Chapter 4 - Follower

The door to Yip's house gets busted open by Iggy as Writer and Pickle, along with the children, follow them. Chaos inside.

Hundreds of pages worth of drawings glide across the living room.

On the floor are Yip's parents' lifeless corpses, pale as they could've ever been.

An emotionless Yip kneeling down, teardrops falling on a drawing of her family.

Iggy takes a moment to process...

"They're gone." He said.

Distraught Pickle.

"And all I can do is watch..." The pickle closes his eyes.

LATER...

Writer digging the grave for Yip's parents. The children around them are innocently playing, oblivious to what just happened to everyone else in Little Farmland.

"Follower, you can't do anything but watch and predict, you know that. Even when you have the power to do something, you'd be nothing compared to that thing." Writer tells the pickle.

"Well you don't get it. I'm no robot; I'm as conscious as you guys are. It's DRAINING to see myself do nothing but track that murderer... as a pickle in this place, of all things." Pickle replies.

Silence... The pickle looks around.

"Massacre is still here, he's still not done finishing everyone off." The pickle adds.

"Oh god." Writer responds, exhausted.

"You can sense his presence?" Iggy asks the pickle.

"He was animated for that purpose." Writer answers.

"Predicting his next destination? That seems cool!" Iggy replies.

"Eh, Not really. It's more of a curse if you think about it."

---

INT. JOHANNESBURG COUNTY - EVENING

Five middle-aged people, wearing black coats. FOLLOWER, a cosmic cloud, is with them. A WOMAN (35) sits right beside Follower.

---

Johannesburg County. Three years ago, I was animated by a studio here. Darn it, whoever made it canon for me to have different forms, I hope you're dead by now. Anyway...

"Follower, your directive. Follow that monster." The Director told me before I left.

I don't really remember anything before that or during the time I was created. I just listened, and followed.

Follower walks away from the woman and into the tunnel road.

"...Is the autowriter working?"

"...Yes, Ma'am Director. It's recording every single move Follower is doing so far."

The director looks at the first page of the printed script. Everything from Pickle's perspective is written in the page, up to the very last moment he left to follow Massacre.

"Scripts are usually fiction... But this one will spit nothing but facts." She says.

DAYS LATER...

Sipping tea in her office, the director notices the autowriter writing a slug line.

---

EXT. MISTY LAGOON - DAY

---

"Misty Lagoon..."

She hurries to the telephone.

"Hello? Contact the dispatch we sent at Misty Lagoon. Follower has arrived. Massacre's gonna be there in a few hours." She says.

My form was fortunate in Misty Lagoon. I was a naive girl with a red scarf. The people are fairly boring, to be honest.

Explosion. Sudden fright from red-scarfed girl. People panicking. Unconscious bodies.

The little girl turns around and catches a glimpse of Massacre.

And that's where I met him face to face.

Massacre nefariously walks past the girl. A gust of wind hits her as he passes through.

"...You're not from here, aren't you?"

"I was just... passing by." I told him.

I remembered the snap of his finger pulling a kid close to his left hand like a magnet. He catches the head of that unconscious child...

"...What are you gonna do to him?" I asked.

"Watch."

He breaks the skull of the child with just his one hand. Blood on his hand, he lets the child go.

I remembered feeling helpless back then...

"...I can't read you."

"...What do you mean?"

He looked at me.

"Can I ask for a favor?"

He knelt to the ground and lifted my chin up.

"Tell the higher-ups that there's no use subjecting you to this torture."

"...It's a directive I had to follow."

---

MASSACRE kneels to the ground and lifted his chin up.

MASSACRE

Tell the higher-ups that there's no use subjecting you to this torture.

FOLLOWER

...It's a directive I have to follow.

---

...There goes The Director, reading the commotion.

"...Took only one mission to figure us out, didn't he?" She says.

"We'll see how this goes..."

From the Lagoon...

"Well then... Follow me if you wish." Massacre told the girl as he walks away.

Massacre pauses and looks back at the red-scarfed girl.

"It is imperative to say, however... That it wouldn't be my fault if you were to lose your mind with all the horrors that are going to happen around me."

What he meant to say is... I had to experience what he does to the people if I were to follow my directive. He's... kinda right about it.

My next hundred missions all ended up with the deaths of hundreds upon hundreds of people. I became a giant, a mule, a fish, stick bug, and an artificial intelligence algorithm...

"Hey, FollowerAI! Create an image of me with a hot woman wearing only~"

"I'm sorry, what!? Screw you! Screw this! No way I'm generating that!"

Massacre teleports to the room and swiftly kills the down bad man.

"...Actually, I don't mind you killing that guy." the Artificial Intelligence said.

And with it, I developed a sick sense of humor... Honestly, it's the only way I could cope.

A few missions later, Hundreds of bodies on top of a giant mouse. It stands up and looks around.

"Haha, why... Why'd you have to do this?"

A fake laugh from Follower.

---

FOLLOWER

Why'd you have to do this?

---

The Director from the office looking intently at what's written.

I kept speaking as I break down.

"I don't know the reason why... but I had enough of just watching, following, and seeing you kill innocent lives."

"...I wanna fight."

I raised my hands in the sky.

"I WANNA FIGHT!!!"

...An impulse hits me. I wiped my tears and calmed myself down.

"...Little Farmland's next."

PRESENT DAY

"Which brings us back to here!" The pickle says.

Iggy sports a gloomy expression, chewing close to the pickle's body.

The curious pickle looks down on his body. It was bitten.

He looks back at Iggy and closely looks at his mouth.

"Did you... just take a bite out of me?"

Roses on Yip's parents' grave. Yip sitting in between the graves.

Writer interrupts the conversation, the shovel sitting in standby near the tree.

"Anyhow, once you can predict his next location, you should keep going."

Iggy thinks to himself a bit.

"...If you like it, I can join you!" Iggy says.

"...What?" Both Writer and the pickle says.

Iggy smirks at the both of them.

"You don't have to be alone."