Thursday, April 28, 2011

50/50

So according to the Reintegration Tablet I've got just over a 50% chance of surviving Slender Man.

I think I like that percentage. Flip a coin, heads I win, tails I lose. It creates the necessary tension: will he win? Or will he lose? Could go either way.

The analysis of my intelligence left me a bit sad, though. Come on, AI Guy. I can quote Shakespeare from memory, and you rank me just slightly above Morningstar? I'm insulted. What do you want me to do, invent sustainable cold fusion or something?

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Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Zerosage

We never have much of a break in the excitement round these parts.

I’ve been really enjoying not being trapped in some kind of weird alternate dimension thing. It’s a nice feeling, living in a reality not under an eldritch being’s complete control, not constantly seeing the setting change around you, and just being able to go outside and take a walk without anything too freaky happening.

It was on one of these walks when the events which I shall tell of occurred. I was on my way back to Setoth’s apartment, walking along a tree line on the edge of St. Edwards campus. It was a quite night out, all nice and calm.

And so I really wasn’t expecting someone to leap out of the trees and try to stab me. My attacker seemed to come out of nowhere; I didn’t have time to dodge, and only prevented myself from being killed by moving my forearm in the way of the blade. I’d rather get stabbed in the arm than have my neck cut open (although, to be honest, if I had the chance neither would happen to me). My attacker was using a sword with phosphorous paint over it, a hoodie (also with phosphorous paint, creating an operator symbol pattern), and a monster mask. He was also shouting something about how I was a monster he would destroy, or something. But when I saw that mask, it looked familiar. Not like anything I’d seen in real life, but like something from a website…. Maybe a blog post somewhere…..

That’s right, ladies and gents, everyone’s favorite ex-Sage, zerosage had decided to pay me a visit! I was so flattered. Me, being put on his hit list. The only sadness I felt then was from the knowledge that I would have to kill him, and thus be unable to read any more of his murderous adventures.

Upon throwing zerosage off me, I expressed my joy at seeing him, although he didn’t appear to share the same reaction. He said some cruel things to me, implying that Slendy was my master WHICH HE IS MOST CERTAINLY NOT. Zerosage continued to say these cruel things, such as “You fed him...you willfully committed murder in his name….” as he got back up and ran at me. His swings with the sword were sloppy, lacking any real training; as such I easily was able to avoid them. I tried to throw in some witty retorts, but as a result of spending more attention on being humorous than on my surroundings, which caused me to trip on some uneven ground. Zerosage did not put this opportunity to waste, and jumped on me. In the ensuing brawl, I attempted to bash in his nose with the hilt of my sword, but the mask made this difficult. My blows caused the mask to shift slightly, giving me a look at his eyes. He was crying.

What are you supposed to do when the person trying to kill you is crying? It was such an odd, out of place sight, that for a few seconds I was in shock. Zerosage trying to press his sword down on my throat snapped me out of that. He kept repeating, “Forgive me.” Unfortunately for him, I am not the most forgiving of people, so instead I bit his wrist. That gave me the chance to throw him off, and get back onto my feet. While zerosage was still on the ground, I swung my sword down at him, striking him in the head. Even without an edge, that blow should have been enough to end the fight, but zerosage grabbed my injured arm and said, “I cannot stop, no, damn you….” Then he started to pull on the arm, causing a significant amount of pain. Both of us attempted to punch the other in the face, which resulted in us once more on the ground in a brutal melee. Somehow zerosage was able to get his hands around my throat, and started strangling me. I tried to gouge out his eyes, but again the mask made if difficult. I was starting to black out when I finally made him let go. Then I kicked him in the ribs, knocking him on his back. He looked too broken to get up again, so I limped over to retrieve my sword (which had been knocked away at some point in the chaos), and walk back over to zerosage.

Arkady: “This has been fun and all zerosage, but I think now's a good stopping point.”

Zerosage: “And when will...he? Stop?”

Arkady: “Good question. I'll ask him that next time I see him.”

Once more, I swung at his head, and connected with a crack. Only this time, he grabbed onto my sword. Zerosage shouted at me, “You…. Damn fool…. You...will not ask him...anything ever again!” And then he pulled out a taser and shot me in the arm with it.

And that was how I ended up lying on the ground in a twitching mess, while zerosage drew a serrated knife and stood over my defenseless body. His mask had almost completely fallen off, letting me see the tears running down his face, mixing with the blood from his wounds. He kept saying “Forgive me, oh god forgive me” over and over and over and over. Then he started cutting my forearm with that knife. They weren’t violent cuts intended to wound; instead they were almost surgical, carving around the bone. Although at the time, I was more focused on him cutting apart my arm than anything else, even if I couldn’t do anything about it.

Before he finished cutting, a shriek echoed around us. I saw a sudden blur of motion barreling towards zerosage. A human figure tackled zerosage, knocking him off me. It was a very distinct figure, one which I had seen several times before. Porfiry. Or, at least what was left of him.

Zerosage and the moving corpse’s fight quickly took them out of sight. I was still on the ground, unable to move, and know bleeding pretty badly from my arm. But then I heard footsteps behind me. From my position on the ground, I could just barely see the person in my peripherals. All I made out was a pair of black boots, the bottom half of a black police uniform, and a long black coat. Lots of black there.

As soon as he spoke, I instantly recognized the voice. Not like I could ever forget it.

“Porfiry’s last stand.” Javert said. “Even with His power supporting the body, Porfiry won’t be able to survive this fight. It’s such a sad thing, giving his life to save someone such as you. Someone who has completely rejected His offering of salvation. Honestly, I think He wouldn’t have minded had you died here. After your refusal of His will, there has no longer been the compulsion for us to keep you alive for the sake of bringing you into the fold. However….”

He was silent for a while, during which time I continued to be bleeding and unable to move.

“I still have yet to see you receive the justice which you deserve. I cannot have you die until I have made you suffer at my hands, in punishment for your sins.”

Then he just walked off. After I regained control of my muscles, I crawled/limped back to Setoth’s apartment, where I was able to stop the bleeding. Even so, it’s going to be hard to do anything with my left arm for a while.

On the morning news, the police found a body floating in Town Lake. They couldn’t identify it, but unless someone else is running around using phosphorous paint on their cutting tools, it was likely Porfiry’s. The remains looked like they had been run through a meat grinder; not even the bones were left unbroken. Javert was right about one thing. This time, I don’t think Porfiry is coming back.

But in spite of him killing Porfiry before I could, and very badly hurting my arm, I had fun with this whole thing. We should do it again sometimes.

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Saturday, April 16, 2011

Why so Silent, Good Messieurs?

Did you think that I had left you for good?

Has it really only been two weeks? It feels so much longer. How long, I cannot say. My sense of time when I was in that place was off.

So where did I leave off? Last you heard from me, it seems I was angrily shouting at the heavens. So what did I do next? I started trying to break things; a perfectly rational response, in my opinion.
What’s this? You want me to relive some point in my childhood, Slendy? But what will you do if I decide not to play along with the event as it happened, and instead start a fire and burn the building down?
This time I’m back outside Javert’s house, on the night I made his family hostages? But what if this time, I politely knock at their door, help them cook dinner and have a nice chat before excusing myself and going home?
Oh, so you’re placing me in that desperate moment where I escaped my apartment, and was driving frantically down the interstate to get as much distance as I could from the police? How about I turn the car around, and then ram Javert’s patrol car head on?
Next you’re making me go through that time I killed Jason, except from his perspective? But what if when hallucination me tries to push me off, I grab his arm, break his fingers, throw him onto the ground, stomp on his head repeatedly, and then toss the limp body over?


WHAT THEN, SLENDY?

I barely remember the specifics of it all. I don’t know if there was supposed to be a purpose or a message behind all the visions, but if there was, I ignored it. Possibly something about morality. Or what a bad, bad man I am. In the end, in spite of all these silly attempts to break my mind, my entire response could be summed up as “Screw this, I’m doing whatever I want”. Was I missing the entire point of this dream sequence-esque deal? Certainly. But there’s just something so satisfying about breaking the rules. Where I was expected to kill, I talked. Where I was expected to watch, I intervened. Where I was expected to run, I fought. Soon the experience ceased to be painful, and changed into a pleasure. It was exhilarating.

But Slendy did not seem to take kindly to me throwing aside the rules. The next few experiences were painful, to put it in the most understated tones. And they went on for a long time. A very long time.

Then everything ended abruptly, though it took my mind a while to understand that the pain had stopped. The world around me was completely black, as though covered in a complete darkness. Soon, a small light appeared. The light grew larger, as though coming closer, and its brightness intensified, until soon I was unable to look directly at it. Thoughts came unbidden to my mind as the light grew closer: that the light represented salvation, forgiveness, but most importantly, an end to the pain. Come into the light, accept it, and you will be freed from all anxiety and suffering. Leave this hell, and be at peace.

I didn’t have to think long.

With a smile, I leapt backwards, away from the light, further into the darkness.

I fell through the blackness for years without end. Or something poetic sounding like that. For a moment I closed my eyes, and then felt a thump as I touched the ground. When I opened them, I was lying on my mattress in Setoth’s apartment. Setoth was there as well, although his reaction to my sudden appearance was a bit disappointing. More of an “Oh, you’re back” than anything else. But I guess that sums it up best. Oh, well, it looks like I’m back.

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Thursday, April 7, 2011

Stop screwing with me, Slendy. Seriously. STOP. If you keep this up, I will be left with no choice but to take out my frustration on my laptop’s keyboard! Look! I’m already doing it! I’M RANTING! AND THESE RANTS WILL BE POSTED ONLINE! THAT’LL SHOW YOU FOR FUCKING WITH ME, SLENDY!

We could start with letting me in on how long I’ve been staying here! Days? Months? Years? It would help if my laptop could just decide what date it is and stick with it for more than five seconds!

And why’d we have to leave the grey city? I was getting used to that grey city! Now it’s all Weird Hallucination, Flashback, Creepy Forest, Flashback, Blackness, Weird Hallucination. HOW MANY FUCKING TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO HAVE ME KILL JASON? ARE YOU TRYING TO MAKE ME FEEL GUILTY OR SOMETHING, SLENDY? WE’VE BEEN OVER THIS ALREADY! THIS ISN’T GUILT INDUCING, IT’S JUST ANNOYING! AND IT DOESN’T HELP THAT YOU HAVE JAVERT’S VOICE RANTING IN THE BACKGROUND ABOUT WHAT A MONSTER I AM EVERY TIME I HAVE TO KILL HIM!

Seriously, what is all of this? Childhood memories? Annoyingly symbolic hallucinations? Are you trying to break me? Slendy, Slendy…. Don’t you realize who the hell you’re dealing with?

I AM

AKADY!

IVANOVICH!

SVIDRIGAILOV!

And I will NOT BE BEATEN BY SUCH PATHETIC TRICKS. You think this can stop me? Over and over, you’ve increased pressure on me, pushing me closer to the edge, until at last the point where I should snap. But at each climax, you have FAILED to defeat me; every time, I emerged STRONGER than I was before. DO YOU SERIOUSLY THINK THIS TIME WILL BE ANY DIFFERENT? THAT JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE ME TRAPPED HERE, YOU HAVE ME AT YOUR MERCY? I WILL TEAR DOWN THIS ENTIRE WORLD IF I HAVE TO!

Come on Slendy, enough of this play. If you aren’t going to let me out, then come out here and face me. FIGHT ME LIKE A FUCKING MAN. I AM SICK AND TIRED OF THIS GAME. I WILL RIP YOUR TENTACLES OFF WITH MY BARE HANDS IF I HAVE TO, AND THEN I WILL BEAT YOU WITH THOSE TENTACLES UNTIL ALL THAT IS LEFT OF YOU IS A BLACK SMEAR ON THE GROUND.

NO MATTER WHAT VISIONS YOU PUT ME THROUGH, NO MATTER HOW MANY OF YOUR STUPID PUPPETS YOU THROW AT ME, NO MATTER HOW MUCH PAIN YOU MAKE ME EXPERIENCE, I WILL FIGHT YOU UNTIL I HAVE WON. I WILL BE THE LAST ONE STANDING, THE ONLY VICTOR, THE CONQUEROR OF ALL.

EVERYTHING WHICH STANDS IN MY WAY SHALL BE BURNT TO ASHES!

YOU THINK YOURSELF TO BE A GOD? DON’T MAKE ME LAUGH.


IF YOU’RE A GOD, THEN I’M FUCKING RAGNARÖK.
AND IT’S ABOUT TIME FOR THE GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG.

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Monday, April 4, 2011

Wherever Here Is

Fuck.

I’ve been using that word a lot lately. I never used to. I tended to avoid obscenities, feeling they were much too crass and uncultured. But now it seems to be the only thing which adequately describes my feelings.

Kal and Michenab screwed up whatever protection stuff Setoth had given them, and Slendy was starting to break through. So Setoth and I had to bail them out with Setoth magick.
Setoth again came up with the plan. What it boiled down to was, we were going to try to forcibly drag Slendy all around Austin. You see, we already knew that Setoth’s summoning ritual had some kind of effect on him; that was how Setoth got into this whole mess to begin with. So what Setoth wanted to do was to set up recordings of the ritual all over the city. They would activate and pull Slendy to that spot. His presence would cause the electronics in the recording to break, but by the time that would happen, the next recording would activate, and he would be pulled to someplace completely different. During that time, Kal and Michenab were to grab the girl and make a run for it.

The plan went amazingly smoothly. We set up each of the recordings sights and turned on all the devices without any interference. No proxies, no Slendy, nothing. Given how rare success is in our field of business, we naturally assumed that this meant something unspeakably horrible was happening on the Father of Light side. The two of us rushed back to Setoth’s apartment, where he called Kal. Kal reported that everything was fine; the instant we’d started the recordings, Slender Man had vanished. We suspected it might have been a trap, so Kal remained in contact with us through the escape. The atmosphere was tense as he told us that he’d grabbed the girl, and Michenab had gotten his car. Then we got word that they were driving away from the apartment, and still hadn’t seen any sign of Slendy. It sounded like victory; the summoning gambit had worked, allowing Kal and Michenab to escape.

Then Slender Man appeared in front of us. I had only a brief moment then, not long enough to act, barely long enough to think. All I felt was incredible rage emanating from the creature, directed at me. Then I blacked out.

When I woke up, I was here. Wherever here is.

It looks like Austin…. Kinda. The basic geography has remained the same; streets and buildings are where they should be. If you can call them the same streets and buildings. Last I checked, the buildings of Austin were not gigantic monoliths that stretched above the clouds. Seemed like a new feature.

I haven’t seen anyone since appearing here, not even Setoth. Everything is gray and quiet. I can shout, but there’s no echo; just my voice falling dead in the air. Even the sound of my footsteps is muffled. I don’t know where the light is coming from; there’s no sun in the sky. No shadows anywhere, not from the buildings, not from myself. Only a gray light, without any source or direction.

I tried entering one of the buildings, but the door was locked. So I tried breaking it down, but was thwarted by its unnatural resilience. All other doors proved similarly difficult to penetrate, and even the glass windows appeared invulnerable. So it would appear that I’m stuck here on these empty streets.

This, though, is par for course when dealing with Slendy. What confuses me is the WiFi. I’m still able to connect to the internet; hell, the connection here is better than the one at Setoth’s place. Now, excuse me for sounding paranoid, but I doubt Slendy would set up a router inside this place just for me. Which means that he’s not only fine with me connecting, but he wants me to be able to access the internet.

Beyond appearing in this place, there’s little else for me to talk about. Everything I’ve seen in here is static and boring. I’m going to be looking for a way out, as I would prefer not to spend the rest of my life in boring town.

There had better be a way out of here. I will be filled with an excessive amount of anger if there isn’t.

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Saturday, April 2, 2011

Recap

A lot of stuff happened this week. Might be best if we give it a quick look over, to make sure everything’s in order.


-First, Kal saw a kid being kidnapped by Slendy right in front of him. This got Kal out of his whining, “Wah, wah, I’m being followed by a faceless embodiment of pure evil!” and made him want to join in the fight for GLORY.

-Kal got into contact with Setoth, asking for advice. Setoth came up with the theory that Slender Man might be related to the Astral Plane, and sent Kal in there. Kal didn’t find anything there, but did see some suspicious black forests of horror, although he could not enter those.

-Setoth then came up with a new theory, that Slendy was hiding out in some kinda weird place called “Oneiros”, which he claims is the Astral Plane’s reflection of the human subconscious and dream world. Kal and Setoth made a plan to go into Oneiros and find the boy whom Kal had seen taken.

-Now for the important part (the part where I’m included). While Setoth was in Oneiros, his body was vulnerable. So I had to play defense, and fight off anyone who came after us. Which they did. Thus I smote Slender Man’s entire legion of proxies singlehandedly.

-After my glorious battle, Setoth found himself forced back into the physical world, leaving Kal all by his lonesome in Oneiros.

-Then comes the twist, for while we were waiting for word from Kal, the next post on Father of Light was from Michenab (You know, Kal’s roommate. The one who thus far had absolutely no connection to Slendy whatsoever). You see, Michenab had come home to find an unconscious Kal next to a girl who had been kidnapped recently. Conclusions were jumped to, and Michenab grabbed the girl and ran out.

-Finally, we got word from Kal, detailing the adventure he had in Slenderworld. He tried to get in contact with Michenab, and convince him that his being found with a missing child was totally the fault of a supernatural creature and not him.

-Somehow, Kal talked Michenab into meeting. No clue how he pulled that off. Anyways, when Michenab went off to speak with Kal, he met a certain special someone. You see, it seems that Slendy doesn’t like it when people play with his food. Poor Kal, now he’s dragged his roommate into this as well.

-Michenab took the girl back to Kal’s place. Setoth got into contact with them, and recommended some weird ritual thing he claims would protect them for a while, which they did.

Which brings us to present day. Setoth’s been staying in contact with Kal; so far they haven’t seen Slendy, which Setoth takes as proof that the ritual is working, but meh, I’m skeptical. The last two times Setoth tried setting up magkical protection it didn’t work.

Haven’t seen Javert or Porfiry since that night; if I’m lucky, Porfiry’s dead. But I’ve learned to not leap to such conclusions where Porfiry is concerned. Going over the damage they did to me…. Well, I’m having to learn first aid pretty fast. As I mentioned before, my left shoulder was dislocated, and had to be popped back into place. That was also the shoulder which Porfiry bit, which I had to stitch up myself (stitching a recently dislocated shoulder is among the more painful things I’ve had to do in recent history). My nose had also been broken, and also had to be moved back into place. Plus I’ve got four scars going right across my face, where Porfiry clawed me. Deep, red scars; this wasn’t just a few scratches. The man would have clawed me to the bones if I’d given him the chance. It gave me some interesting looks at the store when I bought Setoth two bottles of absinthe (One to replace the bottle I’d used as a Molotov, and the other to replace the bottle I’d used to sterilize stuff while I had been fixing myself. Usually I’d ignore his complaints about me using his things, but I figured he’d earned it this time.)

So that’s how I spent my week. Now we wait to see how Slendy responds….

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Friday, April 1, 2011

Happy News

Javert showed up at my door today.

At first I was prepared to fight, but then he dropped down to one knee, and pulled out a ring. It was there that he confessed his eternal love for me, and asked for my hand in marriage.
Of course I said yes.

We're going to be getting married in a small abandoned shed in the middle of the woods, with Slender Man presiding (little known fact, but Slender Man is an ordained priest). It's just going to be a small ceremony, with only close friends and family attending. Setoth has already agreed to be a flower girl.

For the honeymoon, we're thinking of Libya, or some other war torn nation where the two of us can spend hours just gazing into each others eyes as we slaughter thousands.

Sure, there's still disagreements about the nature of his job, but I'm positive true love will find a way. I just wish this happiness that I'm feeling could last forever!

Oh, Javert's calling! I'll be back soon.


And one last thing.

Happy April first.

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