[Q] To Have Fury (An Arbiter's Tears)

[Fawful]

In a small insignificant cave lay a small insignificant stranger.

Lord Darkseid, in his morbid wisdom, sent his Fallen Arbiter to suppress the existing denizens of Inverxe. The work was grim, and led to several prison complexes all over Inverxe. Particularly unjustly were the more peace-loving creatures treated; they were sent to labor camps and forced to work until they died, often of frostbite.

Our stranger should not be in these camps.

When the stranger was discovered, he had apparently long since cut his way through an entire pack of Xenomorphs. He left their singed corpses in a mangled mess, blanketed by a layer of bloody snow. Embedded into this pile of bodies was a single signpost, upon which was inscribed the subject’s name in an alien script. The locals mentioned a mad hermit in a nearby cave who burnt entire villages for looking at him the wrong way. Some called him the Warlock King, others a freak.

He was still no match for the forces of Darkseid, and was captured. There was interest in transforming this individual, who was clearly a fearsome warrior, into one of Darkseid’s numbers. Yet when Ruby Quartz's monsters (those that were left) finally infiltrated the hermit’s cave, they found only an emaciated green dwarf with a permanent smile. Capturing him was surprisingly simple.

And thus was the stranger trapped in a prison with the other civilians. It had been years since any of them had been fed. Some unnatural magic kept them from starving to death, though not from feeling the pain of hunger. The other workers in the prison were in constant agony, forced through mind control to slave away with no promise of relief. None of them had any plans of escape.

But this curse of life would only serve him. Our stranger was no stranger to siphoning dark energy.

The day had finally come. The hermit would no longer separate himself from society once his grim task was complete. He would wreak havoc upon Darkseid, unlike any he had ever known.

The prison's lycanthropic guards found him one day, huddled in a corner of his cell, refusing to work. The others had tried to convince him to rise, but the stranger responded only with whispers of “fink-rats”. The punishment for such defiance was simple.

It should have been simple.

The other prisoners, if you could ask them, would not have known what happened. There was an explosion of darkness that burst out from the stranger’s cell. The Parademons scrambled to their feet, hissing and growling even with their charred flesh. Several tentacles emerged from the cell, borne of intense darkness, gripping the Parademons by their necks. Darkseid’s mightiest warriors were thrown about, their innards flying as their skin split from the much-too-many impacts.

The other prisoners bent the knee to their would-be savior, their eyes begging for salvation. They thanked him for his work, and claimed they owed their lives to him.

As the darkness swelled around the stranger again, he agreed. They owed their lives to him, and nobody was to be spared that day.

The stranger lifted a single mangled claw towards the heavens. He was free. He was finally free. His green fingers crackled with dark energy, gripping tightly onto something that wasn’t there. His grip was unbreakable, his conviction absolute. He would have his glory and his vengeance, everything he deserved. But, to the world, he had only three words to say.

“I…” Fawful chortled, “Have… Fury.”

 

[Fawful]

Fawful looked around the underground prison camp where he was once a prisoner. The corpses of the prisoners and werewolf guards alike were being piled into a corner by some crude mechanical constructs. They didn’t quite have the flourish and pomp that Fawful was accustomed to, but he had to make do.

“Eeeyah ha ha ha! I have chortles!” Fawful cackled, “These fink-rats were of the thinking that I could be defeated! Me! The great, awful nasty that is Fawful!”

Fawful laughed again, this time louder than before. As he did, the sounds of his laughter echoed along the icy walls of the cave.

“Now is the time for pausing celebrations!” Fawful said as he heard his own laughter echo back at him, “I must have the making of plans. Let us see what these chortle puppies have been hiding from me.”

As a dictator might march down a town square to his forcibly adoring fans, Fawful clomped down the tunnels of the prison camp. Ore glistened with sweat as ice melted as quickly as it froze under the various heat lamps placed in strategic locations. Light reflected in dim fractals off the crystalline ice, which was almost painful to the touch.

“I have…” Fawful sneered, “Disappointment. This is where the nasty Fawful was kept? This place is one without value.”

Fawful sniffed. There was a scent here that he couldn’t place. He found this odd, since the cold of this cavern would likely have dampened anything that could smell sweet. Also, Fawful didn’t strictly have nostrils. But it was undeniable. There was a sweet smell leaking from a nearby wall with cracks in it.

“Eeyah hah hah! I have perception!” Fawful cackled, “There is a smell here. It is the smell of tasty victories, like a pudding that is full of the sweet of vengeance. Headgear!”

Fawful’s headgear rocketed towards the Beanish scoundrel before stopping abruptly. It was brilliant, even for Fawful’s standards. At its core was a large, surprisingly flexible glass case. Attached to either side of the case were two rockets, which swiveled and shook according to the direction it needed to go. And on top of it, the pièce de resistance: a cartoon mouth capable of turning into all sorts of weaponry. The headgear gently lowered onto Fawful’s head, causing Fawful to chuckle in anticipation.

“Now we will have the understandings of the smell! Blast, headgear!”

The mouthpiece on top spun around, then contorted itself shut, as if it was chewing on something hard. Then, with little warning, a green ball of energy shot out, crashing into the wall of the cavern. The entire cave system shook as the wall crumbled into dust and frost.

“Eeyah hah hah hah!” Fawful cackled, “None can withstand the power of my headgear! But now, now is the time for having an exploration. Let’s see…”

Fawful coughed as he passed through the cloud of rubble that he had created. This he found odd, as he was usually not bothered by the dust scattered by blasted rubble. After all, Fawful practically lived in vaporized debris.

“It is *hack* none of the mattering!” Fawful coughed.

Fawful stumbled forward as he looked around this new cavern. It was completely different from the prison he was in. The first thing he noticed was how warm he was now. There was a stifling warmth here, laced with enough humidity to suffocate a person. Green mist filled the air, almost hungrily drifting towards Fawful.

The cough was becoming a source of concern now. No matter how much Fawful hacked up whatever was in his throat, the cough would simply not go away.

“What is the *cough* meaning *cough* of thi- *cough* this?”

With a final cough, Fawful collapsed onto the ground, unconscious.

 

[Fawful]

When Fawful awoke, he was tangled up in a mess of wires.

No, not wires. They were vines. Big, juicy vines. Fawful squeezed with his lips, and felt a fluid enter his mouth.

Disgusting, Fawful thought to himself, This is the taste of sourness!

Fawful tried to spit out the sour-bitter fluid, but with the vine wrapped around his mouth, there was nothing he could do. The more he tried to apply pressure, the more vine juice got sprayed into his mouth. It was everything he could do to not accidentally swallow the vegetation.

And where was he? He was in some sort of small round tower, the walls seemingly constructed of what looked like bricks of ice. Fawful could hardly tell - vines as thick as he was were roiling and pulsing throughout the entire tower, practically covering the whole tower.

“Mmfeer!”

Fawful’s headgear loyally rocketed into the chamber. Buzzsaws emerged in pairs from the helmet, spinning and spraying sparks everywhere. With an interesting amount of gentility, the buzzsaws grinded against the vines. Fawful noted there was an unsettling shriek from a great distance away as the vines recoiled. He dropped, tumbling in the air once before he landed on his feet.

“Eeyah hah hah! I have fury!” Fawful said, spitting out the vile essence from his mouth, “My brilliance is knowing no bounds!”

The headgear landed gently on his head, buzzsaws retreating. Fawful took a moment to chortle one more time before looking around. He was still in the prison, but in a part he’d never been in before. The tower was pulsing with more vegetation than Fawful had ever seen.

“This is foulness!” Fawful spat, shaking his cloak once, and once again. “What is the happenings here?”

Fawful looked around. He picked up a piece of vine that had been cut off. Juice and bile was spilling out of the vegetation as he picked it up, causing Fawful to cringe. The slice of vine was already starting to shrivel and decolor as bile fell out.

“Headgear, identify!”

The headgear opened its mouth, flashing an uncanny grin. A metal arm reached out, forming a telescope and scanning the piece of vine Fawful was holding.

The headpiece spoke, “It is vegetation of unidentifiable nature! Identifying reveals traces of Unmaking energy!”

Fawful grimaced as he was reminded of his treatment at the hands of the Unmaking guards that had imprisoned him. The torture, the unending hours of manual labor, which Fawful’s tiny and broken body could barely carry out.

No time for that.

“Burn it all, headgear!”

“Understood, Fawful.”

The mouth opened, its teeth recoiling slightly as the headpiece’s glass case began to glow. As if spitting out giant loogies, the headpiece’s mouth began to launch out arrays of plasma. They spread in various patterns, from diagonal lines to clusters of geometric shapes. The balls of plasma scattered across the tower, detonating into shivering lumps of superheated fluid. In an instant, the plasma exploded into pools of green flame, which crawled up the recoiling vines. There was another shriek, and all the vegetation began to crawl up the tower like shivering snakes.

The headgear refused to let the vegetation escape. As Fawful cackled, the headgear blasted another array of plasma bolts which blasted all over the ceiling. The headgear’s rockets instinctively pulled Fawful aside as frozen rubble collapsed where he was standing minutes ago. The shrieking seemed to grow closer.

The vines pulsed as violet clouds of spores hissed out from beneath them. But this time, Fawful was prepared.

“Headpiece! Breathing apparatus!”

“Understood, Fawful.”

A metal rod reached out, latching onto Fawful’s giant grin with a wide glass container. Fawful inhaled deeply as the purple fumes crawled around him, to no avail.

“Eeyah hah hah!” Fawful chortled, “You are not the gettings of Fawful twice with one trick!”

Fawful’s headpiece spat out another dozen plasma balls, launching it in every which direction. The shrieking was growing ever closer…

But good news was to be had. Fawful could now spy, from beneath the vines which were recoiling upwards, the exit from this tower. Fawful had the headpiece lower him on the ground, and victoriously marched through.

Ah. He could now tell that the hole he had dug into was leading into this tower. In fact, this underground tower was hidden behind a thin wall, which Fawful had blasted away earlier.

“Fawful is of the wonderings,” he said to himself under his gas mask, “Now why would they be hidings of all this deplorable vegetation, which is like too much salt in soy sauce?”

Fawful thought on this as the tower collapsed behind him in a flurry of green flame and screaming vines.

 

[Fawful]

Fawful had spent the next few days analyzing the vegetation that had so infested these caverns. There was… little to report, so far. But perhaps this upcoming test would lead to more significant results.

The headgear protruded a large pistol with dishes around the barrel. It fired a death ray at its target - a single red balloon. The balloon popped, scattering bits of red rubber around. The force of the popped balloon knocked a pair of scissors off its pedestal, cutting a string. This string was attached to a pair of tweezers, which latched onto one leaf on a vine. The pistol from before blasted the leaf, vaporizing it… slowly. Much more slowly than it should have.

“Fascination!” Fawful chortled, “These leaves… they are almost undead! They grow without being prompted, regardless of whether or not they should be able to grow. That means…”

Fawful rubbed his hands together. “I see! The Unmaking… it is not just a name that is fancy for an invading army! It is… as it sounds! The Unmaking… it is an undoing of reality itself!”

As he spoke, he became aware of a trio of figures sneaking up from behind him.

Fawful smiled wide, his toothy grin a row of huge white teeth. “Headgear?”

The headgear, already on his head, chirped happily as it opened its jaw. The mouth on the device was quite large, almost as large as Fawful’s head, and it grew sharp, jagged teeth. Fawful turned, grinning wide, to meet his attackers head-on.

And there they were. Three zombies, mostly composed of decaying plant matter, slowly approached him from the flank. They had emerged from the vines like cocoons, presumably as a defensive measure after Fawful burned down a large portion of the plants. They moaned and groped after Fawful, their teeth made of roots and spare stones.

“Fink-rats,” Fawful cackled to himself.

There was a sudden array of green balls of plasma. They shot out from Fawful’s headgear, scattering across the zombies. They all staggered back in surprise at the sudden attack, two of them reeling as the assault left sizable gaps in their plant-flesh. Fawful cackled as another blast from his headgear blasted the foremost zombie in the head, causing it to burst into a pile of that juice that Fawful found in the vines. The zombie collapsed, but still groped towards Fawful while prone.

Fawful, lightly troubled by how much of a nuisance they were, rocketed into the air. He blasted at them again, this time completely converting the foremost zombie into juice. The other zombies groped at Fawful, unable to reach him. The headgear’s vacuum-like tube extended down and, with a devastating crunch, bit one of the zombies in half. While it had the undead in its jaws, Fawful released another plasma blast, disintegrating the zombie.

“You, however, I shall leave for study!” Fawful said.

The green bean cackled again as the headgear’s mouth started sucking in air. Despite it seeming not physically possible, the sucking of air became quite violent, and the third zombie shuddered in its wake. Eventually, the zombie crumpled into a little ball, and flew right into the headgear’s jaw.

The green bean man rubbed his chin. “This is truly disturbing, like the farts that follow too many bean burritos. I must… Yes… I must be stopping this. But first… I might be finding allies.”

And thus flew out of the Mad Tinkerer, the Warlock King, from the ruins of a garden.