An Awkward Break in Events

So. We met April. Shes nice. Suffice to say, shes not a psychotic runner looking to ambush Free Market Proxies... I was way fucking off on that... seems silly in hindsight. I guess I may have just been a little bit blood thirsty when I set out... just a little disappointed.

I'll get more into that later I guess.

What important is I met April. I'm probably gonna put up a post about her soon. Shes cool... kind of.

In the meantime, I wanted to put this up to let Moth and the other's know I'm on my way to his shattering. I wanted to put it here so I don't have to explain when I left April alone in Navi's care later in case something happens. I did it now. Like right fucking now. As soon as I finish writing this I'm gone.

So if you see this, see you soon Navi. See you soon too April. I won't be long. I probably explain this before I left. Everyone else attending and reading this for some weird and incredibly fucking rude reason, I'll be there in a minute!

Hold your fucking horses assholes!

PaKaSo out!

Bringing Down the Hammer

Laying down the law. Noise, but with authority! Hehe. God I miss Gavel... he had the best one liners. I don't miss Judge, Jury, or Executioner. Those guys were fucking assholes.

Guess I shouldn't have bothered saving his ass. He died just like them all the same...



Hi! I guess? Maybe less enthusiasm. Hi. So I got a big update for you assholes... who ever you are. Who reads this shit? Navi? Hi Navi. Lots of shit you already know for tonight's post. As I explained last post, I'm black mailing an old friend who refuses to talk to me like a spineless asshole in an effort to get orders so I can resume doing proxy work.

It is the family trade after all. For Navi too! She's apparently a third generation proxy. I had no idea any of us live long enough to have kids. Then again, I suppose there are still proxy bureaucrats hiding behind their fancy desks like Sloth and Devil. Get to work you lazy sacks of shit!

So I've been hard at work trying to get the right assignment. I want to restart proxy work on the right foot with a big fucking bang! And now I have just the job to do it. A lot of what my 'Old Friend' had to offer was observation work, supply runs, quick opportunistic hits against rival fear cult members, abductions, and other weak but necessary shit. And that's when we got the E-Mail.

A request for protection from a runner. The only information they provided as a single sentence asking for help against other proxies, their name (April), and their address.

No phone number, no blog account, no personal information, no description of their dire situation. Nothing! Very few runners turn to the Free Market for help despite our generous offer to help those being threatened by fear related entities that aren't Father. I personally blame the couriers for that. To much hope makes dying men prideful. And prideful souls would probably rather die.

Whatever the cause, requests like these are rare so when we get them in they are rarely so brief. Usually they have quite the sob story attached. Desperation does have a way of making people talkative after all. So this request is an oddities even among oddities.

Now, I bet by now you're asking yourself, 'Why the fuck is she explaining all this? Does any of this even fucking matter?'

The answer to that is 'Shut the fuck up before I rip off and sodomize you with your own fucking hand you stupid piece of shit. Then we'll see what matters won't we?!'

Dumbass. It's simple. The request is so short because its a fake request. Someone wants to lure proxies into a trap using the Free Market's selfless generosity as fucking bait! Shameless runners stabbing the hand that seeks to shield them! Un-Fucking-Forgivable! And prefect... for me. Hunting down some ultra aggressive runner shit stains is exactly the kind of bang I want to restart my proxy work to!

We'll cut down those sick sons of bitches... just like Moriarty's goons cut down Gavel for being sympathetic. Because somethings gonna change if I have to kill each and every last one of you to make it happen!

To Atlanta!

Pa Ka So Out!

Night Breezes Seem

Well, I like being left in a box in the corner alone to die with my pet schizophrenic ginger toy thing as much as the next girl but you can only taunt Navi so long before it starts to loose it's charm and without Moth around to mix things up I feel like I could just die of boredom.

But then it occurred to me just how stupid that was. Why should I die of my boredom? Everyone else should die of my boredom. Its their fault for not entertaining me!

So using Navi as a human battering ram, if you can call her human, I broke out of my box and I broke out of the corner and then I broke the fuck out of my room for glorious freedom! Metaphorically speaking at least... wasn't actually locked up anywhere. Just really fucking bored.

I did actually use Navi as a battering ram to open my door though. That happened.

After that I went to visit an old friend. One of the ones I mentioned in the last post. You know, one of those assholes who refuse to spend any time with me or look me in the eye? Yeah, one of those fuckers. To protect the innocent, I will not use their name here. Although those of you who are clever will probably be able to figure it out. Infact, I'm not even gonna explain their half of the dialogue just to be safe. This will just be my half of the conversation!

Super secret keeper PaKaSo for the win!

So I approached my old friend the way I always do... or did, back in the day. With chloroform!

"Hey [Name]. Does this smell like chloroform to you?" I asked putting a rag to their face. They never got back to me on that one but my guess is no. Chloroform is odorless. So they passed out after a moment and I dragged them into their room. Navi stood their being confused, which is pretty typical of her. She followed the unconscious body as I dragged it into the room all the same. Great survival instincts. Definitely... could not go bad on her. I'd try to explain to her why some of the things she does is incredibly dumb but she can't see or hear me. And if she could, this wouldn't be an issue. Kind of a catch twenty two.

Anyways.

So I tied my old friend to a chair and took a seat of my own and waited for the fucker to wake up. I had also fashioned a brace to their neck and shoulders so they couldn't look away from me. I'm tired of these assholes avoiding eye contact. Your will look at me!

In fact, when they woke up I think I explained that in a monologue... that's a bad habit. I'm gonna have to watch that.

I won't bore you with an explanation of my explaining that to him in diologue quotes. That'd be silly. I already explained it or something... this explanation also seems redundant. God, I'm really ranty and shit. Bad habit. I'm gonna have to watch that.

So like I said, I explained the neck brace thing.

Then I got out of my chair and leaned over their face and started yelling.

"So what the fuck?!"

"Don't you what the fuck my what the fuck to me! You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE MY FRIEND"

"Yeah? Then why the fuck have you been avoiding me? Huh. That sound friendly?" I bashed their head against their desk. "Should we make this kind of thing our standard?!"

They got all frantic and shit. Pure panic. I wasn't dealing with a friend anymore. I was dealing with an animal I had backed into a corner. A filthy animal that didn't want to talk to or deal with me. THAT COULDN'T FUCKING STAND TO LOOK AT ME.

"Fuck it." And I cut them free. The asshole toppled over it's desk to get away from me. Classy as shit.

"No! We're not done. I'm tired of sitting in this base doing nothing."

"Fuck that. I don't care what Fracture wants. If he cared, he'd be here. Hes as bad as you and he'll deserve his death when I get around to him."

I buried my sword into their desk. "Would you calm the fuck down?! I'm not here to kill you. But from now on, you're gonna be my handler. And you will give me real assignments. Not baby crap. Or my next visit be to kill you. You hear me?!"

"Good. I assume you already have my number?"

"Glad to see you haven't lost it," I said taking my sword and heading for the door. "Oh and we should get a drink some time and catch up. I've missed our little talks," I said with a bright grin, before slipping out the door pulling Navi out with me.

That fucker. Never called for us to go get a drink... but they did send me an assignment.

So... guess who's back in business? That's right, ME! PaKaSo. And guess what? Its time to mess up some faces. HAHAHAHAHAHA.

PaKaSo out.

More of the Same

Hi. Or something. Do you ever get the feeling you're talking to no one? I get that feeling all the time.

I keep its because I do that so often....

Where did we leave off? Hmm... Right. Just finished explaining how that piece of shit Duckie killed my brother.

I can look back at that now and appreciate that I went a little off the deep end. Lke, I don't know, maybe a in out. A foot tops! I'm not crazy and I'll fucking kill you if you try to prove otherwise, I swear to fucking god I'll snap your lying jaws off and cram them into your brain through your fucking ears.

... So I snapped the tiniest littlest bit. I abandoned my squad, my brother's sword in hand, and I started trying to track Duckie down so I could kill the ugly son of a bitch. That didn't work out so much at first.

Tracking people is hard. I ended up have to go through an information broker. An information broker that,in hindsight, sounded, looked, acted, and had the same eye and hair color as our new glorious leader, the infamous Lord Betrayer, Sloth.

Retrospection tells me that the only reason I was able to get at him was because Fracture was sending Sloth to sell me information to get at Duckie. We'll get more into that later.

I fought Duckie a couple of times after that. At the same time, my old squad was hunting me. Some of them wanted to bring me back. Some of them thought I was a rabid dog that needed to be put down. I could see why they might have thought, hurtful though it was. I they backed off after one of them nearly got their head crushed by one of my fire extinguisher traps.

For all of my efforts at that time, I discovered I had quite a knack for improved traps. It amazes me what I can do with a saw, a hammer, and fish line. I'm like proxy MacGyver sometimes, to reference something fewer and fewer people would understand and that I myself have never seen. One day, a MacGyver will refer to a great improvised craftsman and no one will know where the fuck that name came from anymore.

Rant aside, for all my success against my former life-mates, I found little success against Duckie. I always refused to use traps against him. I didn't just want to kill him. I wanted to be better than him. I wanted to destroy him. So I met him in an honorable way where I announced myself and came at him with my brother's sword, which I still found unwieldy at the time.

Duckie wouldn't just beat me through, he would beat the shit out of me. Later on he'd take a knife to me when I couldn't stand and he'd mark me.

And when he decided I wasn't improving, and those were his words, 'I can see this isn't going anywhere, you're just not improving. You're a disgrace to your brother's memory. At this point I'm doing him a favor,' he ran me through with my own sword, Trent's sword, and then had me slowly slide off of it... off the roof. To fall to my death.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you're gonna die. Others say you find a moment of clarity to reflect on your life and ask your higher power of choice for forgiveness if you should find yourself worthy of such grace.

Only one thing came to mind as wind rushed faster and faster around me as I plummeted toward the ground. And I spoke it out loud. So overpowering was the sensation that I had to make it audible.

"Fuck!"

I would have died there if Fracture hadn't teleported in and plucked me from the sky into the compound, or as we apparently call it today, the Free Market. As a quick aside, the Free Market is a terrible name for an organization. Like, the worst name imaginable. Of all time. -938573 out of 10.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with everyone that they let that travesty happen.

</rant>

I don't know how long I was out after that. When I woke up Fracture gave me a whole speech about how my brother use to work for him and how he wanted me to work for him and how he'd make sure Duckie got what he had coming to him if I did.

Apparently this kind of recruitment was pretty common at the time. I get the sense I was supposed to be a patsy. If you ask any one from the years 2002 to 2012 that signed up with Fracture in that time frame, they'll tell you Fracture faked their death and stole them from the Bureaucracy. Something they typically agreed. I've certainly not met anyone that claimed to have refused his offer...

So naturally, I agreed. In hindsight, Duckie did get what was coming to him in a big way. Even if I couldn't appreciate it at the time... apparently. I've read I didn't but I was apparently a crazy bitch for the last 3 years or so, so who knows what I was thinking during that time frame.

I spent a lot of time locked in the compound. Fracture and Lord Fire refused to let me leave until I had actually learned to wield a sword. And after a good year of practiced dedicated training, I had. I even made friends like Ivan, Whisper, and Gravel Father rest his troubled soul. Occasionally I even found love, not that I'm willing to name any names here on that topic. And I got my self a pet Mask, useless though Moth usually is hes reliable.

Everything was... good, for a little while. And then Fracture took me out on a trip into the Path... and I whited out under... I remember screaming. It wasn't mine, but there was constant near endless screaming everywhere...

Huh. My bad eye started bleeding. Weird...

Back to the story, as I need to wrap it up before this post gets any longer. Like I said, I whited out. I woke up a few weeks ago with no memory of what happened for the last 3 years. Ivan refuses to see, talk to me, or ever talk over the phone. He seems terrified of me. Fracture and Whispers won't look me in the eye. Pained looks of shame and guilt take them and they make an effort to make our encounters brief. Gravel's long dead, he was apparently shot down by a group of fellow runners working under someone called 'Moriarty' for the grave unforgivable crime of sympathizing with proxies. Glad to see the runner ranks are still flush with filth.

Just me and Moth... and my new pet Navi.

I keep trying to explain to my old friends that that wasn't me... that I'm me again and things are different now but...

It just feels like I'm talking to no one... because they aren't listening.

PaKaSo out.

That's Not My Name

You know that feeling? That one you get when you've been asleep for over three years and wake up with no memory of the time you've lost and learn that you spent those three years acting like a raving, psychotic lunatic, attacking your loved ones, and misspelling your own fucking name wrong?

Yeah, that feeling. We've all been there and that's where I am now.

My name is Patrica Kalso. My code name is Pa-Ka-So. Not Picasso. I'm not the worst fucking well known painter of all time. I'm PaKaSo.

Forgive me if this post has some overlap with Moth's Post.

I don't know that it will and I can't assume you've read his post. I'm just gonna talk about myself this post and we'll see where things go from there.

So like I said, I was born Patrica Kalso. I was raised in Philadelphia for what I can only remember to be a small chunk of my childhood. A part of a region Fracture and other's have often liked to refer to as 'Slender Country'. Apparently that encompasses a thick line from Philadelphia to New York. West Pennsylvania and New York's tail. And who knows, maybe that stretches up into Canada. Hard to say. Never been. Border crossing is such a pain in the ass.

I'm not entirely sure what happened when I was little. But it was something bad. I remember I had parents. I certainly don't now though. My brother looked after me after... whatever happened... happened. He took me everywhere. We lived on the streets for a week or so when a man in a fancy looking business suit invited us to join a special home for kids like us. He was apparently 'A friend of Father's'. Or so Trent (my brother) said. I didn't question it. I was happy to live indoors again.

He took us to a small town south of Philly. There we shared a large studio apparent with 6 other kids. It was a scary time for me. Everyone was masked and armed and to my horror my brother would soon be too. I got a mask but not a knife or a gun like everyone else.

Our roommates liked to call me useless. I blame my brother for that. He insisted on dragging me along for missions. Didn't like to leave me alone. Apparently taking an 5 year old to participate in hunting people to death and vandalizing was better.

So my brother fixed it, like he always fixed everything for me. He gave me a title and a job in our little cult. I got to draw Father's symbols in blood since he wouldn't let me cut or break things.

As the little girl painting abstract geometric symbols in blood, and I was named after the worst painter ever. Picasso. But spelled with letters of my name so I could be unique.

That lasted for a year. I was barely getting settled when my brother turned 8. A much more homeless looking man than the man that brought us here came and took four of us away to 'study'.

Left me and the others to cover the work load ourselves. The remaining four of us got by... but I had never felt more useless. I tried to help hunt but I... I was too weak. I couldn't stomach it.

That's when my job as designated painter started to play second to house chores. Cooking, cleaning, laundry. We were all more or less kids but someone had to do these things and if I couldn't pull my weight they decided it would be me. I still have burns on my hands from the time I spend teaching myself to cook. Laundry wasn't hard though. I don't know why people bitch about laundry. The machines do all the work.

Trent didn't come back to me for two years... I thought he was dead. I really did. He was lucky I was still there... I wanted to run away so many times. I had grown a lot. I was learning to kill. I was breaking shit with the best of them.

When Trench came back he saw to it I was taken care of again. No more chores. Nothing to worry my pretty little head about again but painting symbols. Like he had never left. Excepted he came back a badass, I guess.

Many protested when he declared I wasn't doing everyone's chores anymore. He beat the shit out of the biggest one... I want to say Bret, or Braker as he liked to call himself.

Not much changed for the next four years. Trent tried to teach me to fight and use his new sword but he liked to baby me. Our lesions were such a slow processes... can't say I really leaned much. Even today, most of my ability to use a sword was self taught.

That's when we first met Duckie. Our gang and his gang where being paired together to hunt down a group of runners. At the time it was a big deal. You didn't see runners group up.

The operation went miserably. Duckie held his own. Duckie, Trent, Bret, and I survived. The rest of our gangs did not. Knife and sword wielding children did not hold up to a teenager with an oozie.

As an adult, I guess it makes sense. I don't know how they got the oozie but they were just defending themselves. We were there to kill them. But none of us had seen anything like that before.

I remember asking my brother 'Why did they do that to us?' Like it was their fault. As if they shouldn't be protecting themselves.

He never did give me an answer. Although he did skin the one with the oozie alive with Duckie in the next room...

I remember crushing on Duckie, even after he showed me his fucked up face. He was cool. Confident and relaxed in a way my brother never was. I was sad when he didn't stay with us. We got sorted into a new little gang. We were calling ourselves squads by then. It sounded more legal.

Much against my brothers protests, I started training in earnest after that. There were people out there in the world that meant to do us harm... I didn't want to be burden anymore. I wanted to be strong like Duckie and Trent. Trent's sword was still too heavy for me to learn to wield properly though. Even if it wasn't, we had no way of getting a new sword just for me. So he bought me little wood cutting hatchets. Truly terrible fucking weapons. One good chop and if you didn't cleave right though, and you never do, you had to pull them back out. I guess that's why you get two and have a squad.

That's not to say I can't rip in and out of flesh with a hatchet now. I'm a grown women now. But it was harder then. I had little child arms. It sucked pretty hard.

Two more years passed. I was 14. Trent was 16, like Duckie as it turned out.

We got sent in to break up another group of runners. But this time, there was just the four of us.

Not content with our odds after last time, Trent called in another veteran for this kind of mission. My mute crush, Duckie. I remember being so excited to see him again. I wanted to show him everything I learned. After the mission of course.

That's when everything went fucked on a fucked train in a fucked hand basket.

We cornered the group of runners. Five of them. Duckie and Trent were making short work of them at first. They would stab and throw them to us. We would make sure they were very dead. But the last one was a dodgy motherfucker. Duckie went for the throat but he missed. Trent was behind the runner and was trying to grab him and didn't see what happened next coming. With one good swipe of Duckie's long curved knife, Trent's throat was ripped wide open.

The blood spray was... unreal.

I remember screaming. Apparently the runner got away. I clenched my brother... demanded and begged for him not to leave me... he never got back to me on that. Too busy bleeding out. I could have blamed the runner... maybe I should have.

But the runner wasn't the one with the knife. The runner hadn't so much as thrown a punch. Duckie had did it. And I... sort of freaked. I came at Duckie with my hatchet's but he knocked me out with a good punch to the face.

When I came to, they had disposed of Trent's body... Duckie was gone... all I had left of my dear murdered brother was his sword. Much to the protests of my fellow squadmates, I swore on that sword that I would use it gut Duckie for what he had taken from me.

And just like my brother has promised to look after me, just like he had promised to come back before he disappeared for two years, and just as he had promised I could have his sword when I was old enough and he was done with it, I intended to keep my promise to destroy Duckie.

... And now as an adult... I've woken up to find that I have.

But this stories getting a little long. I think I'm gonna stop here. I'll finish it next post or something.

PaKaSo out.

So... this is it...

We're really gonna do it... gonna put an end to all this. Maybe... Just maybe if we kill Duckie and Fracture, we'll get Picasso back. And I don't mean flipping her back from being a raving voilent lunitic to a screaming lunatic constantly threatening violence. I think I may very well be getting back the real Picasso...

Just one more fight... one more.

We're heading there right now. It's turned out to be quite a drive. See, Fracture challenged us to settle things where he originally saved Picasso after Duckie threw her ass off a roof. Unfortunately, the only one who knows for 100% sure where that happened is Picasso and... well we still aren't letting her ass out of the trunk. She might very well rip our throats out if we did. I mean, I've been feeding her... but that more or less just entails me throwing food and water in there three times a day... a little scared of what she might look like at this point.

We have, naturally, accepted Fracture's challenge. That probably goes without saying this far into the post but this give me a flimsy pretense to just... link Nat accepting the challenge on her blog... lessens the amount of explaining I have to do

I... I was nervous about this fight before... but after this... After Picasso went toe to toe with a fear and won... after her show of force granting us insight into just how interconnected her and Father have become in their crusade against Fracture and Duckie... I'm not scared that we won't win this. I know we will win this.

... I'm just scared it won't fix her... is it even possible to repair that much damage? ... To separate a god from the vessel it's jammed an entire finger into?

And if they do part afterwards... will there even be anything left inside Picasso? Or will she just be a shell at that point?

Just... another blessed little hollow lost in the world she can no longer understand or appreciate?

I guess its wrong to say that I'm afraid I'm gonna lose her... at this point I'd have to say I'm scared that we already have.

If shes really gone... I think I'm gonna abandon this blog. It always was more of her baby than it was mine. Her little ranting wall to scream into the internet about how much she hates Fracture and Duckie...

If I survive I'll probably throw up one last post letting every one else know what happened... if not I'm sure at least one of the others will make it... I'm sure they'll put up or at least link a final post explaining what happened from this blog to wherever they posted it themselves.

Best case scenario, a fixed Picasso will be alive and  around to detail what went down... assuming she could even remember.

But this is either my last or second to last post here. Survive or not... if I find the urge to write after that I'll just start my own little blog.

What would I even name it...?

Does anyone even care? Probably not. Curse of the mute. Why would you care about one? Hehe, we don't have souls after all.

Until next time, maybe,
Moth Out.

I... We. We Saw it coming.

Me and Fracture...
But I was hoping he was wrong.

Hmmmmpph. This blog doesn't really get enough love.

Where to start?
We've been spending a lot of time with Nat and her troop of goons including an old friend and flame of mine, Vallus, and my favorite brand of traitorous untrustible swine, Mr. Sloth.

Vallus is talking now, which makes her a wordy vow breaking convictionless... thing. Disgusting really. And as I understand it from what Sloth was telling me she didn't take the Rite of Shattering before she decided to start talking again which... whats a nice to put this? Its... truly... despicable? Yeah. We'll go with that.

If I didn't consider her a friend, I'd have broken that mask of hers against her face myself. I fear I'm growing soft.

Maggot, I don't know if you read this but heres fair warning. If I catch you wandering around without your mask or talking I won't just brake your mask against your face, I'll force feed you the broken pieces down your fucking throat. Stand by your oath or take the Rite.

Moving along.

Nat's an angry bitch but shes got a hell of any arm. Shes quick and she hits hard. And she can take a hit. We've sparred for hours. If I'm being perfectly honest... I'm more than a little interested. Expressing that interest, however, earned me a punch in the throat and in... well, other places. We'll leave it at that.

Suffice to say she isn't interested. And I can't say I blame her. I'm sure being masked, mute, or zealously worshiping an entity she has no respect for could be forgiven if I was doing just one of those things. But I do all of those things... Nature of the oath.

She seems real close to Sloth now which I'm convinced is a huge mistake. I've seen the guy set fire to a building with a squad of proxies inside to slow down the Archangel when it retaliated for the group of timberwolves we had just killed.

Not that the fire slowed down the Archangel, mind you. It trapped the rest of the team inside and Archangel went for the easier kill while we, as per Sloth's instructions, left. I would not be relying on him as I have been if he wasn't bank rolling our little coup against Fracture and even with that I still don't like to be around the fucker.

He was taken out of real management and sent on suicide missions for a reason. The man is a Menace. He keeps telling me things are different now but I don't buy that shit for a second and I'm more then a little afraid Nat's gonna find out what he really is the hard way. But hey, shes a big girl. And if nothing else, I'm confident when he does show his true colors she'll be more than capable of surviving it. Assuming he doesn't like... just shoot her in the back of the head or something.

And that brings us to Helrick and Picasso... current events.

So, after Helrick broke Picasso out of Fracture's little prison in the Compound he realized she was more unstable and unruly than he was able to handle. After much effort on both parties sides, he finally made contact with us and we Met Up.

But even with tranquilizers and all five of us taking turns watching and caring for her, she proved to be too much for all of us to handle. Her erratic behavior was driving us all to the point of insanity when Navi came up with a Plan, which she saw fit to put up on Nat's blog instead of ours.

That plan was to give Picasso what she was screaming for, Helrick. So we threw the lamb the slaughter and miraculously he wasn't immediately ripped to shreds. In fact, Picasso finally calmed down and stopped screaming every five fucking minutes.

I was so relieved to finally have some peace I convinced myself that maybe things could work out for them. If nothing else, maybe Helrick could stay just close enough to keep Picasso stable.

...

I like to think she, the real her, is still in there somewhere but on some cognitive level I know better...




It was my turn to stand watch for Helrick. He didn't feel safe in her arms when we first handed him off to her so we established a watch to keep an eye on the two of them in case something happened and Picasso suddenly went ape shit on him.

I will say it again, he didn't feel comfortable when he was first handed over to her. After about a day, the watch went from being something of a serious concern to mandatory sessions of watching a couple being way to affectionate for company.

Nat straight up refused to do it anymore and I don't know that I can blame her for that. It stopped being Picasso forcing herself on Helrick and slowly turned into constant face sucking and ass grabbing.

We started footing the bill for hotels so we could keep their asses on the roof where the rest of us wouldn't have to see them until our shift came up. Even then, I started sitting inside just on the other side of the roof's door so I'd only have to listen to them which was bad enough on its own.

"I love you" said Picasso in a happy loving tone.

"I... I love you too," said Helrick after taking a moment to decide how he wanted to answer that. It sounded less than convincing.

"We're gonna gut Fuck Face together. We'll rip him, and whisper, and DUCKIE apart!"

"Haha. That's right. Those assholes don't stand a chance."

"And then once they're good and DEAD... you're gonna stay with ME and help me dismantle ALL of Fracture's organization right?"

"..."

"RIGHT?"

"Well. I'll stay with you as long as I can but I have my own assholes to hunt once I've helped you take care of Fracture. The Rake... that thing... it killed my sister... her husband... their kids... made me into this... Monster... left me for dead... I need to make it pay Picasso."

"Oh...." she said sounding disappointed. I mean, I'm sure it sounded like she was disappointed to anyone else. But I recognized her tone. The inflection in her voice. The way she said it... I'd heard it before.

"But I'll always come back to see you... help you when y-Grrrah.... Arrrgh!"

I broke through the door to try to get to Helrick as fast as I could but he wasn't curled up to Picasso anymore. By this point Picasso was already standing and she already had Helrick by the throat... and was dangling him over the edge of the building with one arm.

He was desperately struggling to get lose, although I don't know where he was hoping to go if he did get free. He'd just fall. One arm was on Picasso's arm, the one that was choking him out and holding him there. The other clawed hand wiggled back in forth at his side. From the bruising and blood, I'd have to say Picasso managed to crush that shoulder to render that whole arm useless...

He kept making noises and trying to talk but Picasso was crushing his throat.

I ran at her as fast as I could. I was gonna pull her back and try to bring Helrick back over the edge at the same time but I wasn't fast enough. She rolled her shoulder... and then threw him over the edge.

... To late to save him, I pulled out two tranquilizers and resumed running over. I injected Picasso with both of them. She just... turned to face me, started at me, looked at the needles I had stuck her with, looked back over the edge, and then just suddenly flopped over unconscious.

I decided we wouldn't take any more chances after that... I pulled out a bit of rope and I tied her ass down.

For good measure, I gagged her.

I rushed her down stairs over my shoulder and knocked on our door. Everyone seemed confused as to why I had Picasso over my shoulder. They questioned where Helrick was. I waved for them to follow me and rushed them outside.

From there we got a good look at where Helrick had landed... he fell into the tree below... and was impaled through the gut on one of the larger branches.

He was just... hanging there. His cold lifeless eyes looked confused and scared... forever staring out at nothing in particular...

The group broke into a small panic. We had to leave, now.

I threw Picasso in the trunk and we sped off.

She... managed to get the gag off back there. We could hear her back there talking to herself...

"You promised... Swore to stay with me... Now you'll always be mine... Always be with me."

And she repeats this to herself over and over again... between violent fits of giggles...

We just... We don't know what to fucking do with her anymore. We've been keeping her in the trunk. When we do actually sneak her inside to our hotel room, we keep her ass in the closet.

Its... not safe to be around her anymore. Shes just... all fucked up.

Painful as it is to admit, Fracture was right... but then again its his fucking fault shes like this...

... Moth out.