Isaiah leaned back in his chair, sighing softly as he continued to speak.
"I have to admit, there were much darker fears I could have exploited through your mind."
Though Aizawa's equilibrium and focus were mostly disjointed from just waking up, the sheer realness of the dream he had experienced, coupled with the intense emotions flooding his mind following seeing Olivia's death by Carter's hands, he could only feel puzzled and dizzy from his words.
"Why the hell ...are you here?" He leaned up on the sofa, his joints popping quietly as he gazed into Isaiah.
The man with one working eye remained silent for a few more moments, his gaze fixed on Aizawa. One of his hands was in his trouser pocket, while the other was wrapped around the edge of the sofa, trembling slightly.
"Do you know what lurks in the darkest edges of our subconscious while we're asleep?" Isaiah asked, his tone reminiscent of a cryptic.
Hearing this question, Aizawa's brows furrowed as a wave of puzzlement crashed over him. "No ...and something tells me I don't want to know."
At this moment, Isaiah Walls scoffed under his breath, his right hand drifting away from the couch. His fist clenched, a singular finger pointing directly at Aizawa.
"Then explain why your dream felt so real, like you could hear and feel everything in excruciating detail."
Aizawa's gut churned a little upon hearing the order. Another wave of complicated emotions surged over him as he leaned back on the sofa, running a hand through his hair. "I-I don't know how to ...whatever."
Aizawa's body rolled over, facing away from the older man poised just across from him. "Just leave ...you're weirding me out."
"It's God," Isaiah's voice cut the air like a knife, a knife sharp and precise enough to target an inscrutable yet specific space within Aizawa's heart. Aizawa's body tensed, a cold sensation shooting through his body after hearing Isaiah's short yet eerie explanation.
"I'm ...sorry?" He turned back around to face him. Even if he was too tired and disoriented to understand or want to understand Isaiah and his cryptic bombardment, the sheer mystery of his explanation couldn't help but stir something primal, something habitual within himself.
"God works in mysterious ways," Isaiah kept speaking, his hand now gently rapping on the edge of the wooden table.
"Have you ever considered the thought that a being so intricate, so labyrinthine and impossible to properly dissect, was just created out of thin air, by some massive, all-powerful explosion?"
The longer Isaiah spoke, the deeper this feeling continued to resonate through Aizawa. "I-I mean ...they're theories that say that—"
Before Aizawa could continue, Isaiah abruptly silenced him with a cold finger to his lips. The man with one functioning amber eye gazed into his own, leaning in closer to speak in a whisper. "I don't want to hear the reasoning of man..."
His voice sent a vivid shot of goosebumps coursing over Aizawa's tired, almost pale flesh. Isaiah Walls continued to speak, his voice still a low, grumbling whisper.
"Man is foolish, pawns in their own game. We didn't evolve, we were carefully manufactured and built to serve a higher deity, a deity who punishes those who work against his own bidding and wishes. But..."
Isaiah's other hand, which was nestled in the pocket of his trousers, took out an object—a small syringe. The pinhead-thin tip glistened in the now-cloudy sky, and the barrel of the syringe was filled with a blueish-purple liquid.
"Of course, this deity isn't someone we can't exactly see ...or attempt to pry into. Across all of history, many greats have attempted to satiate their base instincts, the great convergence instinct that fueled the very essence of divinity and manhood. Those who didn't want to huddle around the fire, afraid of the darkness, wanted to reach their own definition of divinity—the pinnacle of what someone could be—a union between heaven and earth, man and his creator."
Isaiah raised the syringe to his left eyelid, the tip mere millimeters from making contact. "The only way one can truly repent, the only way one can truly atone from secret sins, is to alter your own self ...the self that this evil god, our creator, had planted within us."
He looked back to Aizawa smiling softly. "The only way to truly become something better is to defy everything else. It doesn't take a skeptic, scientist, or even a great philosopher to understand that. All you have to do is embrace the cure, embrace this..."
He held the syringe to Aizawa, the liquid inside bobbing and bubbling with darkened hues. With a sly, slow smile, Isaiah let out a long sigh.
"At first, everyone turns this offer down; they'd rather live and sulk with worldly pleasures, the fabrication, the illusion that god created to ensure that we don't discover this arcane, foreign truth."
Aizawa scooted away from the syringe, his skin crawling. The entire time, his gaze remained fixated on it as if it would come to life and attack him. Aizawa's fists clenched at his sides, shaking his head. "W-whatever this 'cure' is sounds like straight up sugary—a forced ...it's just insanity!"
Hearing Aizawa's jumbled sentence, Isaiah could only scoff again. He lowered the syringe, setting it on the table beside him. "You're exactly like I thought you'd be, hesitant to accept the only bridge to heaven, Mount Purgatory."
"Cut the bullshit." Aizawa suddenly stood up, leaning on the couch as he gazed at Isaiah.
His fists, which were already clenched taut, began to tremble slightly. "I-I don't know why you're so ...w-weird or whatever this is, but I won't let you propose this weird-ass cure to any other of my companions."
In an instant, Aizawa reached for the syringe sitting on the table, but his hand froze just inches from grabbing it—he had been frozen in place. Aizawa's eyes, the only part of his body he could move, immediately looked in puzzlement towards Isaiah.
Isaiah's hands and fingers were intertwined in a cryptic, foreign pose. In an instant, he twisted his hands again, and Aizawa was suddenly sent backwards, falling back over the couch and onto the floor as he had been hurled effortlessly.
Aizawa landed headfirst, his skull making contact with the wooden floor before the rest of his paralyzed body. Before he could fathom recovering and attempting to fight back, Isaiah moved his hand again, flailing Aizawa across the apartment, landing atop the stove. At this moment, a fiery, excruciating pain surged through his back as the stove was turned on with the flick of Isaiah's fingers.
He grit his teeth, a strained, pain-stricken scream spilling through the impossibly small gaps in his teeth. The mottled, stained metal of the stove quickly gained a fiery, crimson edge within its surface. Aizawa's fists remained clenched at his sides, unable to move in any direction.
As the stove continued to heat up, Isaiah slowly walked forward, lifting the pot of stew with the flick of his finger. This entire time, he had heated up the contents inside, the stew from last night already sizzling and boiling.
As Isaiah slowly moved his hand, the pot began to tip in Aizawa's direction, threatening to spill the boiling liquid directly onto him.
"I'd recommend just giving in; this fate is just as rapturous as my own treatment." Isaiah's tone was now solidified and solemn, much like a profound philosopher or a noble of deep importance.
The more the pit tipped, the more Aizawa continued to struggle and writhe. The scolding temperature of the stove beneath him continued to gradually rise, searing through his shirt and tainting his skin with the slow, impending threat of searing, blister-torn burns.
"I-I won't let you touch anyone!" Aizawa spat through gritted teeth, his entire body trembling with impending resilience and a primal fear. Even if he was terrified at the moment, his protective instincts quickly bubbled over anything else present. Even if he would be burnt to death by his situation, he wanted to ensure no one he knew would suffer the same fate.
"If you want ...me to meet this deity so badly ...take just me ...I don't want anyone else to suffer."
The man jolted his head to the capacity it could, aiming for the needle. "J-just use that needle ...I-I ...just don't kill me."
Hearing his strained, pleading tone, Isaiah arched an eyebrow. The pot of scolding stew lowered back onto the stove, which also snapped off in an instant. Once Aizawa could regain control of his body, he tumbled off the stove and landed on the apartment floor with a dull thud.
Moments later, Isaiah snagged him by the hair, prompting him against the wall with an indifferent expression.
"But, in the end, you're still human, Aizawa. Pain is the biggest instinct, the only instinct to promote submission." He leaned in, his breath tickling Aizawa's ear.
He grabbed the syringe from the table with the flick of his wrist, the object flying over to him and landing in the palm of his hand. After flicking the barrel, Isaiah slowly lifted the object just in front of Aizawa's left eyelid. Aizawa tensed the moment the syringe came close enough, but his next biggest focus was suppressing the smirk that threatened to spill over.
With a sudden surge of his knee, Aizawa directed it in between Isaiah's legs, landing a critical hit to the older man. Isaiah let out a sharp, almost animalistic hiss as he recoiled backwards, grabbing his lower regions. The syringe clattered to the floor with a dull thud, which Aizawa kicked to the edge of the room.
"If that's true, then I guess you'll submit yourself to me then?" Aizawa crossed his arms over his chest, a confident, almost smug smirk spilling over his face.
A sudden, high-pitched whimper emanated from Isaiah's throat, and his wrinkled, mottled skin began to ripple and pulse. His facial contours suddenly dispersed, rounding along the edges. A pair of rounded glasses manifested on his face, and his body noticeably shrunk in size. As the image of Ayumi hunched over on the floor gradually took shape, Aizawa's eyes widened as he stepped back.
"H-how ...bastard!" Ayumi's voice rang throughout the apartment, strained and pain-stricken from the sudden kick.
"I-I..." Aizawa immediately knelt down, a cold sweat threatening to spill through as only feelings of panic surged through his body.
At this moment the door behind them opened, and Olivia stepped in, her focus immediately gravitating to the scene occurring on the ground.
"Oh dear!" She rushed to Ayumi's side, helping the girl to her feet with a gentle, almost motherly demeanor.
"What happened? Are you sick?" Olivia quickly bombarded the girl with questions.
Instead of giving an immediate reply, instead, she pointed in Aizawa's direction, her face transforming into a borderline animalistic scowl.
"Aizawa hurt me! That damn monster hurt me!"
"W-what the hell, I didn't!" Aizawa immediately scurried to the corner of the room, picking up the syringe from the floor.
"Isaiah randomly barged into the apartment and offered to 'cure' me or something. Just look at what he did!"
He turned around, showing Olivia the gnarly burns on his back. Olivia's eyes widened as she looked towards Ayumi.
"Is that true, were you there with him? Where is he now?"
"You damn fool, Ayumi is Isaiah!" Aizawa barked, reaching out and snagging the young girl from Olivia's grip. He knocked the glasses off her face and raised the syringe to her eye, the tip mere millimeters from making contact.
"Shouta, what the hell are you doing?!" Olvia rushed over and knocked the syringe from his grip, before planting a sharp slap to his cheek.
"You're obviously still sick and not right in the head! I expect you to apologize to Ayumi for everything, now!"
Aizawa looked at the girl in desperation, his fists clenched tightly at his sides, resisting the urge to punch her directly in the nose.
"That's not Ayumi ...it's Isaiah."
"Cut it out, Shouta. After this is all sorted out, you're going back to sleep." Olivia took an authoritative step forward.
The man resisted the urge to rip all the hair from his own skull, the sheer sense of frustration and helplessness spilling over and engulfing his entire body like a tidal wave. His entire body trembled now, resisting the primal instinct to just kill Isaiah then and there.
"Why won't you try and listen to me? This new world is filled with all sorts of magical and supernatural bullshit! You don't think this man can shapeshift or anything?"
"I don't." Olivia responded, scoffing.
At this moment, Ayumi smirked as she leapt back towards the window, opening it with a quick motion and leaping outside. Her body moved with the agility of a prowling tiger as she pinwheeled in the air, her black hair quickly turning orangeish-blonde and freckles forming on her face. The duo watched in shock as Carter ran off in the distance.
"What the fuck..." Olvia's mouth was left agape.