An Unknown

Well it seems I was wrong. I made a comment on Ember’s blog the other day stating my distain for chess metaphors because they don’t really apply in the whole mask/jogger dynamic, in my opinion at least. About an hour later Trent showed up and handed me an open laptop with a game preloaded and set up.

I’m not really much for games but the title on the top little bar for the game read ‘Slender Chess’ and the opposing player’s name thing read ‘frac.4.ture’.  Figured I might was well try, if for no other reason to see if I couldn’t get something to rub in Fracture’s stupid grinning face the next time I see him.

The game was about what you would expect. It was chess with the Master sitting in the middle of the board as a small figurine with many tendrils coming off of his back. For some reason we weren’t white and black, our pieces were orange and blue. The only white and black piece was the Master and he was both. I also noticed that I had an extra Pawn and an extra Queen piece. My guess was that was necessary to spread the board out wider so there was a middle place for the Master, although Fracture explained it as never being able to have enough Queens. Makes sense I guess; those are powerful pieces.

Every round I would get a turn, Fracture would get a turn, and then the Master would get a turn. The Master piece was weird. I would move next to another piece each turn. It didn’t seem to have any movement restrictions. It went where it wanted to.  After a few rounds it started killing pieces. After it moved next to them it would step into their square and then rip them apart in a slow and rather gruesome animation. It didn’t do that often though, just occasionally.

Then occasionally a piece it moved next to would turn black and start attacking the other pieces. I tried attacking the Master with a pawn at one point. The pawn died. It entered the Masters square and was ripped to shreds. I tried it with a queen too.  It was a bit gorier the second time. I did note I could kill the black pieces though, although if they were closer to Fractures side I tried to leave them be in hopes they would pick on him instead. I had some mixed results there.

At one point I moved a Knight next to the Master and watched as my piece killed over for what seemed to be no apparent reason. I accused Fracture of cheating. He explained that some people simply can’t stand in the presence of the Master because it would kill them and apparently that Knight was one of those pieces. I’m pretty sure Fracture was covering his ass because he’s a dirty fucking cheater.

Also, the king became a lot less useless in this version. If you could move your king next to a blackened piece, it would turn to that king’s color. Fracture ended up with 3 Rooks at one point using that rule that he couldn’t be bothered to explain to me before he did it.

The game kind of felt like a big waste of time at the end. Neither Fracture nor I won. We had lost too many pieces and it turned into a Stalemate. Honestly, if the game had gone on any longer I think the black pieces would have checkmated us, you know if that was possible. Can’t be sure, it didn’t happen. Although the game did have some sort of point system because the numbers next to my name were bigger than Fracture’s at the end, so I guess I’ll take that as a victory.

That little game was so interesting I almost forgot just how mad at Fracture I was. I was reminded when he congratulated me on my victory.

'Good job mutt.' the message read.
That fucker keeps treating me like a dog and I don’t know where the fuck he’s getting it from. He just started doing it right out of the fucking blue. I’m kind of glad he isn’t here; I think I’d snap his neck… a couple of times.

“Be sure you stay out of those files pup, I can’t have you pawing your wet little nose into them and making a mess.”
Quite frankly, he’s lucky I didn’t send him a broken computer coated in Trent’s blood.

A part of me really wants to know what it is he thinks he can hide from me but at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter. I’ll not have myself fall back into petty little paranoid distractions.

I just need to focus on my actual mission.

…

Huh. New message from Fracture.

'Why are you still at the school mutt? Shouldn’t you be out hunting?'

And look at that, five new marks on the list… apparently they’ve been there since Wednesday.

...I really need to work on this focus thing. I blame Fracture.

QUIT TREATING ME LIKE A DOG YOU FUCK!
Ugly D[og]k out! [Bark, Bark!]

“I Just Want To Set The World On Fire...

…But first, I’m going to rip out your heart.”

Fracture should be shitting himself right about now.

Arbitrary news flash, Firecracker is back and bitchier than ever. It just wasn’t quite the same around here without a third untrustable subordinate to have to worry about. I say third because it occurs to me that I shouldn’t be trusting Trent.

I’m not sure how I overlooked that particular detail but it occurred to me recently that while Trent comes off as hollowed and harmless, there is still supposedly an actual person in there and not just any person. There’s supposedly a person whose life I changed in some way. So odds are about 99:1 that he secretly and ever silently wishes to gut me, which is about a point worse than the 98:2 odds of this in proxies I haven’t wronged in some way.

And you see, the more I think about it the more Trent reminds me of a proper mask. He doesn’t ever talk, he doesn’t make noise when he walks, he never fucking takes his mask off, and in hindsight I think he’s been scarring himself to teach himself lessons. I’m not sure why I thought he was doing that because he hated himself for being a hollow. Hollows can’t hate, they aren’t people after all. If he really is a Mask, that leaves some very interesting possibilities on who it could be if he's someone from my past.

I’m half tempted to sit down with Trent and skin him slowly for answers on who he is exactly but I recently gave up talking again. I would hate to fall back into the habit after I just gave it up.



On a far less trivial note, something seems to be up with my list again.
It’s not quite as bad as the never ending onslaught of red marks I had to deal with over a short period during the summer but it is just as alarming. My list has gone almost entirely empty. There are six people on it. Short of where to find them it has little to no information about them and each mark has a little post note informing me to collect and bring back as much information from the targets as physically possible following their termination, and if at all possible to have Trent and Firecracker bring one in alive for questioning.

This is starting to feel very Kreegery. I swear to god if I lose another entire week of my life, Trent dies.

Ugly Duck Out.

As the Flames Settle

So, about nine days ago I had never heard of a red alert before. It simply didn’t happen.

We’ve spent the last nine days hunting three to five red marked names at a time, each with a twenty-four hour grace period to get the job done before Master knows what happens. Yesterday I caught Fracture playing with his phone again. He’s been at that nonstop just about every time I see him. When I caught him going at it yesterday in the middle of my fucking hunt I finally took the damn thing and I snapped it in half. I left a little message for whoever the hell he was talking to.

About twelve hours later the red alerts stopped. I’m not entirely sure what to make of that.

Inconclusive, as Fracture may or may not say. I’m not too sure on that either. He’s been a super sourpuss since I broke his phone and isn’t really talking to me right now. I think I’ve missed that, the him not talking. It was nice have someone to talk to for a while but that got old. I’ve been enjoying Trent’s company in our precious little downtime; he just sits there and gets things for you if you point at them. It’s kind of amusing.

 I’ve been sending Firecracker on all the far trips. I don’t like being around her. Quite frankly I have a hard time not tackling her in a preemptive strike every time I see her. And not just because she has been hunting me on and off for two years, she looks like a fucking maskless and fuck those guys. Seriously, if any of you shitheads are still out there I will kill you if I ever find you. I will bleed you all dry and burn what’s left. So it’s good to have her as far away from me as possible until I get over that instinct or something.

Let’s see… oh. Here is another interesting note; Creeger was the only bolded name to have come up in all this time. I also don’t know what that means to be completely honest. I mean they happen from time to time but I don’t actually know what the bolding means.  Prioritizing beyond the red and yellow marks maybe? I know I’ve had the list for four years now but it doesn’t come with an instruction manual.

… Right! Creeger.
I gave Fracture the book I found and he never gave it back.  He said, this is invaluable and every time I’ve brought it up since then he’s informed me he was still working on decoding it. That was until I broke his phone. I don’t know where we are on that anymore. I just want to read the damn thing. Anyone driven to the point of booby trapping their entire house must have some incredible fucking stories… or have never heard of fire. How do they never see that coming?

God, I just keep rambling don’t I?
Here is the long and short of it, we got worked to shit and we’re taking the next few days easy in case the list freaks out on us again.

Nap time,
Swan out!

Leading is Hard

First off, I am impressed with Fracture. He seems to have recovered from whatever was in the cylinder rather fast. Granted I haven’t seen a lot of him around, he keeps sneaking of to somewhere. But when I do see him he is chipper and impatiently awaiting orders.

That brings us to the more title related topic; I’m struggling with this order giving thing. It’s kind of a pain in the ass. I realize the merits of team work and getting shit done faster and more effectively but when I look at my squad I really want to just tell them to go home and then hunt the marks myself.

I mean, what if they do it wrong? What if the mark gets away? What if they get the wrong person? What if they miss something important on the corpse?

Fracture tells me that it’s my job to train them to make sure they do it right. I was unaware leading them made me their mentor as well. That can’t be right. No one trains collectors. You get the list and you figure it out or die. That’s really what it comes down to. Besides, the idea of training my own replacement kind of sickens me. If I’m going to be replaced I’d prefer it be by someone who found the strength by their own merit.

In fact the more I think about it the more I think that is what this really is. They are having me train my own replacements. I want to go run the both of them through and see if either of them are worthy of that. I already know Firecracker isn’t. I don’t hold high prospects for mister never talks ever.

I… need to calm the fuck down.

So I’ve been doing all the hunting on my own. I think that was the point I was trying to get out. The list is getting out of hand though. Four red marked names came up last night, each with the same 24 hour time limit. That is insanely unheard of in my experience. I've never seen anything listed beyond a yellow and I certainly had lots more time to deal with the situation than this.

I can’t get all of them, they are too spread out. I think Fracture might have fucked with my list to create this situation. I mean he can apparently have my list locked out, I don’t see why he couldn’t fuck with its listings. I’m sending Firecracker and Trent to deal with the two out of town marks, Fracture is going to track one of our local names for us, and I’m going take out the remaining guy with the bold printed name. “Creeger.”

Fracture, I swear to god if I find out you are fucking with my list I will break your legs again.

No more time to waste writing.
It’s time to kill Creeger.
Swan out.

Blue Eyes

God damn it.
We’ve been grounded. Or perhaps more accurately, I’ve been grounded. Fracture says we’re not allowed to go anywhere because we’re waiting on special permissions for my next assignment. They aren’t even pretending I’m being sent out for actual work anymore.

And this town is so incredibly boring. I don’t know how Fracture was able to keep cooped up in this motel room for five days without losing it. I’ve only had to stay here for one and I’m beginning to lose it. I keep going through my list checking to see if there are any other marks I could be knocking out as long as I’m stuck here but there is nobody.

I wish I could at least take comfort in my own metal health but that was ruined for me too. I figured coming out of a mental break down was going to mean I was going to be extra stable and ready to go for a little while. I’m starting to think the opposite might actually be true. Yesterday, I… I randomly broke into tear and I don’t know why. I wasn’t sad or extremely happy, nor was I tired or my eyes sore. It was fucking bizarre and I couldn’t make it stop. The thought that I was sad about something kind of made me actually sad.

I tried to talk to Fracture about it. That got me this:

“You seem to be suffering from some deep seeded emotional trauma that your conscious mind is refusing to acknowledge for one reason or another.”

“Umm… ok then? How do I fix it?”

And then he went silent on me. He’s so incredibly fucking useless. What good does it do me to just identify the problem if you can’t fucking fix it?

And you know I could have taken all of this in strife without a word. I normally wouldn’t need a vent. But Fracture has there terrible fucking habit of singing following a session. I can hear him passively spewing out lyrics to some song as he sits there going through his notes. Most of the songs seem to tie back to whatever our discussion was about but I’m stumped on this one.

“Blue eyes, blue eyes, what’s a matter, matter…”

I don’t fucking have blue eyes. I can’t fucking take this.
I think… I think I’m going to go beat him with a marker. I hate to prove him right but I need to shut him up.

Another House Call

I talk a lot of shit about my overseers but everybody’s got redeeming traits. In the case of my onlookers that trait is their unique blend of uncaring distance mixed with concern over my unpredictability. It causes them to do things like show concern when I threaten to go into a fit of rage but at the same time make no real effort in fixing the problem.

That may sound hard to pull off but it’s simple really. Today a man with two broken arms and legs showed up on my doorstep. I couldn’t help but laugh at that poor unlucky bastard.

“Hello Doctor,” I snickered.
“I have a name you know. It’s F-,” he started before I socked him in the face. Then he started yelling and complaining about a broken nose. I had to pull him inside to keep him from making a scene.

Apparently it’s been determined that I need constant psychiatric aid to ensure I don’t do anything unnecessarily stupid like trying to find and hurt Moriarty over someone I don’t know.

“So does that mean I’m not allowed?” I asked.
“It means good fucking luck with that you stupid tit,” he yelled back trying to keep pressure on his nose with a cast on.

He went on to lecture me more on how impractical I was being and how incredibly poor my reasons were, or rather he tried to go on to do that. It’s hard to understand what someone is saying when they got a cast pressed to their face. But he just kept talking like the broken freaking record he is. He couldn’t even bother to change it up by saying it in different ways. Same stupid words over and over again… probably. Like I said, he was hard to understand. I finally started agreeing with him until he settled down and stopped talking. So for the time being I promised to work on my list. So whatever, I guess its back to business as usual.

I’m told the good doctor will be with me until such a time comes when I can be trusted not to do stupid things so he’s probably in for the long haul. As a compromise for the inconvenience of have to drag around a cripple, I’ve been permitted to give the doctor a temporary designation. I went with ‘Fracture’ because by the time all this is over I’m willing to bet there won’t be a bone in his body that I haven’t broken at least once.

Shifting to the topic of my list, I spent the last two days looking for my mark. I had no luck. This one is shaping up to be everything the last one was supposed to be which leads me to believe this maybe another canned scenario. I just don’t remember which yet.

So I got a mark to find and therapist that requires I spoon feed him every five hours. I should probably get back to that.
Laters.

Cleared to Hunt

I do believe it’s time for an update. I wasn’t going to write another post until I had started on my marks but I was looking over old writings and realized I was updating every 2-3 days. Some idle habits are works of the master so it might be best that I don’t break tradition. Perhaps I’m being superstitions.
Bah. I’m rambling. I need to keep this short.
Hmm… idle rambling. I caught myself in a trap.

Moving on, I finished the stacks of papers. With this act I do believe I am officially a proxy again. Not that I wasn’t before but now my file should reflect this. I already have my hunting list. Not too surprisingly, I’ll be operating under the guidance of my old handler again.
I suppose I should be referring to him by his stupid designation, “Whisper”. I think mute might have been more appropriate. Because he refuses to communicate in any fashion, (speech, text, or otherwise) I’ll also be operating under the requests of interested overseers. Otherwise I’ll be moving across the states looking for people on the list.

I’m also being cleared to ‘take requests’. Cleared is such a funny term in their vocabulary because they use it when I have to do something. Apparently I’m obligated to take on the burdens of my brothers on the grounds that my sole duty is to steal their marks, which is odd because my solo job has always been to be the asshole claiming overdue marks. It’s possible they are trying to socialize me in light of my condition but it seems far more likely they’re still trying to kill me.
Oh well. I don’t foresee this coming up anyways.

On another note, because everyone in the circle I watch has at least mentioned this, some named August died. I really didn’t know him but I was happy to hear he died an angry death. I hope that fire lights his way.

In any event my list calls. Laters.