I mean, that's exactly what we've been doing for the past 6 days, mainly by looking their names up in the white pages and then using Franky to Path our way to their address and it's been nothing but smooth sailing from there, until we hit the 3 last names on the list. See, we Pathed our way to the house of the next target, house wasn't super fancy, just a two story building with a backyard, a backyard that I used to sneak up on the house in order to get a quick look at the man residing within the house, so I perched myself up on the tree and waited to see if I would spot a face similar to the one I saw in Claude's memory through one of the windows. This was taking a while so Malik and Franky walked off to get themselves a drink in a nearby 7/11 store, leaving me hanging on that tree, bored out of my mind, now you might ask, why didn't I just break into the house to speed things up? Two reasons: 1. I actually have no idea how to lock pick doors and all the windows were closed, so sneaking in wasn't an option; 2. If sneaking in wasn't an option, brute forcing was the only way, except I didn't want to attract ANY attention to myself AT ALL during this time, because I'm trying to avoid catching Slendy's attention again, I rather enjoy using The Path with no interruptions.
Well, that last bit was quickly drained down the toilet, as I was sitting in my tree, boring myself to death, a sudden burst of force that hit me in my shoulder from the side sent me plummeting to the ground off the tree, immediately standing up, confused, I hid behind the tree I was sitting on top of this entire time, that's when I noticed the pain shooting through my arm, whatever hit me in my shoulder travelled with such speed that it dislocated my shoulder. Few seconds later Fortissimo ended up spitting out a bullet through one of my sleeves, somebody tried to shoot me, luckily for me Fortissimo reacted quickly and clumped up enough of herself around the shoulder area to prevent the bullet from penetrating the shoulder. I tried to peek from my cover, but was immediately met with a bullet wheezing past me, right in front of my face, grazing the tree. That's when I heard the car's engine start that was parked next to the house, which explains why I didn't see any movement inside the house for so long, the fucker was hiding in his car this entire time, as the car began to drive off I saw Franky and Malik jumping out of it's way, yelled to them that this was our guy driving off and they gave chase on foot.
While they were chasing down the car, I was going to deal with my assailant, who's location up until this point eluded me, I knew he shot me from the side, meaning he was on top of one of the neighbouring buildings, but I had no idea which one and considering the fact that he wasn't opening fire on Malik or Franky, it was clear that whoever this was, was after me specifically. My only option was to quickly jump the fence that led to a nearby forest, right behind this guy's backyard, with the forest hopefully preventing the shooter from having a clear view of me. I'm so lucky that Claude was the type of person who felt like he needed to keep his body in shape, because this body's agility on it's own is very impressive, managed to clear the fence very quickly, bullets wheezed by, but none of them hit their intended target. Managing to make it inside the forest, I could still hear bullets hitting various trees near me, whoever this was, he was persistent, so I asked my darling to wrap herself around my body, making us blend in with the darkness of the forest. After the shooting stopped, instead of running deeper into the forest, I began running in the direction of where the shots were coming from, without leaving the forest. I had to find out who this was that was on my ass, suspecting that this was the same person who took pot shots at me before, then his next course of action would be to go after Malik and Franky, in order to get to me. Lo and behold, I was finally able to see the same silhouette from before, juxtaposed against the moon, I could clearly see him packing away his weapons and begin climbing down from the top of the two story derelict building he decided to occupy as his vantage point.
Rushing up towards the back of the building, I could see through the hole that was supposed to be a window at some point, the mystery assailant making his way through the first floor, towards his car. Couldn't allow him to get to it, so I leaned against the window, extended my left arm (the one that wasn't dislocated) through the window and elongated my sleeve into a tendril that slithered through the air towards him at a fast pace. The idea was to wrap around his neck and drag him towards me, but before my tendril could reach him, he quickly spun around and cut the end of the tendril off with a knife in a quick motion, after which he started opening fire on me with a pistol that he was holding in the other hand. I quickly rolled off the window, with my tendril coming back into my sleeve and landed on my dislocated shoulder, the pain of which reminded me that I still had a dislocated shoulder. I asked my darling to pop it back into place, which she did by morphing around it and forcefully yanking it into place, hurt pretty bad, wish I had the time to soak in the pain, but a Molotov that ended up hitting the edge of the window I was near, spreading flames in the process didn't give me that luxury. Rolling away from the fire, I took a moment to think, popping up from around the corner nearest to me would be suicide, no doubt the assailant was keeping an eye on it, rushing to the other corner would take too long, I needed an element of surprise, so I asked my darling to wrap herself around me once more and try her best to protect us from the fire, because I decided the best course of action was to jump through the burning window and catch our assailant by surprise. She did a magnificent job, I could feel the heat surround me as I flung myself through the window, even when getting to my feet, I could see parts of our jacket still flaming, but as I rushed towards the location of our assailant, my darling would put the fires out. As I suspected, he was guarding the corner, allowing me the chance to tackle him from behind, knocking his fedora off of his head, now on top of him, I morphed a sharp spike around my hand and drove it straight into his chest, I was expecting a yelp of pain, or a gargle, anything but an annoyed grunt as if a mosquito just bit him, the next unexpected move was his left hand smashing against my chin, sending me toppling off of him. I scrambled to my feet, as he himself began to stand up, dusting off his green trench coat, inspecting the wound I inflicted upon him.
Finally I could see the face of my assailant, with the moon fully lighting his head up, although, "face" is a bit of a generous description. It was very obvious what this guy was, with his sickly green skin, flesh that was in the process of rotting off his face, a lack of lips revealing his surprisingly white teeth, lack of a nose with just two holes and his right eye missing its eye lids. This guy was clearly possessed by a Dying Man shard, once he finished checking on his wound, I was able to get a better look at him overall. Underneath his green trench coat he was wearing a white business shirt, which made me notice the black blood that was staining it from the wound that I had made, a purple tie, brown formal pants, complete with brown fancy shoes, oh and the left hand that hit like the freight train? Yeah, that thing was encased in some sort of metal armour. Oh, he also had a bag hanging off to his side underneath the trench coat.
Corpse Man hunched over to pick up his fedora, without taking his eyes off of me , he put the fedora back on his head, covering his eyes with it's shadow, after which he spoke.
"Must you be so barbaric? This was a newly purchased garment." He spoke with a sophisticated, calm tone, which is quite a feat for guy who was currently bleeding from a stab wound in his chest, which led me to understand that he didn't feel any pain.
Now for those of you who are observant, might notice that this guy, in his description at least, resembles Koschey a little bit, with the additions of having a sophisticated tone to himself and an armoured hand. So I decided to prod: "My apologies, you did try to shoot me, but since we're conversing, tell me, you related to Koschey by any chance?"
He put his hands behind his back, smugly chuckling to himself: "Indeed, I was an associate of the one you dubbed 'Koschey'..." And then I heard a slight ripping sound as I noticed his arms jolt, then instantly, he lobbed something in my direction. I assumed it was a grenade of some sort, so I jumped back as far as I could, but all I heard was a loud pop, as smoke erupted all over me. Landing on my feet, trying to see through the smoke earned me a stab in the chest with a knife, an effect that this guy achieved by rushing through the smoke and taking advantage of my disorientation. The searing pain, combined with this guy putting all of his weight into the knife, sent me to the floor with him toppling over me, grabbing my throat with his armoured hand and squeezing.
"Let us conduct our business serenely, disrupting the public at this hour would be most improper." This fucking guy, why is it that I always attract the freaks? But he had a point, I'm quite amazed that we didn't wake up the entirety of the neighbourhood at this point and I intended to keep it that way, because at the time, I still wanted to stay off the radar for as long as possible, if I had known then what a fruitless endeavour it would turn out to be, I wouldn't have even bothered.
Considering that he didn't restrict any of my arms, we wrapped a solidified lump around my left hand, which we then used to smash into his arm that was squeezing on the knife, smashed so hard we ended up breaking his forearm, which immediately threw him off balance, allowing me to grab him by the collar with my right hand and pull him towards myself, headbutting him, which I think hurt me more than him, but it led to the result I wanted, he ended up letting go of my throat, allowing me to quickly scramble to my feet and tackle him inside the derelict building we were nearby.
Rolling over to my feet, he was already out of my grasp, hiding in the shadows of the building, shadows which were emanating from the still burning window. Taking the moment, I pulled the knife out of my chest as quickly as possible, allowing my darling to start working on mending the wound, then his voice echoed throughout the building: "I believe it is ill-advised to remove sharpened equipment in the case of an incising circumstance." Couldn't tell where the voice was coming from, but it did sound from further down the building, meaning he wasn't near me.
"Oh yeah? Well it's also ill-advised to take pot shots at me, things usually never end up in a good way for the person who attempts something like that." I yelled out, making sure that he would hear me, after which I began walking further into the building. His voice rang out again "I am aware Mr. Oleg, however, I'm afraid my current commission dictates that such action is necessary." Commission? Another Dead Man Shard assassin, like Koschey? As I walked further, I tried to prod further "Commission? What are you, some sort of assassin like Koschey was? I mean, you did mention that he was your associate." At this point I had reached the stairs that led to the second floor, well, technically, the roof, considering the second floor lacked a roof at this point in time, inspecting the area around the stairs, he spoke again, his voice clearly coming from somewhere at the top: "While true, Terror was an associate of mine, that promptly ended the moment he went into business for himself, severing himself from our proprietor." Now this was getting interesting, but further questioning would have to wait, I had to figure out a way to get upstairs, without getting my head blown off, because it didn't take a genius to figure out that he was guarding the stairway. Luckily for me there was a window near the stairway, climbing out of it and grabbing onto the steel frames that were sticking out from underneath the cement, made it a very easy climb towards the second floor, where I could see Corpsy standing over the stairway, inspecting it, no doubt trying to spot me. In his armoured hand he was gripping his handgun, which put me at a disadvantage, I had to find a way to distract him, luckily, I decided to keep the knife on me that was previously embedded into my chest, now I'm not much of a knife thrower, so throwing it at him would most likely prove to be a fruitless endeavour, instead, I threw the knife as far away as possible from myself, the clanging sound that it made upon landing against the concrete caused Corpsy to spin and wildly shoot in the direction of the sound, allowing me the opportunity to close the distance between us, smacking the gun out of his hand, which earned me a solid hit from his armoured hand, directly to my head, causing me to fall to my knee, however I wasn't going to let him capitalise, falling onto my back, my darling wrapping and solidifying around my foot in the process, I then kicked him with the foot directly in his right knee, the sound of a snap, following by his instant fall backwards onto the stairs, indicated that my kick was successful enough to break his knee.
I got up, holding my head, trying to balance myself and ignore the sparks in my eyes, I looked down at him, laying on the stairs, looking back at me, as calm as ever: "So, before I kill you, mind telling me about this 'proprietor'?" I formed a sharp edge with my sleeved around my left hand, ready to stab the shit out of Corpsy. "Surely Mr. Oleg, you don't think a business provider of my calibre would divulge such sensitive information, so nonchalantly." A smug sounding chuckle later: "I will, however, inform you that quite a lot of habitués would like to see you evanesce, one of such entity's is currently engaged with your colleagues." This made me pause, remembering that Malik and Franky were still out there somewhere, doing fuck knows what, just as I turned around, planning to go looking for them, they were right behind me, with Malik yelling in a panicked state that we had to get out of there immediately. Having no idea what freaked him out so much, they gave me no time to question them, before Pathing me out of there.
Malik will write up what caused him grief himself on his own blog, I would do it myself, but I have to prepare for my upcoming trip. It's a good thing that I had planned this trip in advance, before getting access to the Path again, with us not being able to use The Path for a while, my planned trip manages to stay on track and according to schedule, talk about lucky.
But yeah, so apparently there's some sort of "proprietor" out there that is seeking my death, funny isn't it, how all of a sudden, all of these freaks start coming out of the woodwork the instant I phrase things in a certain way, on one blog post.
Entertaining indeed.
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