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Author's Chapter Notes:

Spoiler Warnings:        This chapter has major spoilers for the Batman Beyond episodes “Disappearing Inque” and “Inqueling”

 

 

In a security building in New Gotham city, a man now known only as Inque 0.5 faced yet another day of being fed soft sloppy food through a funnel, by a woman whom he had no choice but to listen to. She talked on and on about subjects which were of no interest to him, while Inque 0.5 wished for a moment of peace, that he might think over the way the great love of his life Inque had betrayed him.

 

After being secretly video taped professing his love for Inque, by his boss, humiliated and dismissed for no good reason, he had had freed her from the frozen captivity brought about by the new Batman with Mr Freeze’s cold gun. She had then rejected his romantic advances, and amused herself by betraying his request to be like her. Not content to merely deny him her power, she deliberately gave him only half of the formula treatment that had changed her from human form to that of Inque. So he retained a human pinky white skin colouring, but a deformed shapeless body over which he had no control.

 

Expecting to wake to another day of the same undeserved torment, Inque 0.5 was surprised to see one of the complex lights go on in the middle of the night, and even more surprised to see that it had been turned on by Inque.

 

“I didn’t know if I’d ever recover my control of my form or my freedom,” said Inque, “But thanks to an elderly doctor who had once tried to assist Matt Hagen aka Clayface to regain his human form, I was able to adapt her process and stabilize my Inque form. I can do the same for you, but first I must undo the terrible cruelty I heartlessly forced on you. Here is the rest of the formula.”

 

Inque injected the man with a syringe full of bright pink liquid with white sparkly dots apparently included in it.

 

“Do you feel the change happening?” she asked.

 

“Oh yes, yes, yes!” said the man, and found that his body morphed into a dark blue form with a few hints of white and black, “No more Inque 0.5 for me. Now I can truly be Inque 2.0. Thank you!”

 

“It’s the least I could do,” she said.

 

“But what made you change your mind about helping me?”

 

“God convicted me of my evil nature in the only way I really left Him to do it. He showed me how it felt to be betrayed by someone I loved, namely my daughter. After all I did for her, I was left wondering why I’d cared so much. I cried out ‘Why is this happening to me?’ and then God spoke audibly straight into my brain, reminding me of every self involved criminal act I’d ever done, and then finally of the way I treated you, a good caring man who was guilty of nothing but loving me and risking all to help me. I never deserved a good man like you, and you certainly didn’t deserve a bitchy bad woman like me.”

 

“Please … don’t call yourself that. I didn’t deserve what my employer did. He never repented. I’d give anything to have you and this new power,” said Inque 2.0.

 

“Your control over it won’t last, unless I give you the old Clayface stability 2.0 treatment,” said Inque, “We have to get to the doctor’s seafront complex now.”

 

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