Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: East of West, Issue #27 – “Finding Babylon”! In the previous installment, the bulk of the story is spent dealing with each member of the Chosen (and their plus-ones) showing up one at a time to the party. Lots of daggers stared at one another. Lots of scornful words of derision and contempt. Lots of pent-up sexual energy. By the end everyone shows up.

…except for Xiaolian Mao, who chose to decline her invitation. The invitation that was tattooed on greasy skin. I mean, who could blame her at all? The rest are there, though, all accounted for. Call me crazy, though, but I’ll bet dollars to donuts that we won’t be dealing with any of them here in Issue #27, and we’ll instead be focusing on Young Sheldon and his stupid Balloon. PROVE ME WRONG, HICKMAN.

East of West, Issue #27 [June, 2016]
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
“Finding Babylon”

“LOOK AT THIS! At all of you fools… go on, if you have the stomach for it. LOOK!” exclaims the easily angered Prophet Orion. I’m sick of looking at this guy’s lumpy skull. That demon should’ve just devoured him, killed him, and spared the rest of us the constant turmoil.

So what does everyone need to look at? Everyone else, of course. He instructs them to all take a look at who is in attendance at this real General Assembly of the United Nations over here. It’s just a bunch of really broken and pathetic individuals, and yet they were all Chosen! Somebody up there really has their finger on the pulse of who the cool kids are in the year 2065. Several of them are still pointing guns at each other. Even Archibald looks paranoid.

“The Message will not rectify your flaws, or temper your hate – nor will it erase your sins…or theirs. We are all too far gone,” Orion goes on, yelling furiously like some insane preacher screaming about the Jesus outside of a Wal-Mart. This is the End of Times, yada yada. Tell me something I don’t know, you extremely off-putting little man.

This area, as we’ve seen already, is completely surrounded by the depressing cult followers. Outside, there are millions. Inside, every nook and cranny of the cave is packed with people looking down on the Chosen. The Chosen, each and every one, even the unflappable ones, look up in awed disbelief.

“And all of the fallen of man have gathered here – into an army of fate,” continues Orion, addressing only the Chosen as he shakes around his arm stump. “There is no escape from what is coming. All that is left… is doing what you were born to do.”

Oh boy!

“This is a funeral for the free man.”

Ha, is that foreshadowing? A funeral for the Freeman? Hrmpt!

“It is tomorrow we bury here today.”

Hey now. These people cattle? Yes. No army at all? Correct. The End of Times. Not a chance. BUT… BUT… uh, what was that fourth thing you said?

Madame LeVay recaptures her skeptical composure and argues with Prophet OhRyan. Like, yo, old man, are you dumb or something? THIS is the End of Times right here? Lame. Call me back you find some real End of Times.

“The Message is a living word, Antonia,” Orion says, actually looking passive and somber. “It has changed. It has evolved.”

Yeah, like a Wartortle into a Blastoise, am I right fellow millennials?

“Pfft, people do not change. They just die and pull their decaying societies down with them,” LeVay argues back, brow furrowed like her time is being hella wasted here in this stinkin’ cavern. She’s all, why haven’t you been around lately? No one’s seen or heard from you in an age! And what’s the answer? He’s been busy eating paper and now he thinks he’s the shit. And he hates being questioned like this. You can tell because his neck gets more sinewy and his yellow eyes bug out again. It’s disgusting.

Archibald can’t believe this! What a moron, eating the Word. Sounds unbelievably brainless. Freeman can’t believe this! Does Orion now think he’s better than his equals?

The short answer is: yeah, sure. Chosen are Chosen, but HE has become something even more rare. He has become the guy with paper clogging up his bowels. But he doesn’t actually specify what he has become, and Freeman and Bel Solomon get super impatient and catty about this.

Now look what you’ve gone and done, Orion. You’ve made the skeptic skeptical! For shame.

Solomon’s outburst about THIS MAN IS BONKERS doesn’t sit well with Freeman. Freeman thinks, indeed, that it is YOU, sir, *points at Bel Solomon*, who is, *points at Bel Solomon*, …the foolish one.

Freeman aims his gun at Solomon’s face. “Showing your face again when you should be hiding it. And don’t worry,” he says, turning to Orion, “it ain’t the void that’s gonna get you.”

Orion tells this punk to show some respect. Everyone here is Chosen. Respect the sanctity of everyone being Chosen, k?

Heh. Fine. Freeman will keep the peace now, here in this peaceful, diplomatic meeting, but the second they step outside he’ll be sticking the business end of his gun up Solomon’s butt and then it gets stuck and he’ll have to leave it there while he punches him in the face.

Wolf leans in to his best buddy Freeman’s ear. Pssst! Hey, buddy! “The man with him is who killed Cheveyo,” he says, nudging toward Thomas the Hunter. And Thomas the Hunter, he stands by what he did. He is the Hunter! And lest you forget, he is hired to kill every single member of the Chosen. So watch your tongue, because he spent 400 days on the job so far and has only killed one. At this rate, Freeman’s turn will be in 16 years. THEN he’ll know the meaning of the word JUSTICE.

Freeman likes him. He’s got moxie!

Fuck moxie! Like me all you want, Thomas says, for Freeman is on his LIST.

It’s like, list of what? Wolf knows. And Wolf tells Freeman. And Freeman tells him that, then, he’s on the list too. And Wolf tells Freeman ‘fraid not. And Freeman tells Wolf ‘fraid so. And Wolf tells Freeman that he can shoot Thomas first. And Freeman tells Wolf that he agrees.

And Cheveyo’s spirit appears to tell them both that it’s quite a treat to see them like this. Just like old times! And this display of ethereal monologuing, of course, contorts Solomon’s face into a series of schizophrenically pained expressions. Like >:-S

It’s funny, because Freeman all but asks him what his fucking problem is.

I’m not usually a betting man. But if I were to be a betting man, I bet I’d make a ton of bets!

Archibald steps in to remind Freeman that there are more lucid and aware members of the Chosen that deserve more time right now than the rest. It’s time to go all in again, and LeVay is totally in! Let’s not stray too far from the path of the Message. Reign it back in. We’re all believers here, let’s start making believe again.

And who better to make-believe than Uncle Ezra Prophet-Face Orion? He will show you all the way, so don’t fret my pet.

Now it’s Narsimha’s turn to be annoyed. As Wolf’s companion, he wants to know what the HELL kind of freak show he was dragged into. Wolf gets touchy, tells Narsimha that this is serious business, and he “would not be here without reason, and certainly not just to follow someone selling religion.”

Oh, ok. Whew! Carry on, then.

They all take out their bloody skin-scrolls with pod-people looks in their cold, dead eyes.

Follow the Prophet. The man with the Word. All will be fine. Here, have some Kool-Aid. It’s grape! And–

“Just one problem with all that, sport…” a voice says off-panel, much to Orion’s complete frustration. “I am many things, but one of them is not being a foregone conclusion.”

This is Archibald talking now, making the point that his life certainly isn’t set in stone by determinism and sans free will. So shut up about all this “doing what you were born to do” horse-hockey. He’s a cunt hair away from walking out on this charade right now. Take your Chosen and pack it into your butthole, Ezra.

Ezra can’t believe his mangled ears! “You – all of you – are being offered an honored position,” he froths and points. “I have seen a vision of God’s army. The Message has shown me that.”

Madame LeVay admits that her skin scroll contained very personal information that no one could know about. Perhaps Archibald should keep on considering sticking around for this cool apocalypse. The answer, of course, is “shut up”. Archibald is his own man and he will not be pushed around by things like “prophecy” and “entropy”. By the beat of his own drum, and so forth.

Sorry, I don’t make of a habit of listening to ugly people.

“Do not test me,” Orion yells, positively irate at this point. He keeps spouting righteous garbage, the kind of stuff that would make any Chosen groan. Archibald all but calls it complete bullshit. Orion gets even madder. Xiaolian was right to stay home.

Prophet Orion thinks he’s God, and as God his followers will do what he says. He ate the paper! Come on, people. This is serious business! Fall in line!

And then, finally, much to my own relief and satisfaction, Orion gets completely riddled with bullets. BLAM POW BAM. Dead! And not soon enough.

“That’s two,” Thomas triumphs, gun a-smokin’.

“The Word cannot be undone by a man with a gun,” Orion coughs and sputters while his Hell Demon buddy sticks its tendrils through his body. It looks painful. He deserves it.

Thomas then throws something that looks like a utility belt. It lands near Orion and Hell Demon. The Hell Demon sniffs. “Pentolite, propylene, ammonium nitrate… it’s a bomb,” the demon deduces. And just in the knick of– BOOM!

Orion’s lower body explodes in a dozen gorey pieces! With his dying breath, Orion permits the Hell Demon to kill them all. Or, as he puts it, he “judges all of them”.

All the pilgrims in the cavern leap down and start ambushing to kill. “Kill the Chosen! Kill! Kill! Kill!” they scream in unison like Message Zombies who don’t give a shit about anything except what the dead guy wants.

Thomas calls over his dog and fashions a zipline out of grappling hooks and carabiner clips! Bel’s like “what the unholy fuck are you doing?”, and Thomas is like “surviving, dummy”. And they lift themselves up over the mob and zip away.

And not a moment too soon, you clever WZZZZZZZZards!

“Not this time, Old Man,” proclaims the great Jonathan Freeman Number Eight as he draws his gun again. He aims to kill. “Not today, and never again.”

The mob punches the gun out of his hand at the last second. It goes off, but off course. Foiled again! Hoisted by his own petard! The mob is rather irresponsible with the guns. Just shooting at each other and stuff.

“Are you okay?” Sharra asks her beloved Eight Ball.
“No. I am not. Look at this shit…” Eight responds sadly. “Look at what they have done.”

Wolf, Crow, Archibald’s niece Constance, Chief Narsimha, they all actively involve themselves in the fray! Punching, leaping, they feel ALIVE!

The man that Constance is fighting wraps his large hand around her skinny frame and begins biting her shoulder. Archibald, now donning a gray hooded cloak befitting of a member of the Thieves Guild, produces a hidden dagger and stabs the dude right in the neck. “Young lady, when the world is going mad…” he advises his young niece, “it is imperative that one keeps one’s head.”

Is there anything Archibald won’t enjoy? Seriously.

“These people are mad, Uncle,” she pants.
“Yes, mindless indeed,” he responds calmly, offering her a cloak of her own. “Here, put this on.”

Archibald rises up and speaks to the crowd, pretending to be one of their own. “There! There! Behold the faces of our enemies! We must strike them down! For that is what the Prophet declared, and what our God demands. Consume them wholly! The lord loves a happy plate!”

This really whips the mob up into a simmering froth! Archibald and Constance mosey around, trying to be inconspicuous. Elsewhere, Madame LeVay is nervous while Doma Lux shoots into the mob with her automatic rifle. A few sneak up behind LeVay and grab her. Lux is about two seconds away from getting knifed by a raving man, but he is stopped via impalement!

“I find value in keeping things I own intact, Doma Lux. And after today, you will an even more precious commodity…” says Narsimha, her white knight. “When she dies… you ascend. Do nothing to save her,” he quotes the Word, I imagine. I didn’t take Narsimha for a pious man whatsoever. He made that much clear already.

Freeman No. 8 is angered that the mob has surrounded LeVay, but Sharra tells him to let her go. Let her die. Every man for himself! And woman; let’s not discrimination here. “It will make things right for your father,” she adds.

Nah. John Freeman The Eight is better than that! “Try and keep a landing area clear, Sharra,” he says, entering the fray with a gun in each hand. “I’ll be right back.”

There are still millions of these fuckers. John has lifted LeVay up bride-over-the-threshold style and starts running back, heading into the ship. Wolf and Crow had become a bunch of wolves and crows, and they too head into the ship. Sharra is ahead of them. Lux and Narsimha bring up the rear, but Narsimha is grabbed from behind. His head gets pinned by a man’s arm as another brandishes a large dagger.

“Help me,” he begs.
“Sorry,” Lux replies, “but I find no value in keeping the things that own me intact. I hope it hurts, asshole.”

When Lux gets into the ship and informs Wolf that his Uncle didn’t make it. “NO!” he yells, leaping and bounding out of the ship to, like, get dead himself.

“How badly are you hurt, Uncle?” he asks, punching more bitches. Well, Nephew, your dear old uncle got stabbed about four times, so things could be better. Crow joined them, but it looks like the ship is now leaving without them. Narsimha frowns sullenly like he dropped his ice cream.

A couple of ships are trying to blast Hell Demon, who appears to have absorbed Orion again through some of his patented tendril acupuncture. Orion is super fucking mad and promises an unleashing of hell on the Endless Nation. It is now his mission to raze the Machine City to the ground. Not sure why, since it was Thomas the Independent Hunter Guy Who is Friends with Texas Magoo who started this whole riot to begin with. Or, technically, it was actually Orion. Nevertheless…

Wolf’s a lucky guy. Crow’s never been sexier!.

Narsimha urges Wolf and Crow to get out of here and warn the Endless Nation. Leave him there to die! Go! Do it! *gurgle* Please… *gurgle* …just go… *gurgle burble*

Wolf is not agreeable to this. Mr. Uncle must return! However, much to Crow’s dismay, Wolf will stay here to try and halt Orion’s army before it even begins to march. Pick off as many people as he can. Wolf and Crow hug, and Wolf promises to be back.

He probably won’t be.

Time to turn into a rabid wolf and try to take on the Hell Demon! I mean, really now. Has anyone successfully been able to take on this beast? Fucking Ezra Orion became his arm or something.

“I am a servant of Death himself, and I don’t mind seeing him again,” Wolf thinks as Hell Demon’s six tongues start wrapping seductively around Wolf’s wolf face. Death is such a cheerful kind of guy. Who wouldn’t want to hang out with him?

And then the demon bites him. Just eats him all up like a, I dunno, like a fishstick. Sure.

Final Thoughts

What a dumb way to bite the big one, Wolf. You were always stupid! I’m deciding that now for the first time, actually. Wubba lubba dub dub.