2 Days Remaining: Training -/|\- Visiting Green Man -/|\- 1 Day Remaining

2 Days Remaining:

Yeah. I let Morningstar get to me. I've been thinking about if there was a way out of that mess yesterday that didn't involve something dying. I have failed to come up with anything.

I trained today at the dojo, for the first time in a while. I was in New Jersey for too long. I needed to be home. Today's training session was run by the guy who knew a thing or two about Crane, so I ended up learning a number of useful things today. Who knows, maybe I'll actually be able to use some of the stuff that doesn't involve poking someone's eyeballs out.

The dojo is peaceful. It was originally started by a guy who knew a hundred or more martial arts, and began teaching people in my area. I got a chance to spar him a year ago, me and my completely untrained sack of a body versus... well, here's a metaphor for you: Imagine a brick wall. The brick wall starts moving toward you. You cannot hurt a brick wall with your bare hands unless you are a master martial artist, which I am not. I try to escape, only to learn that the brick wall has surrounded me. It's slowly inching inward all around me, threatening to crush me. I monkey around, try to distract him, and it's useless, because the wall sees everything I'm going to do. It knows me. It knew me down to the finest fragment of my soul the moment I arrived. And just as the wall threatens to crush me, the match is over, and I am dumbfounded. What did I just encounter?

I call him Sensei. Sensei is one scary motherfucker, and I know for a fact that he can see through me. 

He is teaching English in Japan right now. The people who currently run the dojo are his senior students, and they are the nicest people you will ever meet. What strikes me is the fact that each of them in their own way feels at peace. They are ranked, and they all strive forward to improve themselves every day. I am not ranked, and I fart around on the astral plane and pretend I'm some great font of wisdom. Amalgamation Sage indeed. I think maybe I need a name change.

-/|\-

Visiting Green Man

I started writing this yesterday. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty messed up. The more I think about what I've done over the years, the more I wonder how much easier this would be if I was batshit crazy. When you astral project, there are degrees of separation between you and what is happening. Compared to the other day with Snore, I've seen and done things that should have driven me to madness a long time ago. I wouldn't feel it on the same level though, because of that separation.

It feels more like a video game. You don't see things as they are, you see things as your mind tells you they are. Like a video game, there's a separation between you and the violence that lets you view it from a neutral perspective. When I figured that out years ago, I had a pretty immediate freakout. I thought about all the times I thought something was saying something, but I couldn't understand it. I couldn't understand it because my mind wasn't capable of comprehending what they were saying, or didn't want to. I tell the stories of my past, and the thing that I need to remember is the fact that my mind just wasn't capable of seeing what was actually happening. This time though, I was right there on the spot. No separation. Me against Donato, and Donato was dead.

This is actually a good explanation for why I was so stupid in the past. I don't like it though. I should have been smarter. I'm going to keep telling the old stories from back then, for what little they mean. I may well be diving into hell when Friday comes, but I'm going to do my best to set the record straight before I get dropped into hell. I could have done it by now, but hey, I was busy saving lives and running around New Jersey. And if I had to do things over again, I wouldn't change a thing. I plain damn like you guys too much. ~_^

So I was considering just how much trouble I was in while me and some guys were in the hospital, visiting Green Man yesterday. As a group, we talked about all kinds of stuff for a while. Green Man has always healed fast, and they think he'll be out in another few days. The other guys had to get going before I did, so I found myself in the hospital room alone with him. We both checked the hallway, and around the window for any sign of someone listening in.

Then, Green Man said to me, "You know, you could have just walked away. Someone else would have shown up to deal with this."

I closed the door to the hospital room.
I turned around and looked him in the eye.

I said, "You always say that. You always say, 'walk away, and the universe will respond. Someone else will show up to do the job.' Well guess what? I was marked a target by this thing in November, and no one walks away from it. And even if I could walk away from my responsibilities as whatever the fuck I am, what if I don't want to make somebody else do it."

I was closer to him now, and I noticed this alarmed look on his face, but I didn't really care:

"I mean, what if I don't want to force some dumb kid to wake up, see a thousand evil spirits and good spirits and indifferent spirits running around out there? Hell, (Green Man), What if I actually give two shits about something other than myself? What if I actually want to stand up for the people who can't see this shit? You talk about training with (Sensei) and how he beat the selfish bastard out of you, but guess what? You haven't changed!"

I was an inch from his face:

"You left me in her care for six, long, painful years. And on year seven, you step out of retirement, kill her, and everything's supposed to be great and wonderful, isn't it? Is that a fact? Quit fucking telling me this ain't my problem, and help me deal with it now that it is!"

A nurse opened the door. She looked worried as hell.

Green Man said, "We're fine."

The nurse said, "But I heard screaming!"

Green Man said, "Trust me. We're fine."

I blinked. I backed off from Green Man, and looked around. I had been screaming in his ear. I didn't even notice. What the fuck was wrong with me?

She closed the door and we listened to her footsteps make their way away from the door.

Green Man said, "I just think it's funny that you're saying all of that now that I'm in the hospital for trying to keep (Forgemaster) alive."

I winced. Yup. He was right, I had just bitched him out and cut loose with six years of repressed fury right after he'd chosen to do something selfless. That was awfully classy on my part.

Green Man said, "You haven't told me what exactly sent those people after us, or what they were doing."

Mostly, because telling you what Slendy is makes him more likely to target you.

Green Man said, "Like I told you when I did what I did, I couldn't have done it before now. I didn't have the training I needed."

Yeah. But you could have done all kinds of OTHER things that could have helped me. Maybe help by dealing with the things she worked with? Maybe help me figure out what kind of conspiracy she was running. As it is, I still don't know what it was she was trying to keep me from seeing.

I changed the subject. I said, "(Green Man), I can't tell you what it is that I'm fighting because it attacks by degrees of separation and thought forms. If you don't think about it, it can't see you. People like the ones that burned (Forgemaster)'s house down and attacked you are different. They have the ability to hunt people down just like normal people do. They work for IT. I spent the last month or so protected from it using a charm I threw together by getting blessings from a bunch of people, including Jane."

He gave me this look when I mentioned Jane. I ignored it. I haven't discussed Jane with you guys yet. Like everything else in my life, Jane is complicated. Then I told him the rest of the story up until now, omitting anything that could get TallBlank McWaterSuit's attention.

We were quiet for a minute, and then I said, "When I start running, I want (Forgemaster) to get my half of the apartment until I get back. Make sure you don't use any of your fancy moves, and you should be safe."

Green Man said, "What do I do if I'm already a target?"

I said, "Throw up wards and pray."

He said, "Why didn't you tell me about this in November?"

I said, "I didn't want to believe this was possible. And I wanted to keep this between me and it, whatever happened next. Wouldn't that have been nice?"

-/|\-

1 Day Remaining:

Tomorrow, I'll be directly in TPF's line of fire. I pick up the sword I commissioned from Forgemaster tomorrow. I need to suck it up and come up with a plan. I need to tell the story of the Rogues that I started a few weeks ago, what I do, and all of that. Mostly, I need to Not Die. Well. Here goes nothing, eh?

I get more confident with each passing Lolcat

Time to make a mess of things, eh?