life goes on.

"I remember this place from back when Migu was there." He recalled bitterly, "Those Two beat me up really bad back then too..."

The defeat he had to endure against the Gods was a bitter pill to take. Hats' temper was still out of whack due to this, but the idea that they're now no longer among the living did give him a small snicker. Then he remembered that Their deaths caused the petrification of his friends, which once more made him sad. Truly, life is an anthology of ups and downs.

"This is where we got buried, and Nerys had to save us." He commented, "Right, which means just next to it should be..."

Energy's remains. The splattered Graymatter contrasted deeply with the pure White marble tiles. It was a disgusting display of power from the Gods, despite their mortal, powerless states. To gang up on a brain with no way to fight back, their despicability knew no bounds. Hats could only stand there in silence.

"I should've been faster."

Once all was said and done, the only emotions that remain are those of regret... and blame; and with no one around for the young Hats to blame, the blame could only fall on him. Bitter feelings emerged of wishing he came by earlier, of him not being so weak as to lose to the two scrawny Gods; the urge to scream at his own hopelessness was at an all time high. But he stowed these feelings away for the time being.

"I'm gonna properly make up for it later." He gently bowed to the brain bits, "Sorry Energy, but right now Migu and the others need me to get my act together. You'd understand."

Just then, a golden glimmer caught his Eye. It was a familiar glint, one he immediately recognized and ran toward, despite nearly falling from the heavy weights covering his ankles. With all the strength he had in his one arm, he pulled the tool out of the rubble. With one end pointed and the other blunt, the golden pickaxe's curve shone just as brightly as when it was last buried.

"This'll work!" He shouted in joy, "Haha! I did it! I found something I can actually use! I can use it, I can!" He then stopped, "Wait, can I?"

Hats did indeed find the golden pickaxe prodding out of the rubble, and he did manage to successfully pull it out, but what exactly could he use it on? There was no reason to dig down, there was no one to use it on as a weapon, and to his knowledge, there was no other special use for it.

"I mean, I guess it'll make walking around easier." He then demonstrated by using it as a walking stick, "And it'll make digging through the rubble way easier, too..."

With an annoyed pout, he kept prodding around for any stray treasures and tools he might be able to use in order to save everyone. But with such a tall task placed on him, and with so little to work with, it became more and more impossible to imagine a scenario where all this worked out perfectly. But maybe things didn't have to go perfectly. No, maybe they just had to be enough.

"This is...?" He noticed a large sheet of paper on the ground, "A blanket! Oh, on second thought, the texture's different."

He looked around the area a bit more, but came up empty handed. This piece of paper, which was as large as he was, simply existed in front of him without seemingly any rhyme or reason. Just then, a thought occurred to him.

"Wasn't there a Book around this size somewhere nearby?" He recalled, "Yeah, it was on the ground while I was fighting the Gods."

The fabled Book Elegy had almost read, the one that was said to be the key to reviving. And Hats had in front of him a single ripped out page of it. As he kept inspecting it, trying to piece together what he could use it for, the page began to speak to him.

"Ah!" He gasped, "...I can't read."

Well, it tried to, at least. Without a mouth to talk to literally, it did attempt to establish communication by way of writing. The letters appeared one by one until a message was shown.

"Sorry, Elegy said I'm illit-" He had some difficulty pronouncing the word, "Illiterr-... Illitraight. N-No, illiterate! That's it, I'm that!"

With how proudly he proclaimed the statement, an outsider might be led to believe he likes being called that, but the Book could only begrudgingly erase its complex message in favor of a drawing.

"Eh? That's... me?" He looked the one armed figure, "And the word next to it... That must be how you spell my name. H-A-T-S..."

Without any other way to get the young angel to understand it, the Book had to start from the essentials. This was the best it could do for now—drawing a person Hats was personally acquainted with, and then writing their name next to the caricature. It was slow, inefficient, and highly limited with the letters he could learn. But still, it was enough.

"Hats, Migu, Elegy." He properly answered the little quiz it gave him, "That one's Energy, and Prylos and Selzion. Eh? That's not a name? Let's see... H-E-L-L-O."