8 Days Remaining -/|\- A Conversation with Time Lord

So me and Ryuu are back whenever visiting hours are open. She's negotiating with her parents to stick around until Kay wakes up. I'm glad I don't live at home anymore. If nothing else, this is a good excuse for me to avoid seeing Green Man in HIS hospital bed. The doctors in Philly expect he'll have a full recovery, but it's my fault that he got in that mess to begin with. I've talked to him over the phone, but it's not going to be the same as actually being there, and admitting that I accidentally pulled him into a situation best described as hell on crack.

Hakurei Ryuu is foaming at the mouth about "The stupidity of the people yelling at Zero." Frankly, this isn't my mess. So long as he stays away from Kay, me, Ryuu and my people, I don't care what kind of deep end he's jumped off of. As it is, he's only going after people he considers "Tainted." Yeah, I know, I love the mentality he's using: he of course, is the one who decides who is tainted and who should die. I hate it when people do that. The reason Ryuu is so pissed is because all these people posting angry messages on his page don't realize: getting angry and in his face isn't going to help anything. It's just going to make him more likely to go down the course he's charted.

As a man, I'll be the first to say that we men can occasionally think with our balls instead of our brains. Then again, it's not just men: we all want to shout out and demonstrate a dominant show of force. We want to show that we're some kinds of badass, and that "oh no that scary Zero better not go after me! If he does, I'll stomp him flat!" Guess what ladies and gents, we're talking about a guy who walked into that Solstice mess armed with a Katana and some prayer, was named "Sage" by Robert, and survived quite a bit of hell at the hands of TPF and friends for a long while before that. He's not some cartoon character, this isn't a TV show, he'll corner you and kill you if you're on his list and that's all there is to it.

Yeah, I know, the loudmouth who directly threw himself in the path of Morningstar to try and protect Hakurei Ryuu, the guy who just pulled some serious shenanigans with the double-circle from hell to get two ancient monsters to duke it out, this guy is telling you to cut it out because you're being cartoony. For better or for worse, I planned things out as best I could and spent days preparing those ash mixtures and plotting how I'd go about all this crap. I intentionally left so many details about what I did out of the writing, because I'm terrified that somebody else out there is going to try and recreate that insane little maneuver of mine. I do not want to be responsible for somebody calling down one creature or another and getting eaten on the spot. Guess what guys, I've spent eight years learning how to do this potentially nonexistent madness, and in theory have other past lives guiding my hands. Unless I'm just insane and it's all been luck. And I nearly got my best friends killed because I didn't think that Morningstar could go after them. Do NOT follow my example. Zero thinks he's lost damn near everything, and he's willing to do some crazy stuff. People who think they've got nothing left will do stupid, stupid things.

Quit provoking him. It's safer that way. And if you think he's going after you, I suggest you invest in barred windows and large firearms. He's human, he follows human rules, unlike the other problems you have. Lord knows that he'll be one unhappy camper when someone calls the police on his vigilante ass and he gets taken in for aggravated assault. How about trespassing and attempted murder? Use your heads people, Zero is only a threat to you if you're stupid. He's a situation that Reality is equipped to handle. Lord knows that when he's wanted across the United States for attempted murder and murder, he's not going to be much of a threat while he's dodging cops.

And in the mean time? Hey! Maybe we can talk him out of whatever he's doing! Did anybody think of that?

In any case, I spotted that Kaiju's blogs...appear to be completely gone. What the hell did I miss??? Give me a break, I hope he's not in some kind of trouble.

-/|\-

A Conversation with Time Lord

While me and Ryuu were waiting at the hospital, I took a lovely, wonderful phone call from an old friend.

I stepped into an empty room as I spotted the Caller ID. (Time Lord.) Well, I knew this was coming. If nobody's guessed by now, whenever I put someone's code name in Parenthesis it means that someone or something has just referred to them by their real name.

Time Lord: "Hey (AmalgamationSage)"

Amalgamations Sage: "Hey (Timelord)"

Time Lord: "So...as near as I can tell, the Jersey Devil came out of the Pine Barrens and got in a fight to the death with something, tearing New Jersey apart. Again. And I asked myself, who is it that keeps causing massive, world-smashing distortions on the Astral Plane?"


Amalgamation Sage: "Did either of them die?"

Time Lord: "No."

Amalgamation Sage: "Yes, because that would have been too easy."

Time Lord: "(Amalgamation Sage), are you completely insane?! New Jersey looks like it got nuked to hell and back, the spirits are flying everywhere, you could have shattered the Veil with that shit!"

Amalgamation Sage: "It was out of my hands. I was running a rescue, and I can't exactly run through a house that changes every time you blink AND fight Blanky the Cosmic Representation of Suck at the same time. I don't even think I CAN fight Blanky. This thing is different from anything I've ever seen, man. It's not possible, but it's happening, and it's bad. It's really bad."

Time Lord: "...I finally got a look at that creature of yours. It doesn't exist in the normal flow of time. It's what happened to you in November all over again."

The November Incident. I've been avoiding discussing that. I'm almost out of time though. Where did all my days go?

Amalgamation Sage: "I was feeling pretty good about myself when you were bitching about how I could have caused the end of the world. Can we get back to that? I really was enjoying it."

Time Lord: "...Do you need help?"

I thought about it. Our odd cadre of mystics and shamans and other weird professionals has an unfortunate problem. Maybe 1 in 8 of us have the expertise to do what me and Time Lord do. I can think of exactly three other people besides myself who I'd want anywhere NEAR Slendy. One of them's Time Lord. The other has something of a Knight Templar thing going on that would make Zero jealous. The third is Tao. I want to bring Tao in, but he's still looking for his people. I need to trust that he'll find them in time. That's my backup right there.

For better or for worse, there aren't a lot of us that are actually in contact with each other, despite the decent number of us worldwide. Everybody is covering an area far too big for what they can handle. Slendy is the sort of thing that might well be the death of all of us. For better or for worse, there's only one thing I can say to an offer of reinforcements:

Amalgamation Sage: "Nah. I fought my way into this, now I'll fight my way out."

We exchanged our goodbyes, and I took a moment to wash my face. In an hour and 10 minutes, I'll be down to 7 days. One week before I'm in the thick of it. This one might be the death of me. But don't count on it. I'll come up with something.

9 Days to go: The Rescue

Who says the House Always Wins?

9 Days to go still, at least for a few more hours. We lost most of the day, but we rescued Kay. I’ll take it.

When taking on an abomination to man and nature, one must prepare very carefully. All that time I’ve been hinting about making preparations and having a cunning plan? All of it finally came into play today.

We found the house where they were keeping Kay. It had to be the right house, it was like a dimensional nexus of hell in a torn up neighborhood. Once you stop looking for signs of where something should be, and start looking for signs where there’s a distinct lack of where they should be, it gets a lot easier to spot this thing. The fact that the thing was in there waiting for us just made it all that much scarier. But I had a plan for that. Oh the plan I had for that.

Step one: pull out all the preparations done for Ritual One. I started with a circle of chalk, pouring on a lovely mixture as I did. The mixture was in a small vial, and was made of a variety of burnt objects made into ashes, including leaves from the Pine Barrens. The objective: to piss off the Jersey Devil, that’s right, THE Jersey Devil, and get him to come running our way. After dancing around the circle a bit, I knew we had his attention. Then I started throwing the other circle together. I want you all to understand the level of panic involved here. Being bisected by an ancient evil indigenous to New Jersey was NOT part of the plan.

Step Two: Slingshot. That’s right, the entire ritual for step two was basically one big banishing circle, designed to toss the Jersey Devil where I wanted. Which happened to be right in that house. Slenderdouche knew we were coming. Now it was time to get everything good and messy. When throwing two ancient and powerful evils in the same room together, they are NOT guaranteed to start fighting. But I had chosen my ancient and powerful evil well, the Jersey Devil is NOT known for subtlety. Having to put up with another ancient and terrible evil on his stomping grounds was not something he was ready to do. Entire armies had avoided the Pine Barrens during the 2002-2004 conflict in fear of getting the Jersey Devil mad. The fact is, I may have just earned the eternal enmity of a fucking eternal fear beast. I just hope to god it never finds out who I am and what I did.

As the fighting started, we made our way to the house. I deal in other dimensions for a living, projecting to them, sensing them, generally messing them up in my favor. It wasn’t a big house, and the key was to find a point of entry that would let me skip the idiocy and get straight to where Kay was.

I found it by a first floor window, and I could feel two presences through it. I normally can’t do that with ordinary people, only entities as a rule. Fortunately, they were in a dimension where the rules did not work normally. The rules I understand when I project applied. I took a moment to steady myself. I’d never actually leapt into another world with my physical body before. It could get bad. But I still sensed those two presences on the other side. One was hurting, injured, bent and beaten, but not broken. The other was a ten ton palooka with a whole lot of muscle and…I couldn’t understand it when I spotted the path to them. It didn’t make any sense to me. One way or the other, one of them was probably Kay. We had work to do.

I took off my coat, and used it to cover my face, neck, and hands. Then I leapt in, shattering the glass, and Ryuu followed close behind. Quick tip for anyone considering leaping through a window: always cover your vital points with cloth ESPECIALLY the neck and face.

We landed in the basement, and I could see Ten-Ton Palooka full on. Kay stabbed his arm, and I held my bokken forward in a ready stance, charging. When I look at people, I see aspects of them. I can feel how their emotions change, and I can “feel” their presence. I generally know at first glance whether or not I’m going to like somebody, and I can generally tell you why I won’t. Ten-Ton Palooka was a real piece of work, and we would never, ever be friends.

There are vines that grow on vast, mighty trees, and sometime they grow so high and so tight that they constrict that tree to the point of collapse. Before the tree collapses, the vines get a magnificent height advantage to gain the power of the sun. When the tree comes crashing down, the vines still find use of it, drawing power from the sun from the height of the fallen tree. It is never as good as when the tree was alive, but it is still a source of food. But the tree I was looking at here had been an ugly, hateful, gnarled thing even before the black vines had crawled up its length. It had not so much come crashing down so much it had leaned hard, its many sickly branches acting as a support that kept it from being fully uprooted even as it was torn to pieces by the vines. Just enough of its roots were in the ground that it could continue to survive. It could flow in the wind and grow leaves, and make the vines even stronger by giving them a better position in the sun for a long, long time. It would never fully collapse, always being supremely useful to the vines.

I wondered if this was what Morningstar was like. This hateful, horrible, brilliant proxy I saw. And I was charging him while he had a steel knife with my wooden sword. Exactly my kind of odds, considering I could tell at a glance that he had no idea how to hold a knife properly. If I was a little more confident in my year of martial arts training, I’d make him stab himself while he was using that grip. Or maybe pull the knife out of his hand and throw it away. Instead, I whacked his hand good and hard with the bokken, and the knife went flying. He was good and unarmed, and I was going to commence with the beating now.

Of course, then Palooka stepped forward and caught my next swing with both hands. You’d never try that against a real sword, but hey, wood. It’s a disadvantage. I was surprised he was using that arm so well after Kay stabbed him. That was okay though, because this was where Aikido came in. There’s a lovely disarm you can perform on someone holding a sword or a bat at this distance, and I tore the bokken out of his hands. That’s about when he punched me in the face. Just like in training, I breathed out fast and tilted my head a bit so he wouldn’t get me at a good angle and the force would be dissipated in my favor. I still stumbled backwards, hitting his table full of torture implements. They scattered against the wall, and I ended up dropping my Bokken. Look, I’ve only been doing this for a year, and Palooka had plenty of muscle to back his punches. I blinked, grimacing as he started toward me. My face and back were going to have a nice bruise in the morning. I had a pile of sharp, bloody tools behind me, but I wasn’t going to take one. I don’t know if I’ve actually killed anyone before, don’t ask me how I don’t know, I’ll explain later. The point being, I wasn’t going to potentially start killing people now, even if it would have made this so much quicker.

And then Palooka came in, and I was done messing around. I took my Karate front-stance. There’s a reason Japanese Karate has spread far and wide: it is a strong, hard style that will ruin any idiot’s day. Karate has no blocks: everything you do in Karate involves striking your enemy. EVERYTHING.

He came in with another punch to my face, I brought my left arm around with a twist for maximum torque, striking his lower arm with the area between my fist and my elbow with a practiced motion.  He pulled back his arm, grimacing. He would not be using that arm for a little while. Then I brought my right hand around in a heavy strike, twisting it into a fist at the very end and tensing at just the right moment like I had a billion other times in training. I’m not a strong guy, but the way his eyes bulged out informed me that I had spent that year of training well. Palooka brought his leg up for a kick, and it was a horrible, horrible kick. You see, real fighters train to have a “chambered” position for their kicks. You step into the “Chamber”, you kick, and then you go back into the chamber, so that you can either kick again or step somewhere else in perfect balance and control. He was just bringing his leg up like a moron. Lord knows it had no power behind it, and once again, Karate had a solution to horrible kicks like that. I brought that lovely portion of my hand between my wrist and my palm down HARD on his knee. I didn’t break anything, but I knew he wouldn’t be using that leg very well. So he had two arms that were injured, and a knee that was killing him. I was feeling pretty good about myself at that point.

Then of course, Palooka performed a desperate grab with both arms. I punched him in the gut, but he just kept coming. How the hell did he do that??? I struggled, kicking backwards as he lifted me up, catching my foot on the table covered with knives. I got stable on that table, and he had this really surprised look on his face as he found he wasn’t slamming my body on the table anymore. My body worked into that lovely Crane Stance where you’re hopping on that one foot, and I was grinning like a madman. My hands shaped themselves into crane-beaks, and I poked his eye and throat. Palooka stumbled backward, clutching his eye, his breathing completely out of whack from the throat strike, and I was back in business. Crane Kung Fu ladies and gentlemen, accept no substitutions.

I leapt off the table at him, and then I got another wakeup call as he managed to work his arms enough to catch me. He slammed me onto the ground, and I exhaled hard as he did. I could feel it all along my back, but exhaling at the right time had reduced the damage. Don’t ask me to explain the science behind exhaling as you get hit, but yes, it DOES reduce the damage you take. I rolled to the side as he tried to stomp on me, and hey! There was my bokken!

I got up as he charged forward and rammed the bokken’s blade into his groin. He doubled over, and I brought the bokken up for cut under his jaw. He toppled over, and I knew this was done. He wasn’t getting back up after that. He’d be out for a while.

I turned to see how Ryuu and Kay were doing, and stumbled forward a little. I used to be horrible in a fight, now I’m mediocre. Palooka was complete shit against someone who knew what he was doing, but goddamn! He just kept getting back up! He had a stabbed arm, a Karate-struck arm, a busted leg, and he was STILL throwing me around.

Ryuu gave me this look, and I pulled myself upright. I’ve got a nice ice-pack on my back in the present, and a lovely bruise on my face. I’ve never been able to say to someone after a fight “you should have seen the other guy.” Now I can. At the time though, she was probably thinking, “Oh fuck, is he okay?”

Of course I was okay, damn it. And that’s when I saw it. The entire house shifted and twisted as the Jersey Devil and SlenderDouche did battle above us.

I said, “Oh fuck me sideways, the maze shifted.”

And then I linked arms with Ryuu and Kay. I could perceive the dimensions around us just fine, but I wasn’t letting either of them get more than an arms length away. If the dimensions suddenly shifted, we could end up being separated in the house of the damned and never find each other again. We had to get the hell out, and get out fast.

I motioned to Ryuu where we needed to walk as we went. Up the basement stairs, ended up in a bathroom. Out the bathroom, and landed in a hallway. We started along the hallway, and I stopped us. There they were, just through the next hallway. When two shapechanging, extra-dimensional entities fight, they warp and twist their home planes in an attempt to kill the other in a crazy game that’s a combination of Go, Shogi, and Bare Knuckle Brawling. I pushed us backwards as the dimensions shifted in front of us, and we were in the kitchen. This was getting bad, Ryuu was looking at the doors as though there was something there during all this. I knew there wasn’t anything there, just illusions and glamour and all kinds of other weird magical horsecrap. I started us toward a side-door, and I was pretty sure I could see an exit in my mind’s eye.

Bam. We were on the third floor. I could feel the dimensions twisting more fiercely, and I knew: there was a way out. We had to leap out the third floor window. Our window for escape was closing fast, and we had no time to mess around. I pulled everyone close to me, and we crashed through it.

I could feel the world twist around us, and I reached out with my arms for our reality. Did I catch hold of it? I honestly don’t know. The next thing I knew, it was around seven at night, it was getting dark fast, and me and Ryuu were trying to put Kay in the car as carefully as possible.

And now we’re drinking coffee at the hospital, and I’m keeping my eyes open. This whole place stinks, and it’s not just the Janitor who’s out of place. I do not like our odds. I just have to hope they’re only here to watch us.

Ryuu's a genius! 9 Days Remaining -/|\- A Typical Day in August 2002

Summarizing our Progress So Far!

Now we're cooking with gas! Ryuu just had a brilliant idea! This Slenderdouche made a severe strategic error! Oh it's brilliant. We're going to find Kay tomorrow, and it's going to be brilliant! I've got my bokken/staff, a full double-ritual set for some hilarious shenanigans, and TOO MUCH CAFFEINE!

I've got 9 days before I have to face Slender-douche head-to-head. I've never had so much fun racing toward oblivion.

I didn't tell Ryuu earlier, but I'm pretty sure I spotted a few people in odd masks on the way to the hotel. Morningstar posted that he's in Jersey. Not going to lie, I'm not happy about this. Morningstar nearly killed one of my best friends, and burnt down another of my best friends' house. I will kill the son of a bitch if I see him. But right now, I'm a little more worried about our defensive position.

So me and Ryuu have to share a room tonight. I'm sleeping on the floor. There is no other option.

I would also like to refute any statements made regarding my power. I may mess around with other dimensions using my mind, but I'm useless in this one. At best, I can make an abnormal situation normal. Maybe I can do other stuff, honestly, I've always been more worried about dealing with things in other planes of existence trying to kill me.

That said, now we rest. We're not going to save anyone if we're half-dead from exhaustion.

-/|\-

A Typical Day in August 2002

The day starts simply enough. I wake up on the top bunk of my ancient bunk bed. I blink. A report flashes across my mind regarding casualties from the latest demonic thrust.

Look at a topographic map of Pennsylvania. It is cut in half by mountains near Philadelphia. Fighting occurs within the gap of these mountains, in Philadelphia when units need to retreat backwards to better defensive positions, and in the mountains themselves. There are only one, maybe two skirmishes in the mountains. On the Astral Plane area of Pennsylvania, there are dragons in those mountains. Demons are powerful, but not suicidal, and fighting Dragons on their own turf is suicidal. We try to maintain multiple lines of defense leading to Philadelphia, giving it depth and forcing the enemy to bleed for every step, but rebuilding those defenses after abandoning them is difficult.

I walk down to the kitchen in my parents' house, ordering a counter offensive as I grab a piece of banana bread. Projecting while walking, and maybe getting food or doing other simple tasks is easy. God help the son of a bitch who has to try and do it while say, driving or performing complex mental actions. There are a lot of people who think of Astral Projection as being a big damn complicated procedure that involves your soul leaving your body. By August, 2002, I'd learned all kinds of tricks for getting around that.

The counter-offensive buys us time. I reorient our lines to better prepare the main defensive walls in the astral fortifications around Philadelphia, and grit my teeth. Mine are the worst soldiers of any army that has ever operated to defend the Planet Earth. There are a few bright spots on the horizon, commanders that I vaguely remembered who actually know what they're doing, but there aren't many.

I realize that as I was sorting out the new defensive perimeter, I had walked into a wall. That hurt. I turn around, and head back to my room. This did not bode well.

I personally arrive on the battlefield and assist in the defense against the oncoming hordes as I find a position to relax in. On some level, you don't survive as a front line commander without being good at taking a hit. Authority equals asskicking, and for better or for worse, I know I'm the best there is on my side of the battlefield. So as I draw my swords and go to work, I consider the fact that Time Lord has people he's trained for years who understand the art of combat. He has the best soldiers that have ever worked for the Higher Planes. He has a great position up in New York, and I'm basically one giant defense on his southern flank that prevents him from being in serious danger. My position though? I'm in the thick of it, and it's not going to get any easier any time soon. The rule of thumb on this battlefield is that the further north you are the safer you are. For some reason, once the 7 dimensional shenanigans are sorted through, it's easier for them to operate in the southern hemisphere. The further north you are, the better the Higher Planes Armies' defenses get. But all reports agree that the good guys are getting pushed further north. The point being: I'm in the thick of it, I've got The Rogues in my face, demons at the rear, and an army that couldn't find it's own ass with two hands and a map.

My mind can't take this forever. I'm starting to get more tired as the days go by, expending more and more energy in ways that my spiritual form just can't handle. Expending vast amounts of your internal energy and restoring it rapidly is NOT healthy, and I am going way over my limit on a daily basis. The troops can't see me breaking down, not in the middle of this, so I do my best to hide it. It would be horrible for morale if they found out I wasn't holding it together like a champ. The "medics" patching my form up see it though. Rumors spread that I'm going off the deep end. No one was ever supposed to command troops while living on Earth, and they say that I'm just going to lose the ability to perceive correctly, and that I'll go absolutely nuts. I'm not sure if that happened or not.

We repel yet another enemy army. The good news is that these demons are naturally fractious. They want to fight each other and prove their own superiority as much as they want to destroy us. If they had all just gotten together and tried to sledgehammer my position, I'd have been in serious trouble.

By September, I'd be down to a force that was 85% the size of the original. But nothing makes troops better and more efficient than being stuck in the middle of a war-zone.We're still combat effective.

Of course, what I didn't realize was that my army was unofficially working for the Rogues. The majority of my higher-ranked officers still worked for Rogue General. Worse, rumors had gone round the Higher Planes that I was part of the Coup (which I WAS, and then I woke up in this life time, and WASN'T! Of course, it helped that I never remembered that other life. It's a little awkward.) Investigations were being launched.. Not that I cared or knew, I was too busy trying not to die.

And then the Rogues made their move.

Green Man is wounded -/|\- Things I Am No Longer Allowed To Do -/|\- The Rogue Mess Explodes

 Green Man is in the Hospital. Morningstar is on the run.

I think I know what Green Man sent after the son of a bitch. He's going to have all kinds of fun.

Talked to Forgemaster. I blame myself, he blames the people who started this. Green Man is in surgery, and I'm busy trying to follow the trail of MurderTentacles McSuitBlank.

I'm going nuts in the back seat of this car. Assuming I wasn't already nuts, anyway. I've gotten good enough at following the trail that I can use Ryuu's netbook to check up on things as my mind races along the path. This thing's been through North Jersey enough times to know all the good restaurants, bars, and parking spots. At first, I thought I'd try marking down all the threads on a roadmap, I gave up after the first four hours. It's a tangled, seven dimension mess that needs a proper 3D model to describe. It's vexing, and figuring out where exactly Kay IS on said potential 3D model is nothing short of maddening. It can only be getting worse for Kay, and I'm stuck riding the astral plane with my mind in the back of the car. I didn't think it would take me this long.

Well, I refuse to lose to this monstrosity. I have my horrible, brilliant scheme to enact, and Ryuu's got my back. We're going to win this. And worrying about Green Man is NOT going to help me do that. I've got to do this the right way.

-/|\-

On a lighter note!

Things Amalgamation Sage is Not Allowed to Do when Hakurei Ryuu is driving:

1: "Do not interrupt the Shaman while he is Shamanizing!" Is never an effective response to, "Do I turn left or right?"

2: Cackling madly when you think you understand the way you need to drive is ONLY acceptable when you're correct.

3: Pathfinder may be superior to D&D 3.5, but that does not mean that you can argue about it online using Ryuu's netbook!

4: Sage cannot cover the Gas bill on his own. He does NOT have the money for that, even if he says he does.

5: Even if Traffic Circles are the work of Satan, we still have to use them. Do not argue otherwise.

6: "Nuke the site from orbit" is NOT the only way to be sure.

7a: If Ryuu says you need a hug, then goddamn it, you are getting a hug!
7b: Unless Ryuu is driving. Then you're getting the goddamn hug after she parks.

8:  Being able to practice Kung Fu moves in the backseat while tracking The Thing is all well and good, but if it distracts the driver too much, she has the right to veto further technique usage.

-/|\-

Because when you're in the car all day, you have plenty of time to write. I started writing this around 6 PM. Green Man is stable and all is right in the world. Now I write, follow trail, write, follow trail...
------

The Rogue Mess Explodes:

I was pretty thick when I started out. And by thick, I think we should say up front that I was an Nth degree moron. I explained exactly how bad things were last time, but here's where things get really stupid: After Rogue General got nailed dead to rights by Time Lord and company, they tossed his army my way. My mission: Protect the general Philadelphia Area from enemy attack. Keep the place intact.

These were the worst soldiers in this or any other army. They were lazy, stupid, and downright evil in nature. Then again, they worked for a guy who was trying to overthrow the lord bossman of the Higher Planes. I would later find out it was not nearly so simple, but even where this guy was concerned there were pretty simple rules to keep in mind: This guy wasn't in it to do the right thing.. He was in it for the power, the money, the stuff that lets you know exactly how much of a monster he could be.

And they gave me this guy's troops. Now, the other thing that I wouldn't find out until later is that we were on the front lines. That the primary defense had been breached due to all the things I listed the other day, and that we were going to get the full brunt of the enemy offensive straight at us.

Lucky me, eh?

So, after all of this, I'm a rank amateur Nth degree moron trying to set up a defense. I'm pretty good at the whole strategic and tactical thing. I would have to be, considering how I've apparently done it in several lifetimes before this one.

And then I've got all five of the Rogues on my doorstep.

Me: "I'm going to have to place you all under arrest."
Rogue Wizard: "Okay. Can the act. You remember us, right? We need to go perform a coup now."
Me: "Wait. What? What are you talking about? Are you all insane?"
Rogue General: "...oh shit. He really doesn't remember anything. You've got to be kidding me."

They dispersed after that. I made no attempt to stop them, as I was not in the mood to be curbstomped. I determined something unfortunate at that point.: besides having probably been a total bastard, and not remembering about the majority of what I SHOULD know about my most recent past life, I was part of some kind of cosmic coup that went horribly wrong. Mostly because I didn't know I was supposed to be part of it.

And then it got worse. I'll get to that later.

11 Days Remain, RESCUE IS GO -/|\- Id Info -/|\- Bugs Bunny Protocol is In Effect

We're on our way.

Yesterday was about preparations. Dear god, I'm no Ritualist, but I can fake it when I have to. I hope I faked it hard enough. Ryuu got in touch with Lucien, I got a response, we are ON THE MOVE.

I've arrived at Ryuu's place. She's driving, I'm meditating and projecting in the back. I need the room to relax and use my tools. We're going to get exactly one shot at this.We need to target it down to the finest millimeter.

I'm putting something together. Damn will it be amazing if it actually works. I feel like I'm going insane all over again. Right on the edge with 11 Days to go. I'll never get the whole story written down by then, but it won't matter. THIS is why I do what I do. That wonderful moment before you start to do something absolutely insane that might or might not save the world, but will DEFINITELY muddy the waters. That moment where you crack your knuckles and get ready to dive headfirst into something bigger than you should by any rights consider diving into. No good plan on hand, the best you'll have is a mediocre plan and a prayer. If I'm not insane, then I am insane, because I'll never survive in normal society like this. This moment, this moment right here, when you're hatching a plan and putting all the pieces together: I need it, like a junkie needs his fix. I need that glorious rush as the whole world come together in my head.

I might lose all my Days in one go, and be on the run come next week. I might never get the whole story written down, and might never get the chance to confess all of my messed up life. I might be a dead man walking. But so long as one person still believes in you, and so long as there's at least one move left to play, it's what you've got to do.

Kay. Hold on. We're on our way.

-/|\-

Ended up giving Invocation of Id whatever I could find out regarding the matter we discussed. Where he goes from there is up to him. Good luck to 'em, 'cause it's a doozy.

-/|\-

Forgemaster Called. Someone set his house on fire. You've got to be kidding me. "Hephaestus will Burn."
Okay Lucy. THAT was uncalled for. In the words of Bugs Bunny, "Of course you realize, This Means War."

I'm missing a day. And they've got Kay.

I could spend the next five minutes writing every obscenity I can think of. It would not be helpful. I am smarter than that, I have more control than that.

Kay has been taken.

Specter does not seem to know about the trouble in the Veil.

Zero's getting ready to go on a rampage.

Lucy Ricardo is going after Hakurei Ryuu.

Of that list of problems, there's only one that I know for a fact I can do something about. Morningstar (Henceforth to be referred to as either Quisling, or Lucy Ricardo), is going after Ryuu. Well, I won't stand for that.

I could have helped Kay. I was working, but I could have gotten her that ritual in time. I could have done a dozen things that might have done the trick. But I missed it. Kay's out facing that THING on her own, and what the hell am I doing?

I was down to 13 days. Tomorrow will be day 12. If someone noticed, yes, I somehow went from day 17 to day 15. I lost a day somehow, and I don't know how. That's worrying. What changed? How did I not notice that?

Kay wrote that she lived near the Pine Barrens. ...oh dear. I just had an idea. I won't say what it is, because if it doesn't pan out, it just plain doesn't pan out. No point in getting anyone's hopes up.

No stories today. I just don't have it in me right now. The living need me more than the dead tonight.

We are in so much trouble -/|\- The 2nd Rogue -/|\- A Full Explanation of How It All Went Wrong

Even I think this joke is in bad taste. We are in serious shit.

14 Days Remaining.
We're all in so much trouble right now. Big trouble. The kind of trouble that makes "the stuff of nightmares" seem like a walk in the park. Ladies and gentlemen, lets have a discussion on the veil between worlds, shall we?

I've mentioned previously that there is a barrier that most entities need to pass through before they can cause havoc on our little slice of existence. While I often refer to it as a "Barrier", what it is would often be called by your average will-worker, witch, mystic, what have you, as "The Veil Between Worlds." There are amateurs, who feel the pull of the Other Side of the Veil, and want to do things like tear it away in portions of the world. After all, they say to themselves with the knowing smile of morons everywhere, "What could go wrong? It's where my power comes from, I'd be able to touch that world beyond with my bare hands. Think about what I could DO there!"

These people are stupid, they are stupid to the Nth degree. They have achieved a level of stupidity that cannot be defined using the English language. I would have to mix and match words from at least six different languages to describe how stupid they are, but I'm only proficient in English. So instead, I'll just tell you why these people are idiots.

I've visited the worlds beyond via astral projection. It is not a happy place. Everything good, bad, and undecided that's ever been thought up by man exists somewhere. People believed they existed or they already existed in some far flung corner of existence, waiting to make their presence known. I've walked both sides, and let me be the first to say that the barrier between worlds, the Veil, exists for a damn good reason. Take away the veil, and every creature from all of your dreams and nightmares gets to walk around on Earth.

The Veil has constantly taken hits for the last twenty years. Just about everyone can agree that it's slowly getting weaker all over the world. On the websites that me and mine gather on, every few months somebody asks, "What will happen if the veil breaks?" And then we spend the next week or so tossing around our theories. Just about everyone agrees that all signs point to 2012, and we get nervous. The worst case scenario involves the astral plane and the material world becoming the same thing in the most violent way possible, with all kinds of architecture and odd topography from the other side suddenly appearing where OURS is, causing one hell of an impact and smashing the world to bits. Just about everyone agrees that scenario is unlikely.

More likely if the two become one, entities from other worlds suddenly get an all-access pass throughout our world. The Jersey Devil, Bigfoot, Chupacabras, they're examples of creatures that exist on earth only SOME of the time. An earth where they exist ALL of the time? That's not a place you want to live in. All of those elder entities, things from beyond our reality that choose our reality to feed in, Cthulhu style? Guess what, they don't need cultists to tear through the Veil for them so they can get into our world, they can just stop on by and start eating everything in their path.

In my business, you hear the words "The veil will be torn away", and you drop whatever you were doing and figure out if it's real or not. No stone unturned, the veil is weak enough right now that all KINDS of bad stuff is happening as it is. Any threat of the veil disappearing will make everyone who actually understands this business panicky, nervous, and ready to go to war. Then there's that select group of idiots who say "Hooray! I get cosmic power right here and now!" Like I said, they are goddamn morons, and I swear to god I do NOT want to run into a crazy veil smashing cult. I know I will, there's always one running around, but I am NOT ready for that confrontations.

Right. Here's hoping that Specter is willing to take me at face value. Christ I wish I had some kind of credentials right about now. How do you get credentials as a bloody modern shaman with an axe to grind? Dear fluffy jumping jesus christ on crutches, how do I even get started? Okay, I know how I'd get started, I'd need to figure out the connection "A Friend" was using in the cosmic sense and follow it back to whatever hole is forming. Oh by all that's holy, I love how simple I make that sound. I sense many migraines in my future.

-/|\-

The Rogue situation exploded around the time the Summer Program was near its end. The rogues. By all that's holy I hate thinking back to that mess. Okay. Let me break it down for you.

Our first encounter with the Second Rogue, who we will refer to as Rogue General, should have filled us in on exactly what was going on. I bet you guys see what was happening by the time I get to my next post, or at least have a guess. Rogue General was at the head of one of the larger, less impressive Higher Planes armies. Rogue General had decided to go after The Presence. I didn't know what he wanted with her at the time, but I could feel her panic. There were a tense couple of hours as Time Lord did some fancy political maneuvers and got his army from his most recent past life back onto the field of play.

I mostly sat there and prayed she would be okay. These were my earliest days. I was just some joker with a bit too much talent and about zero luck back then. Now I've upgraded to having a bit too much skill and even more abysmal luck.

I wish I had been a larger part in keeping her safe during that whole mess. I wish I hadn't been a helpless spectator. If I had seen everything, I might have made a few guesses about what was REALLY going on. I'll just point out that someone you care about doesn't get two visits by two different world conquering jackasses without having a couple of irons in the fire. When I figured out all the connections I missed back then, I shat bricks.

These were my early days. I've had 8 years to learn how to be a scheming, brilliant, crazy bastard. I've learned how to be paranoid, and to question everyone. Back then? Back then I was a charming, if somewhat useless tool. For better or for worse, it was how I had to be. You see, I was the spanner that got dropped into the works.

------

A Full Explanation of How It All Went Wrong:

Right. So In my last post, I explained the overall situation that our world faced in the cosmic sense.

Now, the Higher Plane forces had all kinds of advantages. Fortresses, the backing of all the local creatures that wanted to live their peaceful lives, and much better trained soldiers. I mean, when you get down to it, the lower plane guys have always been on the wrong end of this particular battlefield. They made up for it with cannon fodder, ungodly amounts of cannon fodder. Their favorite trick was to create their soldiers from mud and sticks, very weak entities that weren't worth very much, but made up for it by hitting surprisingly hard and being able to attack in mass groups.

Every basic Higher Planes foot soldier was worth 10 of these Clay Soldiers. The problem is, that these Clay Soldiers would always outnumber the Higher Planes foot soldiers about 12 to 1 or 15 to 1, and that wasn't counting the actual intelligent demons and entities that were part of the Lower Planes army. However, with all the advantages I listed above for the Higher Planes armies, you'd think that the Lower Planes armies STILL wouldn't stand a chance.

Then the Rogues, with their Higher Planes armies, staged their coup against the High One. Keep in mind ladies and gentlemen, I've been expressly avoiding the terms "Heaven" and "Hell", and "God and the Devil." They are misnomers, and not even close to accurate to describe the places I'm mentioning. There IS a heaven, and there IS a hell, because people believe there is a Heaven and a Hell. The places I'm talking about are a more generalized, murkier locations that represent Entities that have been mistaken as "Angels" and "Devils" in the past. When I DO end up in situations that directly encounter Heaven and Hell, I'll be the first to tell you, but it doesn't happen very often. In any case, The High One is not Judeo-Christrian God, not even close. He's more like the great king of a vast empire that happens to be placed in the same conceptual area as where people would say "Heaven" is. If you have a headache yet, I apologize. It's an unfortunate part of my line of work.

I'm rambling, the point is, that they staged their coup. Now, the Rogues intended to cut the head off the body, take control over the Higher Planes in one fell swoop, and institute their rule. 5 of the greatest generals of the army, with the full support of the soldiers from their individual fiefdoms. It was go time, and their plan...

...Flopped. They took control of a portion of the Higher Planes near the celestial palace and had to run like hell. The sixth army never arrived. There was a sixth rogue and a sixth general. Neither arrived when they needed him to. Their forces escaped destruction, choosing to hide in the Astral Plane of Earth RIGHT before this conflict started. Keep in mind, that their force accounted for about a quarter of the overall armed forces that were going to be facing off against the Lower Planes army.

So now the Higher Planes army is smaller, and split on two fronts, fighting its former soldiers AND the incoming hordes from the lower planes.

I bet you can see how things would go to hell pretty quickly. But I haven't even GOTTEN to the part that really messed things up beyond all belief. I'll get into that next time.

15 Days Remaining -/|\- Oops -/|\- World State: Late 2002

15 Days Remaining. Spent a while hanging out with an old friend, shooting the breeze and playing Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. So far, I run Deadpool, Ryu, and Haggar. This is subject to change, as I only got the game last week, I've still got plenty to learn, and I may not have TIME to learn before this all gets unpleasant.

According the Forgemaster, the sword is coming along nicely.

Haven't gotten an actual post from Ryuu in a while. She hasn't been on AIM either. She's responded to my posts and to other people's posts, but I've got a bad feeling. Lord knows that Morningstar said he was going after her. I wasn't kidding about what I said I'd do to him if he tried. He's made it clear my threat isn't deterring him, and so it looks like I'm going to have to take on a proxy earlier than I thought I would. After what happened to Scott a few weeks back, I'm not letting ANYONE who is within my range get caught by this thing. In any case, I owe her. Next time I hear from her, I'm getting a location from her. I'm not making the same mistake twice. In any case, I've got a fantastic plan that only requires a paintball gun, a bit of Forgemaster's expertise, and a willingness to flip the bird at an ancient and terrible monster.

How about it Morningstar? Ready to play?

^_^ "Yay, now is fighty time, fighty time, blood blood blood!" -Wade Wilson

-/|\-

Oops:

I remember after the revelation that I was connected to someone, and directly in love with her, there was a point when I was working on fighting my inner gatekeeper.

The Inner gatekeeper is what guarded the knowledge I had been born with, things that I simply knew and understood and could make use of as whatever I am to try and stay alive. In theory, everyone like us has one. For sake of ease, I think the best label I could give myself is "Shaman." It's simple, it's easy, and it explains a lot.

"Being chosen by spirits, taught by them to enter trance and to fly with one's soul to other worlds in the sky or clamber through dangerous crevasses into the terror subterranean worlds; being stripped of one's flesh, reduced to a skeleton . . . and then reassembled and reborn; gaining the power to combat spirits and heal their victims, to kill enemies and save one's own people from disease and starvation -" Shamanism, by Piers Vitebsky

Well nuts. I wish I had remembered that little passage. Could have saved us plenty of time. I don't feel comfortable running around and waving the Authority stick by calling myself a "Guardian", and just about every tradition in this field warns against all the threats to one's health and sanity by sticking to this job...yeah. It's as good a label as any.

Anyways, the point is that I had to fight this thing. These things are always a warped and twisted version of your own personality. And mine was a clown. It makes sense, I'm a joker at my best and at my worst. The fact that we're talking a scary murder clown like in Steven King's "IT" gives you an idea of how much of a warped version of me this was.

Time Lord asked me as I did this, "So you're worried about this girl?"

I shrugged, "Yeah. Considering how bad things are here, how bad are they there? Who knows what could be out there? Think you could take a look?"

Meanwhile, in my mind I've got two scimitars and I'm doing some fancy bladework against an acid cream pie tossing, unicycle riding, magic sword spitting clown. Just another day at the office.

He said, "Eh. I just follow the emotional connection between you and her, pop on out, see what's going on..."

Suddenly, he got really, really quiet. I didn't notice, my eyes were closed and I was busy fighting my ICP loving alter ego. I had my rhythm going, and I was feeling pretty good about smiting my inner clown. So I opened my eyes, continuing to duke it out in my head, and saw Time Lord flat on his back. He looked like he'd just been hit by a freight train. You see, it turned out that the Presence had been entertaining guests. I would not finish defeating the clown until tomorrow. Time Lord went kind of nuts when he woke up. Apparently, someone had gotten the drop on him and beat him senseless. He got all worked up, calling on every resource he had to put together a protection detail for the Presence.

Who was her guest? A person who's going to play a big part in things to come. We'll codename him Rogue Wizard. Needless to say, this guy had betrayed everyone, trying to conquer the heavens themselves with his powers. He and his four cohorts had tried and failed in their coup, and now they were on earth and most definitely our problem.

-/|\-

World State: Late 2002

The period between 2002 - 2004 involved some of the absolute worst conflicts between spirits and entities beyond our world. To say that most of the nearby lands connecting to earth were torn asunder puts it mildly. But we're not at that point yet.

It is July 2002. Everything is intact at this point. Vast demon hordes can be found in several of the "lower planes" around our world, and are beginning to pour into the astral plane, which is the plane most immediately accessible from the Earth's physical plane. Forces have been dispatch from the higher planes, as they'll jump at a chance to duke it out with a couple of demons. Countless entities that stand inbetween them are battening down the hatches and hiding in their fortresses, or just running wherever they can. They know what it is to stand between these two eternal enemies when a war starts, and they want nothing to do with it. The Astral plane is not so lucky. The entities there know that they'll be in the thick of the war no mater what they do.

The Astral Plane of earth has not seen a conflict like this in decades. No one knows how big or how nasty it's going to be. The varying rulers of the different factions are picking sides between the higher plane armies and the lower plane armies. The Lower Plane armies have NEVER won a war on the Astral plane. They've given the Higher Plane armies a hell (pun intended) of a run for their money over the years, but they've never actually won. Everyone's pretty sure they're standing with the boys and girls of the Higher Plane for this little shindig.

What no one realizes is how absolutely screwed they all are. No one saw it coming. No one could have DREAMED that what happened is about to happen. Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the Thirty Xanatos Pileup. I get to cover THAT in the next post.

17 Days Remaining -/|\- A beginning.

17 Days remaining. Day 19 and Day 18 were two of the strangest, worst, best, worst days of my life.

The thing is, I can't even explain it to you. Not in a way that you would all understand. SHE is dead. And in order to explain that death, I need to tell the whole damn story.

Green Man, Hakurei Ryuu, I owe you both. I've been debating how I'd write about all of this all day. During training at the Dojo, as I ate pizza with the guys afterwards, as I met with my buddy who'd been in Japan during the earthquake and Tsunami and just got home...and then I realized, the best memorial would be to just do what I'd intended to do from the beginning. I will tell you our story. HER story intersects with mine quite a lot, and maybe you will all find some truth that I cannot. As it is, it will include the story I have alluded to this whole time, my "November Incident." There, you will learn why it is that I have this day counter, that's been counting down from 28 to 0.

When 0 Days remain, SlenderDouche will arrive. I will engage him in a nearby park in the city. And I will determine exactly where I need to go from there. I will not win. But I will find out what I need to know, and be ready to engage him in the next battle. And then I will go to war with a world of proxies, illusions and death. Failure to do so at this point, after seeing what everyone else has gone through, would be the very definition of cowardice.

That said, let us begin.

------
A Beginning:

This sums up my Training Period quite well.

When I met Time Lord at that school summer program, I had no idea what I was getting into. I was young, I was stupid, it's been eight years since then. Many people who get involved in this kind of work might tell you that they wish they had never got involved. I am not one of those people. I've done good things, and I know that if I had continued to live my life in fear of things I could not see, I would not be here today. For my entire life I have lived with a giant target sign on my back that says "Hi negative energy beings! Hi demons and things that hide in the dark! I'm a Big Fat Target! Kill Me!"

It's not a way you want to live.

Of course, four weeks after I met Time Lord for the first time, I wasn't thinking that. I was thinking something along the lines of "Oh god this hurts." You see, if demons were beer, then here were enough demons at that summer program to host a week-long fraternity party. It was a bad time, and I had to understand how to banish, purify, or destroy a variety of different entities VERY quickly.

Let’s get something straight right now: my training was NOT sufficient. Time Lord and I were both neophytes, and Time Lord was different in that he had sensed the imbalance in the world and had just gone to work. He was basically just updating me on what he'd figured out at this point in his life. We've gotten better, smarter, tougher, the whole nine yards. We spent the majority of our time working together making it up as we went along. I can admit that now. We were and are partners, no matter how many ways you slice it. If the world ended tomorrow we would spontaneously find a way to stand next to each other, bump fists, and go to work.

Four weeks into this unfortunate hell of a school summer program, a great army of "shades" arrived. They were creatures made of shadows and negative energy, and they had a serious beef with just about everything in the area. Time Lord called on all the local spirits he could find, and we found ourselves with a decent sized army to oppose them. And in the middle of the night, when the fight was at its thickest, I ended up jumping off the fortified wall we managed to put together and attacked the enemy on the ground. All of them. At once.

I was so very, very stupid when I started out.

So I was in my dorm room, feeling a spot on my chest where it felt like I'd been hit with a huge hammer. I was gasping for breath, groaning, hoping nobody else could hear me. I have felt pain like that maybe two other times in my life.  Back then, if I took a wound on an astral projection body, I'd feel it on my physical body. Needless to say, that's not as much of an issue anymore. At the time though, I probably could have died if something had gone much worse. It hurt just that badly.

Remember that distant presence? The one I spoke about when me and Time Lord first met? Well, the spirits near me parted, and they brought her in. I could feel that presence, and it was magnificent. She placed her hands on the wound, and I could feel this warmth pulsing through it. I could feel my body taking the proper shape again, and she was giving me this little smile. I knew her, I knew her from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. Everything about her being there made me feel like there could be a light at the end of this tunnel.

She said to me, "I missed you."

I could tell you the gory details about how she pieced everything back together, and about how crazy it was for both of us to talk after that. I didn't understand what was happening at all. She was always one step ahead of me, always knowing just a little bit more about what was happening than I did. She knew exactly what was going on. I was just amazed that I was talking to a friendly spirit in my room, and somehow seemed to know her. She wasn't a spirit. She was real. And I may never see her again. But that's something to discuss later.

So Time Lord and I were on a basketball court a few days later, discussing this along with two dragons. Don't laugh, just because you can't see them in the physical world doesn't mean they don't hang around sometimes. I couldn't explain it to them. I could feel a weight on my heart and like my entire body was burning and it wasn't like anything I'd ever felt before.

Dragon 1: "He's in love, isn't he?"
Dragon 2: "Silly humans. It would be easier if he realized it."

I blinked, and glared at them. I said something along the lines of, "You know, I can hear you."

Dragon 2: "Well shit. He learns fast."
Dragon 1: "I would hope so. It's his only hope."

I said, "How I can I love someone I've never met before?"

Time Lord: "Maybe you did meet her. Not in this life, but in the last one. God only knows how often we get Reincarnated."

The dragons nodded.

I couldn't help but agree. It felt right. And I could feel her watching. Keeping an eye out for me. But then, there was that other presence. He watched from a distance in his ancient armor, and Time Lord and I both spent a while theorizing what his deal was. By the fourth week though, he made his position pretty clear: In my past life, I had insulted him in a way that could only be repaid through blood. We would do battle when he felt I was skilled enough.

This is a running theme with my career. I don't actually REMEMBER anything that happened in these supposed "past lives" I have. I've remembered maybe one, two things, and none of them feel right. The one thing I do know for certain, is that I worked REALLY hard on making enemies. I must have had a wonderful schedule:

Monday:
8:00 AM: Wake up.
8:05 AM: Make an enemy for all eternity.
8:10 AM: Kill someone in such a manner that their family swears vengeance on me.
8:15 AM: Shower.
8:30 AM: Kill an assassin while showering, earning the enmity of a Ninja Clan
8:45 AM: Get dressed. Eat breakfast at mess hall.
9:00 AM: Inadvertently insult the cooking, earning the enmity of the cook.
9:05 AM: Make an enemy for all eternity.
9:10 AM: Execute an Enemy, making their family my enemy for all eternity.
9:15 AM: Defeat ambush.
9:20 AM: Be An Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy. Anger my peers.
9:30 AM: Make Snarky comments about a peer's mother.

Seriously. That was only the first hour-and-a-half of what my average day MUST have been like, because I have met so very, very many spirits who have said, "You! You're a total jackass!"

------

I really am a nice person. Really! Now, I actually got a better explanation of who I was later on. This is just what I could piece together at the time. Either way, I think I’ll stop here for tonight. Lord knows this is going to get complicated enough as it is. I’ll try and distill the information as best I can, readers. Lord knows that trying to tell 8 years of history in 16 days is NOT how I should have gone about this, but I’m stuck where I am. Do forgive me if this ends up feeling like what I am afraid it might be: too much to tell in too little space.

Well shit. We really needed THAT right now, didn't we?

I'm waaaaaaay too old for this shit.

Well damn. I sort of wondered whether or not this might happen. Ladies and gentlemen, we've just hit Pain Town. Population: Everybody.

I have no idea how to proceed at this point. Shelby is 13, and kids are pretty easy to manipulate at that age, especially the ones who have multiple personalities, no offense intended. I don't know what's going on here, but my theories run the gamut from enemy plot, Kung Fu Treachery, to a chain reaction that started when Reach dropped his particular bombshell.

Personally, I really hope it's not Kung Fu Treachery. Slendy McDoucheRiot is one thing, but Ninjas? I'm not equipped to handle Ninjas. I know people who are, but I'm not one of them. If this ends in a mighty ninja battle, I'm heading for the hills. I'll stick to dealing with potentially nonexistent spirits and entities in my insane little world that I don't expect anyone else to believe in.

God knows I don't blame Shelby, whatever happens next. This whole mess is crazy enough as is, and kids make mistakes. She's just 13. I remember when I was thirteen. I don't like to talk about the stupid shit I did when I was thirteen. In fact, I've got a long, long list of things from when I was a kid that I think about sometimes, and I'll have these moments where I clasp my skull and groan at how stupid I was. Then again, I'm a perfectionist about human interaction. Needless to say, MY life didn't start to make sense until after I was 20.

Having just used the "It was just an ARG!" Trick to get Clone Kaiju out of trouble a few days ago, the fact that this is happening right now is giving me this brilliant, fantastic headache. I suffer from chronic migraines, and I take preventative medication every night to ensure a minimal amount of pain in the membrane at all times. I forgot to take it yesterday night with all the craziness that Brawler put out into the open. I think he and Student are alright now. Then something happened that...well, Day 18 was fucked up. If I tried to explain EXACTLY what happened, it wouldn't make any sense. So I need to tell the whole story before I explain what the fuck happened at the end of day 18. However, I've got work to do and forgetting to take that pill means I need to break out the Maxalt. Maxalt will take your migraine by the balls and pile-drive it out of your head, but it can also make you dizzy. In short, I'm cooped up in the apartment writing all day, because I'm not safe to drive.

I'm down to 17 days. I'm going to be cutting it close. I've got to tell the whole story before I'm fighting for my life, but I can't really do that on Migraine Day.

Needless to say, my opinion on EVERYTHING that's happening right now is summed up by the picture: "Hunter S. Thompson, John Cusack, and Johnny Depp with a Blowup Doll. Your argument is invalid." I can't wait until this whole mess blows over so that people can get back to what we all want to do: Survive, and maybe kill this fucking dapper and fashionable, blank faced, child eating mothefucker.

And goddamn it, if this IS Kung Fu Treachery, then I have attracted the attention of at least 3 different nasty Conspiracies out to dominate the world. ...Admittedly, that'd be pretty cool. I mean, if I could totally attract the attention of 3 different major conspiracies and still survive? I'd be living the dream baby. God it's fantastic being totally fucking off-your-rocker insane sometimes.

So yeah. It's not Kung-Fu Treachery. And all jokes aside, I hope everybody figures out what exactly is going on. I'm too old for this shit.

Back to Work -/|\- Day 18

Scared me silly until I realized it was part of construction

The convention center had some construction going on in the parking lot, and I ended up getting a bad parking place all the way on the edge of the lot. Nothing beats starting your morning thinking you're staring at your first Operator Symbol. It's better than coffee! But no, just a part of the construction markings.

I didn't need that right now. Eighteen days left. I've been about half-dead since 2 PM and running on caffeine. I've got about 8 articles in the bag, and that will cover my ass work-wise for now.

Student's boyfriend has gone off the deep end. For better or for worse, she has issues with her father. You know the old story about how people with an abusive parent tend to get into abusive relationships? Yeah. The worst part is, that the boyfriend is one of Time Lord's FORMER STUDENTS. I'll Codename him "Brawler." Brawler is just that, a bare-knuckle brawler with about enough talent to fill a thimble and the common sense of a lemming.

Student has talent in spades. She doesn't even realize how good she is. A few weeks after she and Brawler got involved and he introduced her to me, I ended up saying to Brawler:

"(Brawler). This isn't something you fuck around with. You two are dating, and you want to teach her. Fine. You're training a Partner. Someone to back you up. You will take this seriously, unlike everything else you've ever done. This is your responsibility."
He said to me, "Yeah. Totally, of course."

Needless to say, I'm the one teaching her now. He didn't teach her shit, and after a few weeks he told her "You'll never be one of us!" And said she had no talent. I guess he was too busy being an asshole to teach her anything.

No talent. NO TALENT?! Well fuck me sideways and call me a kangaroo, if she's got no talent then I'm a bloody nerf-ball tossing LARPer running around shouting "Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!"

So Brawler's going on about a bunch of conspiracy theories involving Japan, he basically just spent the last 52 hours straight working on information that doesn't make sense. He's acting completely nuts. I'm afraid he's going to try and hurt her or something. I don't know why I think that, just call it a hunch. I just called him, talked to him about it, and got him to relax. I know I said I'd start telling the whole story and how we got to this point when I got back from the convention, but fuck it. The rest of tonight is getting spent proofreading articles and figuring out whether or not I need to go to Chicago and keep Brawler from hurting himself or others. I'm too old for this shit.