Outplayed.

So things might have gone a little wrong.

Yeah we were outplayed, which is surprising considering the ineptitude exhibited previously by Martha's goons. Malik is a tad bit pissed off right now and kind of won't stop smashing shit in our base, throwing a tantrum like a little baby. I'd smack him in order to for him to stop, but it's quite fun to behold to be honest. As a result of his current temper tantrum I guess I'll be the one posting about what exactly happened.

If you were paying attention to Malik's blog, you'd know that due to some people's ineptitude in keeping their banking accounts secure by turning off autofill, Malik was able to find an IP address from which Martha conducted her payment to the idiotic gentleman, for whatever odd jobs he did for her. With the IP Malik was able to figure out what city she was making her payments from, while this doesn't necessarily track her exact location down, it does show us what city she was operating from. Assuming that she was in a similar position that of an Oracle (This is a freebie for "Big Brother", since you were not familiar with the terminology, an "Oracle" is essentially the president of the entire Proxy system within a country.) she was most likely operating from one place and one place only in order to minimize exposing her own existence, much to the similarity of how Oracles tended to operate in general.

So we knew what City she was operating from, that's great, it still doesn't narrow down where exactly she was located. That's where Franky and his pet Denizens came in handy, we told him to Path in to the city and spread his Denizens around the entire city, Malik specifically marked a few locations to keep an eye on, apparently he had access to some kind of Proxy database, from how he explained it's essentially similar to the deep web (Whatever the fuck that is) and through there various requests and news were exchanged. I guess it also listed bases of operations in various cities, hence how he knew which locations for Franky to specifically keep an eye on.

Then came yesterday's post. While I meant what I said yesterday, the posts main purpose was to signal to Martha and her men that we were coming, in reality we weren't, we just wanted to steer up the hive and steer it up we did. I'm assuming once the post went up some movement began in the city, allowing Franky and his pets to start tracking said movement, it was probably made all easier considering that the City was in lockdown and there wasn't a lot of cars, or people outside. Eventually Franky was able to track all the supposed movement (Franky didn't exactly explain how he was able to track them down, due to him being a mute), after which he Pathed us right outside some kind of Mansion, in the forest next to it.

From our hiding spot we could see that there was a lot of vehicles parked outside, vans and all that other shit. Malik pointed out that the vehicles looked very similar to the hit-squad's vehicles he encountered a while back, when the Proxy System was collapsing, apparently these guys were sent out by the higher ups to wipe out the remainder of their subordinates, for what purpose? Fuck knows? Maybe they wanted to leave gracefully and rebuild in silence? Regardless, now we knew that there were several military grade fuckers running around in that Mansion.

Luckily we were in a forest behind the main entrance of the Mansion. From the back we got a clear view of the 3 story building, knowing how Oracles loved their top floor offices, my best guess as to where Martha was within the building, was probably on the third floor in the main office. As cliché as that may sound, when I climbed the tree in order to get a good view of the third floor, the guess seemed to have been proven to be true, because on the third floor, there was this huge balcony that was left unguarded, with big windows revealing an office, inside of which was a woman in a chair, filling out some kind of paperwork whilst talking on the phone.

So me and Malik managed to sneak our way towards the mansion and we began climbing the wall all the way to the balcony, avoiding the windows as much as we could in order to not get spotted by the heavily armed guards. The entire time that I was climbing there was this nagging feeling that wouldn't leave my head, whatever it was, it had to wait, because once we made it to the balcony, Malik seemed to have thrown all the caution to the wind and began to storm right towards the office with his sword unsheathed. Stopping him might have been a good idea, but at the time I felt no need to interfere, at the end of the day, this was his crusade and I personally wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

Yeah, I quickly realized that, that nagging feeling in my head, was my own self screaming at me that this was all way too easy. Because when Malik broke through the office windows, ranting at Martha how he was going to enjoy stabbing her corpse, the nagging became a full blown yell, as Malik turned the chair around what we were greeted with wasn't JUST Martha, but an icy stare and some kind of bomb on her lap. I quickly grabbed Malik and spun myself around, allowing my darling to morph the back of the jacket into a wall of sorts which managed to protect both of us from the detonating blast, which seemed to take out the entire third floor. Myself and Malik found ourselves on the second floor, buried under the rubble, covered in smoke and dust. Everything was spinning and my body wanted to puke it's guts out, but there was no time because I heard heavy footsteps stomping around above us and beneath us. I turned to see if Malik was even alive and to his credit, he wasn't just alive, he was already getting up, cursing to himself, not sure if from pain, the shittyness of the situation, or a combination of both.

I didn't have time to ponder, because through the smoke we could see some kind of green light flickering, I wasn't sure what it was at first. However, Malik was much faster to figure things out, considering he immediately dropped back to the floor and began to crawl under a long table of this other officer that we were now in. Dawning on me that the green light was from the soldier's gun, some kind of aim light, I fond myself in a position of not being able to really do anything other than distract. See, due to my darling defending us the way that she did, the explosion ripped her apart, she was fine because I could still hear her within me, but she needed time to regrow, meaning that she couldn't defend me at the time. So I raised my hands and yelled out "I surrender!", as smoke cleared up a bit, I could see that there was two of them, both slowly approaching me with the one closest to me aiming his gun at me and the one behind him radioing my location. Once they got close enough, that's when Malik stabbed the one with the radio in his leg from under the table, causing him to drop his gun, Malik then swung for the second one but the soldier was able to block the sword with the Kevlar that was on his arms. He was about to blow Malik's brains away, but at this point I was close enough to morph a sharp edged spike around my left hand stump and stab him through the back of his throat. Second soldier scrambled for his gun, but Malik was quick enough to punt him in the head, kick the gun away and stab him in the back of his throat as well.

There was no time to rest because of the radio man, there was probably a bunch of them running in our direction now. Going out the hallway wasn't gonna do anything since that's where they were probably coming from, only other way out was the window. So after we picked their guns up, Malik threw a chair at the window, smashing it, after which he tore off the curtain and began to tie it to the radiator that was underneath the window, whilst throwing the other end of the curtain out said window, we were gonna have to climb down to the lower floor. Whilst he was doing all of that, I was using the doorway as cover, firing off random shots into the hall to keep the soldiers at bay long enough, this was honestly the best use of me with a gun, since I never used guns before. When Malik was done, he ran up, flipped the long table against the doorway to stall them and we ran towards the window, climbing down along the curtain to the 1st floor (Which wasn't the ground floor, so jumping down was out of the question). Malik managed to get into the window of the first floor, but I wasn't quick enough and one of these soldiers was pointing a gun at me from the window that we were climbing out of, I'm thinking that I would end up with a few bullet holes by now, however that's when our friend crashed the party.

As the soldier was aiming down at me, suddenly his insides began to explode out of his stomach, partially covering me in his blood. Sticking out of him was a long, slimy, black tentacle and as it quickly retracted back into the window, it yanked the soldier after it. Shortly after that gunfire and screaming erupted in the room that we were escaping from. I was transfixed by the sound of chaos happening above, only breaking out of my trance with Malik yelling at me to get a move on. The coast seemed to be clear, so we began running out of the room that we were now in, into the hallway. As we were running through the hallway towards the entrance room of the mansion, 2 soldiers got in our way as they came running out of some door, clearly not expecting to see us (Probably were headed upstairs), to my surprise Malik took out the first one with pretty well placed shots, while I lunged at the second soldier, once again extending and morphing part of my self into a sharp edged spike around the left hand stump and stabbing him directly in the throat, the stunt earned me a bullet wound in the side. As I was removing the spike from his throat I could hear the commotion upstairs, large banging sounds of wet flesh smacking against the wooden walls, gunshots and blood curdling screaming, sounded like the squad was having fun with our guest.

Through the screams we finally made our way towards the entrance room and who was there waiting for us on top of the stairs? Of course it was our Tall Faceless Friend, casually standing there, a trail of blood and corpses behind him, with the hallway to the right of him covered in blood all the way to the ceiling, his long crooked arms in a relaxed state, black long-clawed hands dangling right by where his knees would be. His pale faceless head slowly twisting to the side, with only one tendril sticking out of his back at the end of which was hanging a thrashing soldier, who was desperately trying to at the same time get off the tendril, but also try and keep his organs within himself. I quietly told Malik to open fire, but no fire came, when I looked over at him, he was fucking trembling, eyes wide like a deer caught in the headlights, I would have slapped him for his pathetic display but there was no time for that, so I reached for his gun, but was quickly interrupted as a tendril quickly wrapped around my neck, lifted me off my feet and sent me smashing against the wall above the entrance, pushing me against it, slowly crushing my windpipe. I had to extend a part of my self out of my human host's throat in order to slow down the crushing, when my true self made contact with his tendril, it burnt me, it hurt, you could hear the weird sizzling sound, but it was the best I could do to slow down it's attempts at choking the human body, whilst I tried to come up with a plan to get us out of this predicament.

Malik was no help, he just continued to stand in place, trembling like a pathetic weakling that he was. Our Tall Friend began to lift one of his arms up and as it lifted through the air, it seemed to extend, to a point where he's clawed fingers were now inches away from Malik's face. Meanwhile I noticed that the soldier's now lifeless body that was still dangling from the tendril, had a few goodies on it, mainly two grenades of some kind. My darling wasn't fully regrown yet, but there was enough of her to help out with our escape, I extended one of my legs giving her a head start of sorts and she grew out of my foot, ripping my shoe to bits in the process, reaching towards the soldier's belt, quickly reaching it, she stabbed through the pins on the grenades and pushed against them, forcing them to unpin whilst at the same time also ripping off the belt off the soldier, causing them to fall on the ground below. A mix of explosion and smoke that resulted, seemed to snap Malik out of his trance, since I saw him scrambling towards the door. While all of that was happening I yet again grew a sharp edged spike around my stump and managed to stab the tendril off of me, allowing to fall beside Malik and scramble out of the mansion myself.

Catching my breath, I could hear the sirens in the distance, looked to the side and saw Malik vomiting onto the stairs that were leading to the entrance of the mansion. I grabbed him by the arm and began to pull him after myself, running down the stairs as quickly as I could. Shoved him inside one of the parked vans and told him to start hotwiring (He told me before that he learned how to do it whilst being a proxy, I'm assuming that's also when he learned how to shoot). Once I could hear the car engine roaring to life, I shoved him to the back so he could finish his vomiting routine, whilst I drove us the fuck out of there.

So yeah, well played Martha, well played, I mean we still got what we wanted, you're dead. But not only did you almost manage to take us with you, but you also denied Malik the satisfaction of the kill and now he's raging like a baby, yes, he is still breaking shit.

I however doubt that the appearance of a Lanky Faceless Fuck was part of the plan. I wonder why he started acting up all of a sudden.

Greed never lasts.

So a bit about the haps. We are prepping to move out on Malik's latest lead, so yeah, this oughta be fun, with any luck, this will be the moment where we will nail good ol' Martha. As I find myself with some free time on my hands, I decided to make a post, just for you my darlings.

You know, just when I think that there aren't anymore pieces left in this game, I get proven otherwise. On that note, say hello to the "Bowie Commission". 

"Who are they?" you might ask.

Well my dears, they are an organization of sorts, what is their purpose? No idea, their PR Team a.k.a. "Big Brother" can feel free to clarify that one in the comments, if he so wishes to. However, their activities so far were minimal, just merely compiling information about various pieces within this game (Yours truly included) and that's pretty much it. So why do I mention them?

Well, for one, it doesn't seem as though we are going to be on the most friendliest of terms with them, so I figured that keeping an eye on them from now on would be a good idea, just in case they get any funny ideas about interfering in my business (Honestly though, part of me hopes that this happens, I do enjoy decimating corporate structures).

Another reason, is because once I stumbled upon them, I of course reached out to them, extending an olive branch in the form of helpful advice on how all of them can prolong their existence in this game: Which would be to drop all of this corporate bullshit and run for the hills.

And that's the purpose of this post, to show them (And by extension Martha, since she also leads and organization of sorts) that this Funded Organization stuff never works out. Things tend to get messy within a corporate environment rather quickly, most of the times due to greed and very rarely due to happenstance, sometimes a combination of both.

Either it be teammates who hide shit, higher ups who get a little too drunk on their own power, or an outside element that completely decimates everything around you, it just never works out. But it is always such an entertaining sight to behold, mainly because, somehow, none of them ever expect this destructive outcome.

Take Joseph and his Baker Squad for example, a group of experienced, proxy field agents, working together to take down those pesky, psychotic Runners. Oh how much disdain there was among them for the runners, how they would stand a top of their soap boxes to ruminate about how they were better than those runners in every way possible. What happened in the end? Joseph was continuously humiliated by the higher ups, sure he might have been promoted at some point, but I don't think it was an act of acknowledgment from his bosses, considering he didn't even want the position. Cue Joseph showing his own psychopathic side, exploiting his teammates as means to get back at the higher ups and overall, just becoming more miserable. And what happened in the end? For his loyal servitude, his team was dissolved, some of his friends turned on him and the cherry on top, he was branded as a traitor and was forced to run from his superiors. Today he is probably dead in a ditch somewhere.

What about Spencer Fitzgerald and his little delivery club? Now there's a mess worth reading about. They thought they had enough money and sense to run their little delivery scheme, without getting into any severe danger. Holy fucking shit were they wrong, inner lies and deceit tore that operation to smithereens and Spencer paid the most dearest prize a person can, their humanity.

How about Diana? Here she thought she'd spend the rest of her life pushing around papers in the comfort of the proxy-shared accommodation, on behalf of her bosses and what happens? One crazed lunatic returns from the dead and proceeds to royally decimate an entire structure of their organization, almost single-handedly and that wasn't even his goal. In the end, he ended up dead, everyone involved ended up dead and Diana herself? Probably fucking dead too.

But why are we talking about only Proxy Organizations? Let's talk about the Oathbreaker's little foray into the world of cut-throat corporations. There they are, in their own little cult town, raising their soldiers, expanding their territory, on occasion abducting Proxies, you know, just to show that their competition shouldn't sleep on them. And the next second they are being absolutely decimated by the likes of Nightscream and David Banks.

There's a reason any structure, that relies on any kind of central funding, always falls apart, that being greed. For all of Nightscreams amazing work, the Proxies themselves would eventually begin to lose their grasp and influence over the world, as their funding would begin to get cut off and those who deemed themselves more important, would begin to devour those beneath them. Greed ladies and gentlemen, greed is the sole reason why a financed structure can never last in this explosive game of ours.

So hopefully you'll take note "Big Brother" and get your old ass out of danger as quickly as possible, preferably whilst blogging about it, cause you know, I enjoy reading in my spare time.

Alrighty, looks like Malik is all readied up, Martha, get the dinner ready, cause we're coming over.