My grandfather...

...is absolutely, utterly, and entirely insane.

And he's brilliant.

No wonder he joined our little ragtag group.  He was nuts enough to come with us and badass enough to help greatly. (Note: he whacked me with the damned shillelagh for swearing (that's twice now))

Of course, he's already made enemies with Stripes, but that's expected.

I think we may actually have a shot at victory.

Just maybe.

Promising to Die for Ireland

Yes, the title is an Angela's Ashes reference.  If you haven't read it, do so please, it's amazing.

Anyway.  Stripey made me realize something yesterday.  Our email conversation before I really started my getaway led to a Harry Potter metaphor when I said that my policy with the mask was the same as how the trio handled the locket Horcrux in the last book.  And the metaphor really works in a lot of ways, too, not the least of which being that I'm a Chosen one.  Get it?

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked again.  I asked him where my Dumbledore was and he said that he'd killed him and Voorhees ate the body.  Well, I realized that I have never really had a Dumbledore, and could really use one in my current situation.  But who do I know that's so wise and can teach me things to help out against all those hell-bent on my destruction?

Then I remembered that my grandfather is a former member of the freaking IRA.  He kept all his memorabilia, too.  Including his weapons.  A burglar tried to rob him a few years back.  Grandpa shot him in the chest before the guy knew he was there.

Now, I know what you're thinking.  "Goodness, Doc, the Irish Republican Army was a group of terrorists!  Wouldn't associating yourself with them - and using their tactics, no less - go completely against that moral code, you know, one of the main reasons you refused to join the Commune in the first place?"

First off, FREEDOM FIGHTERS FOR THE GLORY OF THE GREATEST NATION ON TH' FACE O' TH' EARTH, not terrorists.  If you ask Grandpa, at least.  Second, I don't have many more options left.  Even I can't run forever.  Not like this, anyway.

So we showed up at his house this morning.  He opened the door only a crack, as he always does, and when he saw me his one visible eye widened.  "Jaysus, Hanna, what happened to ye?  Ye look like hell!"  So he let us in and I explained the whole situation.  He just took it in solemnly, nodding every now and again.  After I finished, he said, "Och.  I was hoping ye wouldn't get wrapped up with these guys, you were always such a nice and peace-lovin' girl..."

"You...wait, you know about these guys?!  Why haven't you said anything?!"

"Och, aye, I'll tell you all about it later.  Right now we need to get packed and outta here.  An' we'll be takin' my vehicle, your puny little thing is ruddy worthless for combat 'n holdin' th' supplies we'll need 'n all sorts o' odder things..."

The friend I have codenamed Liz, who happens to own the car, didn't like that.  "Hey!  My car is awesome!  It's gotten us this far, it'll go forever!"

He just gave her an amused look.  "You won't survive long in a war with that attitude, lassie.  Sacrifices have to be made sometimes, an' if ye don't like it, you can see if th' enemy's any better."

That shut her up.  Which was kind of amazing, because usually nothing shuts her up when she's mad but the other person's surrender.  Of course, my grandpa's still in great shape.  He could destroy a lot of guys less than half his age in a fair fight if he needed to.  Which is good for our sakes.

So we moved our stuff to his vehicle, which happens to be a modified truck of some sort, and he grabbed some stuff for himself to pack.  Among his luggage is a crate that, when asked what it contains, he'll only give us a devilish grin.

He's promised to teach us how to fight back as best as he can and as fast as he can.  And he, in turn, made me promise that, in the ("rather likely") event of his death, I'm to scatter his ashes back home in Ireland.

We're back on the move now.  Grandpa's happier than I've ever seen him.  Crazy old bastard.

Given the events of the week, I'd pretty much forgotten that I have more problems than just the Iowa Commune to worry about.

Specifically the fact that they weren't they only proxies I'd pissed off with negative consequences for me.

I'm referring of course to MT.  Or rather, Vadiir.  Or The Artist Formerly Known As MT.

You know, that guy I had no shred of hope of encountering and leaving with my life.  Before he knew fire Theurgy.  Oh yeah, did you know that?  He knows goddamned fiery magic.  Oh, and he had a short range teleporty thingy with him courtesy of Stripes.  This bodes well for me, eh?

Now, I know what you're wondering.  "Oh my goodness, Doctor, this guy certainly is tough! Surely you couldn't defeat him and the teleporter would make him nigh-inescapable!  How EVER did you manage to use your endless wiles to your advantage and manage to survive such a harrowing encounter?"

Simple.  I did something almost as likely to kill me as our fiery friend.

"But Doctor, how could something so deadly save your life?"

Well, I won't give you a play-by-play this time, we all saw what happens when I try that.  So, to save you from reading a novel and to save me from typing one when I should be doing other things - like sleeping, if I can manage it - I'll just tell you how it ended.

It ended with me, with several newly acquired gashes and ON FIRE, jumping off a bridge into a river all while screaming "ALLONS-Y!"  (Not "Geronimo".  Tennant's still cooler, Stripeypants.)

That's right.  I jumped off a bridge into a river while on fire.  Maybe you should start calling me "Captain" instead of Doctor, savvy?  Heheh.

Surface tension is some pretty amazing stuff, too.  I owe a few broken ribs to it.  Once I hit the water, I was paralyzed underwater for a few seconds and when I finally broke the surface I was somewhere entirely different.  Also, I was soaked and dead tired and hurt pretty badly, so my swimming wasn't exactly strong.  I managed to grab a log and float downstream until I washed ashore.  I coughed, I sputtered, I shook, and I collapsed.  And I saw that thrice-damned mask, still hanging by a chain from my beltloop.  Grinning back at me.  Mocking me.  So I tried to destroy it again in a ragefit until I decided to ragequit and spent the next several standard units of time curled up in a ball clutching my head.

I called my buds and gave them directions.  They showed up a while ago to pick me up.  My various burns, cuts, and fractures have been attended to as best as we can.  I hurt like hell, everywhere.

We're on the move once again.  I'm lying in the backseat, watching out the window.  It's the beginning of spring, and yet there's already corn sprouted everywhere.  I used to hate it with a passion, it was EVERYWHERE, it was my home state.  It was everything boring about my life.

What I wouldn't give now to just get lost in a cornfield and never come out.  No chases, no knives, no fire.  Just corn.  I miss the boring.

Right.  I'm going to try and get some restful sleep for once, god knows I need it.  Talk to ya later, guys.  Doctor, over and out.

Killjoys, make some noise!

I really really love this music video.  It's so awesome.  BEHOLD THE SCI-FI GLORY!

I was watching this today and I noticed some weird coincidences.

Like how the people chasing our ragtag group of heros, those Draculoids, they all wear...white...suits...  Of course, Stripes doesn't actually wear a white suit (or I've never seen him in one, anyway).  And Korse, the bald dude, tells our ragtag group of heroes to "keep running".  Also other things that no one really cares to read and I don't really care to type.

AND THEY SAVE THE LITTLE GIRL IN THE SEQUEL, BY THE WAY.

Also, anyone notice that #nationalrunningday is trending on Twitter right now?  Irony, much?

WhiteSuit

I'm gonna kill him.

He's not even taking this seriously! (Though that's probably in our best interests, but still.) He's toying with me, and it makes me fucking mad.

He took all our stuff and hid it, for one thing.  He taunts me than I've ever taunted anyone, and you guys know me.

And on top of everything, he's dragged Nein into this.

She messaged him to try to get him to stop chasing me, and so he sent the goons at the Missouri Commune after her.  It's not fucking fair, she just wanted to help!  And look what it got her!  He didn't have to do that!

And it doesn't help that he spent nearly the entire email conversation we had today hitting on me in a really creepy way.

But he said something today that worries me.  He said that way back when in that Mibbit chat with Slendy (god, it seems like so long ago) that his saying "It should be noted I am also a liar" was a prediction of the future, someone else is going to say that.  So we have another liar to look out for now.  Five bucks it's goddamn WhiteStripes.  Asshole.

And that doesn't mean that the Slender Man isn't a dirty liar, as well.  I'm enough of a Doctor Who fan to know that the Master's Utopia is bullshit.

And look at that, Stripey.  Repeating the fucking Doctor Who joke.  U mad, bro?

Memorial Day

I did something today that was potentially really, really dumb.

Every year, my family has a get together on Memorial Day weekend, always Sunday.  I decided to show up for a while.  I got there kinda late, so everyone of age was a bit tipsy and all the kids were getting tired.  Well, except my cousin Dylan, but he's always bouncing off the wall.  He was running around yelling about Mother Russia and terrorists and all sorts of strange things.  In fact, he immediately decided that I was a "unique red-headed Nazi" and tried to shoot me with a baby.  So I yelled at him in German and he ran off.  After that, I only talked to him in my German accent that he couldn't tell was awful.

My cousin was there with his electric guitar and amp, and my uncle had his bass and amp, and they sat on their amps and we all sat around them and they played and we all sang.  It was a beautiful drunken scene.  Everything from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to "Hey Jude" to "Puff the Magic Dragon" to every AC/DC song ever got played, and only half of the people knew the words or chords to a song at any given time.  I had to remind my aunt - who was a bona fide hippie back in the day - of the words to "Hey Jude".  Another one of my cousins took over for a while, he played mostly Metallica and 90s stuff, though.  He knew some Green Day, and only I knew the words.  Naturally, they made me sing them.  Talk about awkward.

I talked to my parents.  They were a little tipsy, and with some arm twisting and coercing, they agreed to let me go on a road trip.  Mum also gave me some money in case I needed it.  They both had that sad our-little-girl's-growing-up face that every kid learns to recognize.  I didn't tell them about my current situation.  I knew they wouldn't believe me.  Hell, I barely believe me.

I wasn't at the party very long.  Liz and Amy had gone to grab some more supplies from their places, and a few minutes after they showed up I noticed a masked man standing almost out of sight talking on the phone.  We left in a hurry.  I hated to rush goodbyes, but we had to get out.  One of my cousins, the one playing guitar earlier, hugged me out of the blue.  It caught me off guard since he isn't normally a very huggy person.  At all.  We are pretty close, though - people joke that we're siblings sometimes, and we formed a team because we're usually the only one to get the others' various quotes and references.

"Stay safe," he said.  "I can't have a Tag Team Awesome without you."

I came closer to crying right then than I've been in years, and I'm not a very emotional person.  The fact that he was clearly plastered didn't seem to take anything away from it.

We stopped at my place to grab a few more things and left town.  It's just us now.  The three of us against a group of ruthless super powered people bent on catching me working for an unknowable Eldritch monstrosity.

I hope I just found myself in a fictional tale, because that's probably the only way we're getting out of this at all, let alone victorious or unscathed.

Yesterday

So.  Bet you're wondering what went on yesterday.  Would have gotten to ya earlier, but given my current situation, it was kinda hard to find time to sit down and write up a blog entry.

At about 1:30 I went to the park.  My logic was that no one would have the balls to attack and kidnap someone and force them into a mask, kicking and screaming in broad daylight in front of lots of people.  Of course I'd forgotten that the Chosen are FUCKING INSANE, ALL OF THEM.  And have a boss that can fucking manipulate reality as he sees fit.

So anyway, I was standing there, leaning against a shelter house wall so no one could sneak up behind me.  I was perhaps a little stressed.  Okay, strung out enough to have a bad stomachache and prone to absolute panic at more or less nothing.  When two o' clock finally rolled around, I was nearly at my breaking point.  And they showed up out of fucking nowhere.  Seriously, I was looking one way and I moved my head and there are like eight or nine people in spooky masks just fucking STANDING there as if it were nothing.  How I didn't die of a heart attack right then and there is beyond me, but I've been Chosen to work for a being that by all means shouldn't exist.  Obviously, normal logic no longer applies.

So one of them walks foreword a bit, I assume it was WhiteSuit, and he told me that I could just go quietly or they would take me by force.  I, of course, made an attempt to choose a third option and sprinted off at full throttle.  I'm pretty sure they saw that coming.  Mostly because it's exactly what I told Stripey I'd do via email earlier.  So I'm running for my life and they're after me, and they're catching up, but I've got home field advantage.  See, in the park I was in, there's this big hole in the ground you can't see because the grass grows over it.  I ran right over it, making sure not to actually step in it, and then I heard a yelp and a thud.  I think one of them broke their ankle on it.  Meanwhile, I'm wondering why the hell no one's calling the cops or even noticing this chase scene.  And then I remembered their boss and all his super magic powers and damn near stopped to smack myself.

Then I remembered that my back-up plan required my friends to show up and notice me being in trouble.  I prayed to whoever would listen that I wasn't royally fucked.  Anyway, they weren't due for another half hour or so at least, so I needed to stall.  So I made the fucking brilliant decision of running into the adjacent woods.  Now, process that for a second.  When have the woods /ever/ boded well for a Slenderstory protagonist?  Exactly.  I have no idea how I'm not currently in Ames brainwashed other than the luck of the Irish - no that's not enough, that combined with divine intervention.

Anyway, I ran into the woods.  I weaved in and out of trees, going for the zigzag thing rabbits do.  And then I got hit in the back of the knees with a flying tackle.  I kicked the person in the face, hard.  Four times.  Their mask got covered in mud and I'm pretty sure I cracked it, but they didn't so much as flinch.  So I kicked them in the throat with all my might and they let go.  (No, I don't know what gender the person was.  All I could perceive was their mask, it seems.)

So I was up and running again, but now they were way closer.  Close enough for their fingers to brush the back of my jacket as we ran, which was a bit worrisome.  I figured that my best bet was to maybe GET OUT OF THE DAMNED WOODS TO SOMEWHERE WHERE MY SCREAMS COULD MAYBE BE HEARD, so I headed back towards the park with them hot on my tail.  When I broke out of the trees, though, there were three more of the fuckers waiting for me, one of them being Stripey, who just so happened to be holding a certain mask.  You know the one.

The Grinning Jester Mask.  Custom made just for me, the hapless kid they refer to now as LastLord.  (Which is really a pretty fuckawesome name, but I refuse to go by it because of the whole principle of the thing.)

Everything just kinda stopped.  It seemed like all that existed was me and that mask,  It was like it was some part of me that had been long lost and was just being reunited with me.  I was infinitesimally close to just putting it on and going with them, I think the only way I could have avoided it was divine intervention.  Naturally, my phone rang just then.  Nothing to snap someone like me out of a trance like a Doctor Who ringtone.  I snapped out of it and realized that my arms were being held by someone.  I managed to tear my way free - quite literally, I scratched them up pretty badly - and barreled of in another direction, Stripey right behind me.

Now, I knew they needed me alive, so I wasn't even remotely expecting him to pull a fucking knife on me.  I entirely forgot I had mine on me because it's about as good a weapon as a stick of celery, and that's for someone experienced in knifeplay.  He caught up to me easily, maybe because I'd been running for a while, maybe because he was really fast, maybe some other third thing.  The point being, I saw a silver flash fly through the air and I swerved to avoid it.  Of course, I didn't swerve enough.  Pain shot into my upper arm and I felt it start bleeding.  Upon closer inspection later, it's a pretty deep gash, it'll probably leave a scar.

Did I say the last thing I was expecting was for him to pull a knife?  No, that isn't right.  The last thing I was expecting right then was for him to get hit by a flying tackle.  I just kept running.  I heard the honk of a car horn and  I looked over and a friend of mine, let's call her Liz for the sake of this, idling in the parking lot, back door of her car hanging open, gesturing wildly to me.  Turns out she'd been the one that called me earlier, too.  I dove inside gratefully and another friend of mine who we'll call Amy dove in to the front and Liz floored it.  We got the doors shut and just drove.  Turns out that Amy was the one that tackled Stripey and she got a gash in her side for the trouble.

They had bags we'd packed in case of needing to go on the run because of this specific situation, including two full of my stuff, so I've been typing this as we drove.  We can't stop for more than an hour or so at a time, though, because they show up.  We got our cuts dressed and I'm all covered in bruises.  Amy and Liz will drive and sleep in shifts since I don't drive.  They're gonna teach me, though.

...yeah.  I don't know how long we can keep this up.  At least it's summer and we aren't missing school, but there's still money and food and other basic necessities to worry about.  I'm glad to have endlessly loyal friends, though.  I don't know if I'd be so giving as to willingly put myself in a situation like this for a friend.  I like to think I would, but...

Right.  That's pretty much it.  I'm spent and my arm hurts from that cut.  I'll try to keep you guys updated

I don't know where we'll go from here or what we'll do.  All I know is that they'll take me and probably kill my friends if they catch us.  But first they must catch us.

EDIT:  I hope you remember what my Twitter was, because I deleted it just in case.