Chapter Text
She pushed through rusty layers of metal, scraping away scrap metal with her hands, covered in a century-old layer of dust and something mysteriously damp, suspiciously sticky, and vulgarly slimy. Disgust was etched on her face, caused not at all by her terrible hairstyle, but precisely by the fact that her hands, despite the gloves, were thoroughly coated with everything she had to touch.
But it was not in vain. Praise the Scrap! Goal reached a cliff on the shore of the Rusty Sea and froze, seeking balance on an unstable construction beam protruding from beneath dunes of junk. Waving her arms and legs to find equilibrium, she stared and watched with fascination the city rising in the distance up the slope.
Well, calling it a city was a stretch. Actually, even calling that a stretch was a stretch of a stretch… In any case, before her beautiful eyes – whose blueness was associated neither with the sky nor with water – lay a village, stretched vertically from top to bottom or perhaps bottom to top along the slope from the shore of the Rusty Sea to the peak of the trash mountain.
Hohenwetz! Somewhere, a victorious, triumphant melody might have played, but… There it is! Yes, now it's heard clearly. And while you, my dear readers, were distracted by the pompous melody accompanying the feigned grandeur of a couple of musty huts, Goal jumped off the beam, skillfully riding a trash wave.
On an iron door from some long-forgotten vehicle, Goal maneuvered between artifacts of the past jutting out here and there: refrigerators, antennas, poles. At one point, the solid trash ground vanished and gave way to shifting plastic cups. The wave behind her rose, swirled, bubbled with battery fluids, whose acid rain was approaching the lovely, velvet-like skin of the Elysian.
But she was lucky. She wasn't a Deponian, which meant she was already born under a lucky star. And now she was lucky again: drops of acid sizzled down beside her with a characteristic, relentless hiss, in which a quiet but distinct whisper could be heard: "We'll get you yet!"
Green drops melted the blue plastic, and gradually the plastic cups turned into a heated stream, in whose turbulent flow Goal found herself. The door beneath her feet slid deftly over new waves as the pursuing trash subsided and sank into the plastic.
Losing its solid support, one of the construction beams in Goal's path collapsed. The plastic churned with splashes of a mixture that corroded everything in its path. Goal ducked, and when her door slammed into the collapsed beam, the Elysian pushed off with her feet and soared upward.
"Aaaaaaah!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, and this soul-chilling cry turned into angelic song.
Beneath her dangling feet appeared an old tire, on which the girl landed so skillfully. The backpack suddenly pulled her backward, and Goal bent dangerously far back toward the foaming, bubbling acid in the plastic. Maybe if a couple of drops had landed on her hair, things wouldn't have gotten worse overall, but Goal herself thought otherwise.
Just a moment ago she was waving her legs, now she was flailing her arms, seeking help in the surrounding junk, whose landscape was changing rapidly: firstly, Goal herself was being carried along the plastic stream somewhere forward and downward, and secondly – the waves would lift some scraps of rust, then swallow them with a characteristic slurping sound, followed by a gurgling burp of bursting bubbles.
And help came to Goal unexpectedly – the plastic simply ended. Just stopped abruptly.
The tire hit a curb, flipped from one side to the other, and Goal, as if launched from a catapult, flew upward, arcing over a considerable distance straight to the beach of the Rusty Sea.
The sand softened the landing, which happened right on her beautiful face, perfectly capable of enduring such an accident and remaining wondrously unchanged. Although, apparently, from the force of the impact, Goal was stunned, burying her head in the sand like a mythical slag-ostrich, inspiring all rationally-minded residents of Deponia who think about their own survival with its strategic retreat.
Goal's posture was quite remarkable: head stuck in the sand, rear end in the air…
Goal straightened up. Her face bore a shiner, concealing a reddened eye. Holding her breath, Goal first shook her head, raising a sandy cloud of grains from her hair, then opened her mouth, pouring out a waterfall of sand.
Having played excavator, the Elysian took a mouthful of air and finally sneezed, finishing the cleanup of her airways from deposits of sand grains.
And her single eye, not swollen shut, stared at the horizon line, where a bright amber sun was smoothly sinking beyond the sea, coloring the distant sky in a vibrant orange, and the sky directly above Goal in a lilac-purple, the color of her shiner.
But neither the sun nor the sky held Goal's particular interest. She was interested in the dark, almost black spot blocking that very sun.
Porta Fisco. And Elysium. All within sight. Actually, everything in one place: Elysium, fallen right on Porta Fisco, and Porta Fisco, burning with an endless fire. This sight made Goal get up and continue her journey along the coast, but this same path weighed on her more heavily than the straps of the backpack on her shoulders, forcing her to trudge dejectedly along the sandy shore, washed by rusty waves with a rainbow sheen.
Goal's journey came to an end at night, when only stars shone in the sky and a cracked, crooked moon hung. Perhaps, somewhere up there, Elysium had hung long ago, but Goal now couldn't even imagine how her native city might look from here, below, from Deponia, from piles of trash, junk, slag, rust, wreckage, remains and… But look, it's Goal!
"Halt!" came a characteristic raspy voice. One of the Organon soldiers stood at a checkpoint with a lowered barrier.
The second soldier at the checkpoint sat in his booth, operating the barrier.
"Who goes there?! Purpose of visit?!" shouted the Organonian, aiming a wrench at Goal, held like a pistol with the long end pointed at her.
"You do know that's a wrench, not a pistol, right?" Goal addressed the soldier with her characteristic disappointed expression.
"Damn, she's clever…" whispered the Organonian, hiding the wrench in his holster. "Answer, or I'll summon the giga-dodo!" Now, a whistle gleamed in the Organonian's clenched fingers.
Goal sighed, rolling her eyes.
"Stop!" the girl exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "I'm just a traveler. I heard there are cultural figures in Hohenwetz and decided to familiarize myself with their works."
"Another tourist," chuckled the Organonian, hiding the whistle in his uniform pocket. "And where are you from?"
"Um, well…" Goal glanced up at the sky, at the stars. They sparkled, and the constellations formed a sequence of numbers. Goal, being the only literate person for ten miles, promptly read them: "Four, eight, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-three, forty-two."
"Are those coordinates?" inquired the Organonian.
"Well… Yes," Goal confidently nodded to him.
The Organonian stirred, stepped down, and entered the booth. Through the clouded and cracked glass, Goal both heard and saw the Organonian checking a map on the wall.
"So…" whispered the Organonian, but his helmet turned the whisper into a loud hiss.
Satisfied, he nodded, poked the map with his finger, then came out and put his hands on his hips.
"You're lucky, that's not Germ. I don't know what's in the middle of the Schrottlantik Ocean, but definitely not Germ." After a second's pause, during which Goal only had time to nod, the Organonian firmly stamped his foot on a metal sheet and yelled, "Open the gate!"
The Organonian previously sitting in the booth came out. He pulled a pouch filled with something white and crystalline from his uniform pocket. The Elysian's knowledge immediately told her it was either salt or sugar. But her experience living with Rufus told Goal it could also be dandruff. Nevertheless, this Organonian sprinkled the powder on the edge of the barrier.
From the opposite side, right from a pile of junk, something emerged. With a rumble, pushing aside deposits of valuable scrap, appeared the snout of a giant slug with a potato-like nose and a pair of beady eyes. The crack under the nose, called a mouth by humanoid life forms, was immediately moistened by a thick, greenish tongue, resembling a peculiar variation of jello preparation.
This tongue, like a whip, shot from the slug's maw, slicing the air. With a smack, it latched onto the edge of the barrier sprinkled with the mysterious powder and pulled it toward itself. The barrier rose, opening the way. As soon as Goal crossed the line, the Organonian hid the pouch back in his pocket and returned to the booth, above which the slug's tongue now was. A gloved hand emerged from the broken window and scratched the slug under its tongue. With a chuckle, the slug retracted its tongue back into its toothed maw and disappeared into the junk piles as if it had never been there, and the barrier immediately closed on its own.
Goal marched along the rusty steps, laid from even, identical plates, leading down to a level, right into the center of the settlement – a small square, from which huts stretched upward and downward, assembled from wood, metal, and the remains of sea creatures, among which were ribs and skulls of some unimaginable beasts, making Goal grimace.
Spotting down below, where the moonlight glinted on the rusty waves, a tiny port consisting of a bio-toilet – or rather, bio-weapon "TOILET" – a pier of a couple of collapsed planks, and a motorboat rocking on the waves, Goal stepped onto the step and wandered down past the houses of the locals.
Reaching the boat, Goal spotted something in it resembling a homeless person sleeping under a blanket. Upon closer inspection, this something turned out to be exactly that – a homeless person, peacefully snoring out his most intimate dream moments.
"Ahem!" Goal cleared her throat.
"Oh, my dear Betty…" muttered the sleeping homeless man. "I love your whooping pox so much. Please, give me your blue tongue…"
"AHEM!" repeated a flushed Goal.
The homeless man squealed something unintelligible and jumped up. Goal stepped back from him, saving her shiner-adorned face from another blow.
"Who's there?! Where am I?! WHAT AM I?!" the homeless man yelled, looking around. When his bleary gaze managed to latch onto the beacon in the form of the red-haired Elysian, he belched heartily and scratched the back of his head. Immediately, dandruff showered from his head onto his shoulders. "Whaddya want?"
"The boat. I need your boat," Goal stated, crossing her arms over her chest. "Please."
"Ha! You're not from around here, are ya?" The homeless man crawled out of the boat and on all fours crawled along the pier to a crate, which he occupied, sitting on it with all four limbs, like… like any four-legged animal.
'And how did he guess?' Goal's mind snorted.
Physically, she answered the homeless man by shrugging.
"That's what I thought. Anyway," he made a short pause to belch. "the boat ain't mine, so you can take it, I don't care. But you need gasoline."
"And where do I find it? I haven't seen any fueling centers or fuel tanks around here."
"All these fancy words!" The homeless man lifted his leg, scratching his ear with his boot, causing more dandruff to shower from his head onto his shoulders. "You also need permission from the Organon to operate hydro-vehicles while intoxicated."
"But I'm… sober."
"For now."
"Fine. And how do I get it?"
"Dunno, the Organon doesn't give it to anyone. Maybe take it by force."
And something clicked in Goal's head. Hearing this, she even tensed up. Carefully feeling the implant in her temple, Goal calmed down and realized it was a lightbulb that had suddenly lit up right above her red-haired crown. She even looked up, not understanding my metaphor, and snorted.
Approaching the boat, she first threw her backpack into it, causing the boat to rock from side to side, then pulled out the blanket the homeless man had been covered with. The piece of fabric, blackened with time, was thoroughly soaked in something that smelled like diesel. Because of this, the piece was both wet and heavy.
Goal approached the homeless man and shook the blanket in front of him. The man immediately growled, baring a pair of yellow teeth against the absolute blackness of an almost completely toothless mouth. With these teeth, he clamped onto the piece of fabric and shook his head while Goal pulled the blanket toward herself, trying to wrench it from him. Dandruff from his head showered down like a snowstorm, falling onto the blanket, until suddenly a couple of teeth flew out of his mouth.
Whimpering, the homeless man returned to the crate, clutching his bleeding mouth with his palm.
Goal shook the blanket, and more dandruff fell from it right into her palm, which she clenched tightly. She slung the blanket over her shoulder and returned to the square, then climbed from it to the checkpoint. The Organonians, staring at the empty, night road, didn't even turn toward Goal, though she wasn't trying to be stealthy or silent. Although, she managed that as easily as stealing the heart of a certain charming, clever Deponian!
Approaching the one standing outside, Goal poured the dandruff onto his shoulder. The slug in the junk pile came alive again, stirred, and showed its snout. Repeating the same ritual with moistening its mouth with greenish, viscous saliva, it shot its tongue at the Organonian, and in an instant, only the soldier's legs remained, swaying from side to side. The wrench flew out of his holster, landing at Goal's feet.
When the second soldier ran out of the booth, staring at the situation, Goal noticed a badge hanging on his belt. Despite the shaking the badge was subjected to, the Elysian with her sharp, uncorrupted vision clearly read the word "PERMIT" on the white plastic, which was enough for her.
Goal bent down low, picked up the wrench, and with a confident blow to the back of the head, knocked out the Organonian, who fell at her feet where the whole world already lay. Goal tossed the wrench aside and tore the permit from the belt. With her new find, the girl headed for the port, when suddenly she heard applause along the way. And no, these weren't my rhythmic applause, but real, resounding ones, coming from one of the houses.
Goal hurried inside.
In the living room, which was the only room in the hut, sat four people: a young guy with a greenish handkerchief, an elderly man with a baby face, a middle-aged woman with a plastic patch on her lips, and a thin old man with a hooked nose. All four were watching a fifth, whom Goal didn't notice immediately.
The fifth man had a thick beard and long hair. He sat opposite the others, holding a guitar, and next to him stood a red canister with telling contents. The musician picked up the canister from the floor and took a swig. Immediately, a lighter flashed in his other hand and, like a fire-breathing dragon, he spat out a flame, which made the crowd erupt in applause.
"Anyone got a cloth?" the bard spoke up.
The kid with the handkerchief immediately hid his, and the whole hut stared at Goal, devouring her with their piercing, grasping eyes. Goal shrugged and pulled the gasoline-soaked fabric from her shoulder, immediately handing it to the bard.
He moistened his lips with the rag and returned it to Goal. The kid from the crowd spoke up.
"Can you breathe fire again?" he batted his innocent eyelashes.
Before he could even grab his guitar, the musician took a mouthful of gasoline and lit the lighter. Just as the flame shot from his mouth, it jumped to the drops of fuel on his thick beard. The musician froze for a moment. The realization of the fire on his own face didn't hit him immediately, but it did hit him. It reached him much faster than he could run to the Rusty Sea, into which he dove headfirst right from the pier. The crowd immediately ran out of the hut and rushed after him.
"What a… fiery show," Goal stated with a barely noticeable smile, which she immediately hid, recognizing familiar Deponian notes in her words.
Left alone, Goal took the canister and headed back to the boat. While the crowd gathered on the pier examined the bubbles rising from the water and the small burning spot right on the surface, the Elysian jumped into the boat, tossing all the things she'd found in this town inside. She deftly unscrewed the gas cap - count it, a couple of movements. Poured the entire contents of the canister inside and screwed the cap back on just as skillfully.
Goal grabbed the handle sticking out from the side of the fuel tank and stepped on the tank itself. Confidently, sharply, she pulled it toward herself, but the boat coughed like someone sick with whooping pox. Goal growled - like a predatory cat, r-r-r! - and pulled the handle toward herself again. The boat, no longer coughing but sneezing exhaust eyes, started, and the Elysian set off, moving away from the shore.
+++
The moon hid behind the horizon and the sun rose from behind mountains of junk somewhere far away. Goal continued her journey without stopping for a moment. The huge silhouette in the distance steadily approached, and soon Porta Fisco seemed so close you could reach out and touch it. But you couldn't. And you shouldn't even stick your limbs over the sides of the boat.
But ultimately, the Elysian had to stop. An Organon cruiser seemed to appear out of nowhere, emerging somewhere at the edge of vision, where all sorts of monsters, pink elephants, and spies from hostile states still dwell. Yes, yes, they're all real, they just hide well!
Goal cut the boat's engine and stood to her full height, looking up at the Organon helmet that appeared from behind the cruiser's railings somewhere up high.
"CAN YOU HEAR ME?!" shouted the Organonian.
"WHAT?!" Goal replied, cupping her hands around her mouth like a megaphone.
The Organonian muttered something, and his helmet disappeared somewhere beyond the railings. Goal even managed to get bored by the time the Organonian returned, pressing a megaphone to his metal "beard."
"CAN YOU HEAR ME?!" he yelled, and a stunned seagull fell between the Organonian and Goal.
"Yes!" shouted Goal.
"SHOW ME YOUR PERMIT!"
Goal took the very permit from the pocket of her half-lowered overalls and deftly hurled it upward. The piece of plastic hung in the air, and the Organonian reached for it, even grabbed it, but ended up tumbling over the railing and splashing into the water.
Surfacing, the Organonian didn't panic but calmly read the inscription on the badge and looked up at Goal.
"This is a permit to operate hydro-vehicles while intoxicated," he stated and continued. "Are you currently intoxicated?"
"Well…" Goal drawled, scratching her shaved nape. "No."
"Then I'm afraid I'll have to…" the soldier wasn't allowed to finish.
A purple tentacle erupted from the water with a loud splash. It deftly wrapped around the Organonian's neck and dragged him underwater. Goal leaned over the side of her boat and stared at the calming water's surface when a new tentacle emerged from it.
Goal barely managed to dodge it.
While the tentacle rocked the boat, Goal grabbed the lever and pulled it toward herself. Again. And again. The boat moved, and Goal sped toward Porta Fisco as behind her back a lilac fin rose from the water, followed by eight, nine, ten, eleven tentacles! Actually, there were more, but Goal didn't count them all, stopping at eleven on a string.
Reaching the coast, Goal crashed onto it, and the boat's bottom screeched, throwing sparks off the rusty metal it slid over, even rode on, propelled by inertia and its own propeller. But when the boat's thrust was no longer enough to overcome the land, Goal jumped off, grabbed her backpack, and ran on, ran away from there toward a narrow passage from which unbearable heat emanated.
Getting covered in sticky moisture… Ahem, getting covered in sticky moisture, Goal continued her path while slurping, squelching tentacles squeezed into the passage right behind her. But she didn't stop and ran on, straight toward a dump of burning tires.
Coughing, Goal squeezed her eyes shut and ran forward almost blindly, skirting one pile of burning tires, then another, then a third. It seemed she was in a maze, forced to run past tentacles tangled together into a knot. But this maze had an exit, and she reached it, running out to the lower levels of Porta Fisco, covered in knee-deep water.
The tentacles didn't reach here, nor did the smog or fire, so Goal continued her journey much more calmly and measuredly.
With each step, she splashed water, raising rusty silt that had settled. Directly above her head, gunshots sounded, even explosions, followed by inarticulate screams and yells. But the source of the screams wasn't visible. Only columns, skeletons of buildings, roads, and construction scaffolding towering high above her were visible. And only occasionally did sunlight from somewhere up there break through narrow cracks.
Goal reached a green pipe as big as her and even bigger, and entered, as there were no other forks. Inside, she was met by an even higher water level - or lower ground level - dampness, and mushrooms growing right on the metal lining.
She kept walking, sloshing through the muddy bottom and raising splashes of murky dark green water. Now she could be mistaken for a seasoned sewerologist, if such a profession even existed. And if such a profession existed, it would resemble speleology, whatever that was. Though, a worthy name.
Following the growth of mushrooms, deliberately avoiding a fork where no mushrooms grew - and from which rhythmic chants, or rather screams, emanated - Goal came to another intersection of pipes, only now the mushrooms with striped caps led in both directions. And just as doubts began to creep into Goal's mind, a certain flickering light appeared in one of the pipes at the intersection, casting chaotic shadows on the walls.
The Elysian considered hiding, but from around the corner floated merely a burning tire. Goal let it pass and snorted.
'Knowing Deponia…' she thought, wiping sweat from her brow. 'This could be a good sign.'
Oh, Goal, it was the best sign.
Emerging at another intersection, now consisting of many small pipes, three turns at once, and a whole mushroom nursery, Goal trudged forward and only forward, and her path led to the burning remains of a tavern, whose sign had already completely burned away. The building was drowning in a sewer lake, as were the people surrounding it.
'Yeah, not a very good sign,' Goal stated, looking around.
Immediately, she was met by a sobbing bartender, adding his salty tears to the general swampy mess in which everyone was chest-deep—Goal, being taller than the others, was only waist-deep.
"Don't worry so much," a mustachioed man in a red cap was comforting the bartender. "At least the Organon didn't get you."
But the bartender broke into even greater sobs.
"Darling," a lady accompanying the mustachioed man spoke in a high, hoarse voice. "he needs time to come to his senses."
"Yes, dear, you're right," the mustachioed man, being shorter than his beloved, rose on his toes, pecking her on the chin, and jumped toward the nearest pipe. The one protruding from the wall simply sucked the couple in, leaving no trace of them.
"Hey, you!" a monkey-like lout behind a barrel organ, on which sat a small macaque with dark chocolate-colored skin, addressed Goal. "New here? Wanna earn something?"
Goal didn't have time to answer: she was interrupted by the sounds of gunshots and explosions coming from the nearest storm drain grate. Goal jumped, grabbing a crossbar, and climbed onto a platform. She approached that very grate and didn't even have to stand on tiptoes to look out, so the sight outside immediately presented itself: a burning shawarma stand and the visible fragments of Elysium somewhere up there, above the city, hanging on metal beams like a spine on the ribs of a cetacean carcass.
"Hey, you!" an Organonian of higher rank addressed his subordinates somewhere out of Goal's sight. "The germians have learned about the clone factory. They intend to find it and start cloning their soldiers. I want you to leave this sector immediately and search for the clone factory on the city outskirts, understood?!"
"Yes, sir!" at least a dozen Organonians replied, and the ceiling above Goal shook from their rhythmic steps.
A clone factory? That's… No, wait… Isn't that a plot hole? Goal wondered, directing her gaze somewhere toward the ceiling.
And no, it wasn't a plot hole, my dear Goal.
And Goal only snorted at that, jumping down from the ledge to the macaque behind the barrel organ and the crying bartender.
"I need to get out of here urgently!" Goal said firmly, even demanded. "IMMEDIATELY!" she added for clarity.
"Pff!" retorted the monkey. "Whoever falls into the sewer doesn't get out! Although…" the macaque scratched its chin and stretched its lips into a sly grin. "My cousin said a certain mustachioed acquaintance takes some special mushrooms, after which he gets a kick like no other and even flies, can you imagine?! I'd tell you where to find them, but…"
"You mean the mustachioed guy who just jumped into the pipe?"
"Poss-i-i-ibly…" drawled the monkey.
Goal herself now grinned slyly and jumped into the pipe. It sucked her in, and Goal didn't even notice how she was ejected on the other side.
The Elysian found herself in a multi-level underground palace with many stairs and ledges, on the highest of which sat a hairy gorilla in a cowboy hat, and in a cage next to the gorilla sat and trembled the mustachioed man's blond girlfriend. And the mustachioed man himself stood at the very bottom, right in front of Goal, holding a burning mushroom over his mouth.
"No!" Goal exclaimed, extending her palm toward the mustachioed man. "Stop! I need that mushroom!"
The mustachioed man shrugged and turned to the Elysian.
"I need it to get my beloved back. If you help me do that, I'll give you my mushroom, deal?"
Goal stood up, brushed off the pants of her overalls, came closer, and was about to extend her hand to the mustachioed man when suddenly the realization came to her that the runtime isn't elastic and it's about time to wrap up this epic.
Yes, yes, wrap it up quickly!
Goal sighed, rolling her eyes, and delivered her signature uppercut to the plumber's jaw, sending the Italian flying in an arc across the lowest level of this hall. Goal bent down, picked up the very burning mushroom from the floor, and tossed it into her mouth.
The mushroom tasted expectedly spicy, but with a hint of sweetness and even bitterness, toning her whole body. The Elysian's eyes flashed with pure fire, her hair rose as if weightless, and her clothes turned scarlet with rare white accents.
Goal, releasing a reactive jet from her feet, soared upward, knocking the gorilla off its pedestal with one confident blow, and with its body, Goal broke through the wall and flew into the pipe system, rushing between them straight upward without stopping.
+++
She flew out of a brass funnel, shattering one of the three capsules hanging directly above the giant funnel leading to the sewer systems with the gorilla's body.
The gorilla fell onto a platform hanging in the air, and Goal, cooling down, landed right in front of a control panel. The image of a skeleton, in which she recognized that very, masculine, unimaginably handsome…
'Crooked, scrawny Rufus,' the girl lied brazenly.
But pressing the lever did nothing. Not a single light on the panel was lit. Labeled, these lights collectively stated one thing: materials for creating a clone were missing. Goal exhaled. It seemed it was over, it seemed there was no way forward, and going back made no sense.
Goal turned to Porta Fisco, surveying the city covered by the wreckage of Elysium like a hat. A burning city, covered in smog and amber firelight. She was ready to step off the edge downward, but then her foot bumped into something soft, something that crunched.
Goal cried out when she looked down. Right at her feet, by her boot, lay her own corpse. No, not hers. But very similar. Exactly like her, only… No, not her, couldn't be her. Goal grabbed the legs of her own-other corpse and dragged it down the metal steps. Finding herself on an arch over three toothed grinders, Goal threw the corpse into the left maw. It ground flesh, bones, clothes, leaving hair on top of all this biomass, and the greenish, rotten mince traveled along a conveyor belt into the distance.
Goal climbed back to the control panel, but the lights glowed yellow, not green. She pressed the lever, but again it gave nothing. Goal hit the control panel, stumbled from the effort, and fell right onto the furry back of the gorilla.
Dragging the gorilla was unimaginably harder than her own body. Especially when Organon soldiers armed with pistols immediately appeared. Thankfully, none of the bullets fired hit Goal herself, and the gorilla's body went for recycling.
The Elysian, running under the whistling bullets, returned to the cloning capsules and control panel. The lights shone with bright neon, and pressing the lever made one of the capsules glow with pure white light. And when the light faded, a smiling child with a bright crimson curl of hair on its head sat at the bottom of the capsule. Goal stared at the child.
"Why do you have red hair?" she asked more herself, but the shouts of Organonians behind distracted her from her thoughts.
The soldiers were rushing here, already filling the arch from which Goal had thrown the bodies. The Elysian ran to the control panel, frantically clicking various buttons, twisting dials, and checking the screen. One thought spun in her head:
"How do I make you an adult?!" — well, there were many thoughts, but for the sake of the age rating, they'll have to be shortened.
And, twisting one of the knobs, Goal changed the image of Rufus's skeleton to another familiar skeleton - her own. The girl closed her eyes. She exhaled.
"Alright," the girl began, raising her hand over the lever. "I lost my Rufus, but you'll get your Goal!" She pressed the lever, and the second capsule erupted with bright light, and as soon as it faded, inside sat a little red-haired girl. Goal recognized herself in her.
When the first Organonian ran onto the platform, Goal rushed at him and elbowed him right in the temple. The soldier fell from the platform, but Goal managed to snatch the pistol from his hands. Two shots and the fastenings of both capsules were torn. The children rushed into the funnel, tumbled into the sewer.
As the new Me said in farewell to the old Goal:
"Goo-goo ga-ga!"