Divide and Conquer

Or: How I, Chester Matenga-White, managed to fuck up everything.

Okay, so I panicked, typed up that one post (you know the one) and then literally caught the first bus out of town and rode it until I got hungry, at which point I stopped at a shitty cafe and ate shitty food and slept on the roof. Then I caught another bus all the way down to Taupo, where I ran into a bit of trouble with a few proxies. There were six of them, so I led them all the way around the freaking city in an attempt to shake them off (didn't work) so I ducked into an internet cafe, got myself something to eat, and then wrestled with the idea of checking this blog. Then I saw the post. 11:11.

I logged off, got out of the chair, and got up to Auckland as fast as I possibly could. Those were possibly the most excruciating hours of my life. I called Vivi over and over and over again and it always went straight to answerphone.

When I got to the house is was empty and for a moment I was afraid it was too late before I remembered about Stella's perception-screw abilties and yelled, as loudly as I could. "HEY, LADIES! HOWS A GUY TO HELP YOU OUT IF HE CANT SEE WHAT'S GOING ON?"

There was a pause, then the world shifted. The scene was much the same except for two unconscious proxies lying on the front lawn and another nearby, having some kind of seizure. And, uh, Slendy. He turned to face me and...suddenly there were tentacles fucking everywhere. Like fucked up wings or something. I picked up my barbed-wire cricket bat (which was lying on the ground a couple of metres away- I later found out Vivi had been using it and had accidentally thrown it. She's so helpful.) and took a few steps back from Him.

he just kinda stood there for what felt like ages. Then he screamed. For a given definition of "scream"

fuck, I will never forget that noise or whatever it was. It wasn't actually noise, but I heard it. Inside my head or some shit. I fell unconscious, and pretty much the first thing I did when I woke up was throw up Slendergoop. lots of it. I burnt it because that's not exactly the sort of stuff you leave lying around to it's own devices.

Slendy was gone, oddly enough.

The girls were on the roof. Apparently Slendy had initially appeared INSIDE the house, with about seven or eight proxies, so the first thing they did was get into the study, go out the skylight and climb onto the roof. And improvise weapons with kitchen knives and a length of pole that I WAS going to use to replace the rail currently on the balcony, which is very rusty.

I swear, despite the situation, there was nothing more reassuring than meeting Vivi's eyes and knowing she's here, that I can protect her, that she's alive.

Then she charged up to me and slapped me. Twice. And screamed at me for being an idiot and leaving because that was their PLAN, she wouldn't be any safer with me gone and dear god why did I leave?

Answer: I am stupid.

Meanwhile, Stella is bleeding from the nose from the strain of holding a perceptionscrew on most of the street. Slendy is gone and the proxies are waking up, so I told her only to mess with the people in the houses directly surrounding us and to just make it uninteresting rather than give them an entire illusion.

We waited until about 4am, but no sign of Slendy or any proxies so we went back inside. I had to treat Vivi's wounds, and then help clean up Stella (who has ruined one of the two sets of clothes she has to her name. We need to take her shopping at some point because she can't keep borrowing Vivi's clothes) and then we all just coma'd out in the living room.

Vivi's forgiven me. For leaving, I mean. She has every right not to, but after the whole slap-and-rant thing she just smiled in that odd little way of hers, flicked a bit of hair out of her eyes and said "Welcome home, Chess." like I hadn't just abandoned her.

God, I'm going to hate myself for that for the rest of my life.

Vivi would have typed parts of this post up, but her right hand has been all bandaged up and it's a pain to type one-handed, so she's sitting curled up against my side, watching me type. She hit me for the bit about hating myself, but it's the honest truth and I'd rather not lie.

As if I could lie to her anyway.

On a happier note: JEDI. What on earth happened between you and Stella? Our computer hates tumblr and Stella won't say, but she's being all weird. Did you say something to her?

--Chester