Reuinted

Hello. Moth here.

So this is probably the more pressing part of this update, I've reunited with Picasso and Navi.

Navi is pretty fucked up. Or was. We let some time ass. We've been moving. Always moving. Have to be. Fracture's been chasing us pretty hard. Or at least his men have. Hes mad. Madder then I've ever seen him. We stopped leaving the car. We loiter off in parking lots. Have to be ready to leave in a moments notice. Gas prices have been hell on our budget lately as a direct result. And now that we don't have Sloth to fund our mission, that budget isn't going to be getting any bigger so we have to be frugal... if money should get tight we may very well end up robbing some poor fucks to make a quick buck at some pawn shop.

My greatest concern there is the possibility of accidentally creating some new runners... I'll have to be careful with how I handle things if it gets to that. Then again, that risk is supposedly present in everything we do. Kind of hell on the nerves if you think about it too much. Just have to... try to ignore it I guess.

... I got so sidetracked there. Damn it. I'm rambling. I need to watch that. Its a terrible trait.

So Navi was pretty fucked up. We're not sure who bandaged her up, as Picasso can't see Navi and Navi was apparently passed out for it but they did a pretty good job. They were in New York though. Everything from New York City to Philadelphia is an uncannily active hub for proxies and fears so it could have been anyone looking to cut a light blow against Fracture. I'd like to think its an old friend or something but, I can't imagine they'd risk it.

 But since they did such a good job, and since I've been pulling more than my own fair share of the work to make sure she can take it easy, (And since shes such a good girls she insists on constantly reminding me) she healed up pretty quick. Her stitches aren't quite out but shes been doing some minor exercises to get back into form. She should be bouncing off the walls and pissing me off in no time flat at this rate.

I'd had sustained some minor injuries myself... but not as troubling as a stab wound. My opponent was careful just to piece my skin. My arms were pretty ripped up. I think they were trying to induce minor blood loss while disabling my ability to fight. We'll get back to that later in the post.

It made moving my arms a pain in the ass. Every little muscle flex would irritate those nerves. I suppose I should just be happy I didn't end up with any snapped ligaments.

Since my range of motion had to be slow and deliberate, Picasso was doing a lot of the driving and buying. Once Fracture's goons really started to come down on us I had to push myself to drive so she could sleep. I've had a lot of cuts rip open on me. Now that I'm better, I have to be honest, my arms look like shit. More scarred flesh then I'd ever hope to have earned. My over all range of motion is... mostly what it was. I can still make my wide breath of motion with my arms but I have to tell myself that I can. I haven't quite gotten over that sensation that they could rip back open if I over do it when but I'm pretty sure they're fine now.

If we ever find more then a days break somewhere, I'll have to spar with Picasso or something. I need see if I'm more fucked up than I think I am and the best way to find out is by doing. So here is hoping that goes well if the opportunity should ever present itself.




So back to the asshole that disabled me. For those that can remember him, apparently Helrick is still alive.

News that absolute made Picasso perk up.

"What?! NO! You're lying! HOW?! Did he actually kill them all himself? OH MY GOD IS HE AWESOME?!"

'No. Hes working for Fracture.' Her smile sank as she read those words. She smashed one of the rear view mirrors with her fist and kicked the non-discript vehicle hard enough to dent it. Furious.

"FUCK HIM. I knew he was weak..."

Yeah... weak.

He fucked me up. Once more, I'm ahead of myself.

So I had been making a point of being track-able. Fracture made a point of announcing that he was sending his finest after us so I made of point of being known. I path traveled a lot. I made transactions with Sloth's account. I used my old cell number to shoot fake plans to Picasso. I'm thinking I over did it and he caught on that something was up because his finest didn't show up to face me.

As Hollow's Eve night fell on me, I made my final stop. A big ass aquarium. A place I'd done a job at before. And from that job, I knew how to rig the room I was waiting in to flash flood with the press of a button. I just had to wait for his finest to show up looking for me and then with the press of that button they were gonna drown to death. Not exactly the kind of victory I like but at this point I'll take any victory.

But as I've said, his finest did not show. Instead I got a single arrival. A muscular man with his arm in a sling. His face concealed by a black hoody. I figured this was just a scout. If he didn't come back, surely the rest of the 'finest' would come out and I should spring the trap then. So I stepped out into view and flicked on the lights.

To my surprise, it was Helrick.

"Ah. Hello Moth. Just you? Where's Picasso... and that one girl. Whats-her-tits. Novi I think? Or maybe Navi. 'Hey listen!', hahaha. I can't believe she made that her name.... where are they?"

'...'

"Oh right. You're mute. See, I've been looking for you guys. You were right. That assault on the police station was... it was a shit idea you know? I took a few bullets. I was lucky to get out of there with my life. Had to go hide and lick my wounds... guess I was lucky I left Black lake when I did. You guys really fucked that place up. I mean jeez. Overkill. But hey, that town tried to kill me for helping them... hard to fault you.

... So where is everyone else."

His demeanor was offensive. His guard was high. His unslung hand had was hidden, I suspected on a weapon. I considered he might have been being followed but that was giving him too much befit of the doubt. How could he have possible have tracked me? Pathing around made it easy for Fracture to track me, but for any non-proxy it should be terribly fucking difficult. Hell, I don't even know how Fracture does that shit. And yet as soon as I stop moving for more than a day... there he is. Like he knew exactly where I was.

He was lying. Fracture sent him. No doubt. I drew my spear.

I could see him grin. I guess he already had a pretty good idea that wasn't going to work.

"I never was a good liar," he laughed pulling off his eye-patch to reveal his cat eye and pulling his arm from its sling to reveal his rake claw. "But a fight I can do. I'll make a liar out of you when I leave you lying on the floor!" He snickered at this terrible fucking joke. He dropped down on all fours and started dashing at me.

Hes fucking fast. I thought I had him. A running start is a terrible idea against a spear, but he leapt against wall and kick into my side. Once he was in and on me, my spear was not doing me a lot of good.

I kept trying to spin and swing at him but he kept pace and ripped at my arms. By that last swing, when I finally did hit him, it wasn't very hard. He just grinned his toothy grin and shoved me against the wall. My arms were fucked. Useless. That spear was dead to me. I couldn't much leave with it now. It'd just get in the way. Colors were fading. I was dizzy.

He brought his fist up. I think he thought I was done. He was wrong. He threw my weight hard in on direction. I knew it was gonna be coming at me so I just had to make a good point of moving. Heard him shout. Listened to bones snap with a loud thud as he accidentally brought his fist against the wall in what was likely supposed to be a knock out punch. That rake claw, its real good for slashing and impaling but not punching. Given the shape those hands take when a feral-ling mutates, they break easily under the force of a punch.

I grabbed his shoulders. I needed to secure the advantaged before he could recoup from the pain. I couldn't push or pull real hard but holding him like that made it easy to drive a knee into his gut. He crumpled over, winded.

Time to fuck off. I Pathed out to my car and sped off for as long as I could bear, not long, into the middle of nowhere. Bandaged up. Did my best to drive further way before the adrenaline wore off and I finally had to curl up and sleep to escape the pain.

I spent the next few days trying to meet up with Picasso. Moving around was hellish. I'm lucky I made it.

They kept showing up at the meeting spots before me. Had keep changing it closer until I just had them coming in to pick me up.

That sucked.

... Better now. But fuck that asshole.  Helrick, I'm sure you read this. Fuck you buddy. Traitorous asshole. I'm gonna feed you your own claw. Seriously, fuck you.

Moth out.

the Path

Navi here... hi.

So uh, apparently I've been called to answer what I was up to over the Halloween week or something? Or 'Hollow's Eve' as Captain Caps-Lock likes to call it.

So lets run through her questions really quick. 'Her'. Presumably a her. Moth likes to refer to it as a her... but Picasso is not a name for a 'her'. I keep picturing I've been traveling around with an old artist who doesn't know how fucking shapes work. Hack.

But lets get back to the questions, no need to dwell on the opinions that got me thrown out of art class.

"What happened girl? Where you at? You still here with me? Where you going? You alive?"

-Picasso in the last post, allegedly 

I have no idea what happened.
I'm here, in a hotel room.
I didn't pay for it, the door was unlocked, and no one has been complaining so I assume I'm still with you or I've actually broken into someones house.
I have no idea where I'm going. Presumably, I'm following you to meet up with the people who probably killed Moth.
I am totally alive. And if I'm not, this is a better hell than I could have ever asked for so yay me.

But to address the more general question of what I've been up to, I'm gonna be honest and say I'm not entirely sure...

I'm not sure about a lot of things anymore. All I know is the Path.

Ever since Master started chasing me, my bright colorful world turned black.
I was hopeful when I was cornered and begging for Master to end my suffering and ordered to 'kneel' by something that felt more like an overwhelming inescapable presence filling my mind and scrapping away at my thoughts than actual words... that the darkness might go away.

But it didn't. The world turned even blacker. Now the only light is the floor in front of me. The only color is what passes for emotions from a mute and a sociopath I can't even see. No offense guys. But you feel funny. Your colors are wrong.

All I've been doing since then is following the Path that lights up before me... killing or talking to people in the areas that light up around me. Desperately trying to figure out why the Path stopped there. Figuring out what I'm supposed to do there. And when its done, it gets dark again and I follow the new Path.

After I met Master and Moth again at the hotel, the Path changed. No longer was it a lit path guiding me around. It became an area around Master, calling me to his side... branching out only when I needed to take him somewhere.

And then when we left the hotel Moth dragged me into that... place. What he calls the Path. Apparently that's what all of his kind and their victims call the path. But its not. They're so wrong. That place was more like Master's Neverland. There were so many of them. They called for us. Screamed for us. G-Grabbed at us.

They wanted to play 'the tree game'. I just wanted to get away from them. I just wanted to escape them and their constant grabbing and whining. So many faces. So many colors... I practically threw myself out of the exit portal thing...

Master didn't follow us out... still in Neverland I guess. Still with 'them'. But the Path, the Path still lit up around Moth beckoning me to follow him. And I did.

Until operation 'Hollow Hunt'. Moth wrote my orders on a single sticky note. The note had an address, a date, and the key phrase 'Stake Out' written on it. Once he handed me the note, he walked off into the blackness. The Path no longer followed him. I turned around to find a new path opening up behind me. It led me to a car and kept me in the passenger seat until I needed to eat or sleep. In this way, it eventually led me to the place on the note and then to a place to stake out the address until Halloween night.

I have to assume this new path I've been following has been forming in Picasso's wake. That its leading me to travel with her since I was told I would be working with her for this but I can't be sure.

Before anyone asks, I have not tried to wonder away from this Path. It... wouldn't be safe.
I occasionally glance off into the darkness as I walk with what was, at one point, curiosity of what might lie in the dark mysterious abyss that surrounds me. I now know the answer to be all manner of horrible things.

Veins of lava, chasms, wide open toothy mouths,  saw blades, outstretched appendages, corpses, grinning children, and worst of all People.

I can see old loved ones and family members roaming around in the darkness. They're screaming, bleeding, battered, and covered in blood. Many of them call out my name begging to know 'Why? Why did you doom us? Why did you kill us?!'

I know from experience that trying to answer just brings louder angrier screaming... best not to bother.

Sometimes, out the corner of my eye, I can catch Master out there standing deep into the darkness and staring at me with that eyeless, featureless face. A stare so intense it often winds me, leaving me to choke on my own fucking breath. I don't know why he does it. I've been good. I've been so good. I never leave the Path. Never! Never ever, it's not Navi. Never Navi.

Please never Navi. Please...

....

Sorry. I just... don't understand what I'm doing wrong. So good. Good girl. Good girl. Just wish he would tell me what he wants... I wish he had a mouth.

Uhhhhhhhpppppppphhhhhhh.

Deep breaths. I'm fine. Everything's fine. Master loves me or I'd surely be dead... surely.

Uuuuuhhhhppppphhhhh.

And now they're screaming again. Just.... Just peachy.

Topic topic topic. Back to the topic.

Right. So I've just been following the Path. The lit up road ahead of me taking me everywhere I need to go, apparently, and blinding me to everything else whether I like it or not. And it let me to the address of Fracture's coffee shop where whoever the fuck that is has apparently tethered their loop (Because supposedly that string of completely disassociated words is supposed to mean something.).

And apparently it did mean something because Halloween night the street below lit up for me revealing a bunch of masked freaks wondering out of the coffee shop in numbers far larger than should have been able to fit into the damn place. And to top it all off they were ALL colored red, which lately has been an indicator that what ever I'm seeing is hostile and I need to kill it.

So, coincidentally, I used the same tactic Picasso was using since running into the hoard of them probably would have meant death. That is to say I took to one side and picked off stragglers that wondered from the group. Which was working great until one of the masked freaks from deeper within the hoard seemed to notice me and broke their normal shuffling patter to come approach me.

It was wearing a plain clean mask like the rest of them but its mask was a little different. It was missing its forehead. It looked like that piece had been broken away leaving room for a long lock of hair to rest in that spot just above the eyes leaving me to wonder if that break was intentional or not.

This freak was clearly a women, she had the figure. And she was an adult. Tall... developed. Crows feet on the eyes. She pulled out a thin stabbing needle spike thing. No optional slashing power there unless she caught me on the tip, that spike was for stabbing through and through.

I figured this was gonna be a short fight, whoever this person was had a stupid fucking weapon. While most competent people with a knife will just stab, they usually use flair to trick you into believing otherwise. Flick and wave the blade to make you commit to the wrong kind of evasive maneuver before they run you through. But this freak didn't have that. She didn't have a proper knife with an edge. She just had a stupid spike with little other course of action but to stab.

But then the masked thing spoke before driving it's spike deep into my gut. It spoke in my Mother's voice. But rougher and angrier than I've ever heard her before.

"Suffer Ivy. Suffer for what you did to Black Lake. For what you did to me and your friends," she said before shoving me to the ground with the spike still in my gut. "For running your Father through. For hurting so many people who didn't do anything wrong. Suffer and die."

And with that, she disappeared back into the crowd of masked Freaks leaving me to gawk and wheeze for air.

I grabbed my sword and dragged myself down the alley, gripping the spike. There was no light anymore. Everything was dark. My friends and family where all around me pointing and laughing. And as I passed them, they lit on fire and started screaming. Screaming so loud in my ear I had to seriously consider whether or not it would be better to just curl up on the floor to bleed out or keep going and endure what I was pretty sure was supposed to be my Aunt up next screaming bloody fucking murder and demanding to know 'Why?' as she lit on fire and crumpled to the ground.

As you can probably guess, I pushed forward and let the bitch burn. Fuck her. She wasn't even in Black Lake. Shes probably still alive. These things aren't real. That wasn't my Mother. Master is testing me. Testing my loyalty in the face of guilt. And I failed and as a result failed the mission, all because I saw an older masked women and convinced myself it was my Mother coming to punish me. But I was a good girl. I AM a good girl. Master forgives those. And sure enough, after forcing myself to push forward for what felt like hours he lit up a new Path for me and led me somewhere safe to rest.

Because Master loves me, he lets me live.

When I reached the end of the new Path, I found myself in what I was pretty sure was a hotel room. Certain I was safe now, I promptly collapsed on the floor. When I woke up I found that someone had bandaged me up. I have no idea who. Maybe Master.

I proceeded to limp out of bed and follow the Path out. And I've been slowly following it since then.

After a text from Moth and Picasso's last post, seems I'm heading for Moth now. I have to assume so at least. Can't be sure. Doesn't matter. As always, the Path will take me to where I need to go. I just hope I'm healed up by the time I get there.

Never Not Navi out.

Operation Hallow Hunt

God FUCKING damn it.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Seriously, fuck.

I thought we had it that time. I really really really thought we finally had it. FUCK.

So, this happened.

Which, I didn't do. I SO would have if I could, but I didn't! I did, however, have a good hunch that it was gonna happen.

So the plan was for Moth to start heading away from New York for the FAR corners of the United States. I can't say where exactly for safety reasons, but his part of the plan was more or less to lead Fracture's FINEST blood hounds as far away from New York as possible so they would be unavailable to respond to the crisis I suspected was gonna go down in New York.

Meanwhile, I was camping out in New York watching the coffee shop Fracture tethered his loop to. That's right, its at a fucking COFFEE SHOP of ALL fucking places. Not the Baker Street one, but its still kind of fucked up. I can't tell if its silent reverence, a hommage, or if he was blatantly trying to exploit the high profile nature of the original coffee shop to confuse people out of finding his. But the bottom line here, ITS FUCKED UP. Probably.

Its gone now. I think. Everything was packed up and the place is labeled 'For Lease' now. Not that I could hang around to see if anyone was still making regular trips in and out of it. For all I know, the 'For Lease' thing could just be to throw me and anyone else off his trail. He could very well still be tethered there. Again, I COULDN'T HANG AROUND. I was pretty sure I was being followed and that shit HAD to stop. So I slipped in and out of a few clothes store in different outfits without paying until I was sure no one was tracking me anymore. ALSO DITCHED ALL OF MY PRECIOUS STUFF. It was REALLY fucking disheartening.

Holy shit, I am so far ahead of myself. Lets roll back the clock.... to the dawn of time. SING THIS SONG WITH ME~...

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do... do, do, do... do, do, do... do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do... sing this song with me...

.......

DINOSAURS. Moving on (from happier times~).

Lets go back to the hunch. THE HUNCH IS SO IMPORTANT.

So, like, Duckie is a hollow right? And hollows try to go somewhere on Hollow's Eve, right? And Fracture lives in and keeps all his valuable stuff in a loop right? Fracture considers Duckie valuable and is keeping him, right? Still with me? Is it coming together?

I bet this is all sounding TOTALLY irrelevant right? YOUR WRONG AND A FUCKING IDIOT! As stupid as Fuck Face Fracture.

See, apparently Duckie can dismantle a loop by force of will. He just has to want to. Its not something he did a lot but it is something he did before HE DIDN'T DIE.

But a hollow does not want... except! Except on Hollow's Eve when they all want out of their cages to go to the woods! 

SO BLAMMO. Hollow's Eve night and VIOLENT MASKED LUNATICS start pouring out of Fracture's coffee shop. Apparently, Fracture was storing Duckie with the rest of the psychopaths to keep him hidden or something because they all seemed to be hollows... best I could tell at least.

I started CUTTING THEM DOWN, safely. I would pick wanderers out of the crowd. NONE OF THEM WERE DUCKIE.

I got impatient! I was in the process of running back to my car so I could just try PLOWING through the crowd when MOTH 2.0 SHOWED UP. Maggot.

I can TOTALLY take that little shit in a fight, but the little fucker pulled a gun on me and started unloading. I RIPPED a path portal back to my car to escape the gun fire. Once I had gotten the car started, I could see the fucker coming around the corner for me. I'm still not sure how they're tracking my path use. I couldn't risk Maggot gunning me down if I sped the car forward at it, so I spun the car around and fled across town making SO many turns until I was sure I had lost ANY potential pursuers. Then I had to ditch the car. Maggot had probably got my plates.

Couldn't risk going back that night... and I already explained what I saw when I went back later.

Now, here is an interesting side note. Supposedly, Moth's imaginary girlfriend Navi went with me for this plan. So somewhere in all of this, she was in there doing things... somewhere. But we can't see each other or something so... I don't... know how that could possibly have worked...

HERE IS A MESSAGE FOR NAVI. What happened girl? Where you at? You still here with me? Where you going? You alive?

Either way, I got a text from Moth telling me where he is so we can meet up. So we're doing that. Since I got the laptop, he can share his half of the story when he gets to me.

That is, of course, assuming the Finest didn't FIND AND KILL HIM. In which case, this is a trap and I'm probably gonna die.

HAPPY THOUGHTS.

Here is hoping that does not happen.

Picasso out and stuff.