"Hey... Hey... Amanda... I have a confession to make. I might have lied a little. I might have tricked you into coming here under false pretences... Sort of. There was no information about The Man In Grey coming here, but I figured if you showed up here and I made some... interested parties aware you'd be here the resulting disaster that would be caused might draw him here anyway... You don't seem very happy, but hey... It might work and I promise you will not die even if the plan fails. I'll make sure of that... You still don't seem ha-" That somewhat paraphrased quote from Muffin, followed by the sound of a certain woman's fist connecting with his jaw >.>, were the words that began the worst day of my life so far.
So, yeah turns out Muffin is a lying Jerk. Portnoy and Dr. Malice were not aware of this plan, or at least they promise me they weren't. It turns out Muffin had no information regarding a Man In Grey Appearance his plan was to use me as bait to manufacture a disaster that might, keyword: Might, draw The Man in Grey here. He had himself, Portnoy, Dr. Malice, Lisa, Sally and I waiting in a shopping mall. Apparently he didn't believe it would work if there weren't innocents caught in the crossfire. Which made me reject the initial plan immediately and caused him to explain his true plan which of course I couldn't really reject since it was a trick anyway and I'd already fallen for it. He had also informed as many servant groups as he could find that I would be there as well as that he would be there, and apparently killed a whole bunch of people to make sure they'd take an interest in him being there, and on cue shortly after explaining this to me and before I could leave, the place began to explode.
It would seem in fact that someone on The Servant side was a bit smarter than my dear, "loyal and trustworthy" friend Muffin and had, knowing that we'd be there, set up traps in advance. Hidden bombs had been placed in strategic locations throughout the mall. In fact their placement was so strategic that if it wasn't for some quick work by Lisa, Muffin and Portnoy we all would have been instantly killed when the bombs went off. The bombs did not go off all at once and we were fortunate to be standing quite far from the first detonation and instead only saw the explosion go off across the... Atrium I think they're called? I had just enough time to see a piece of shrapnel tear through the arm of a woman and into the chest of her son before Lisa barreled into me and Drove me and Sally to the ground. Portnoy somehow managed to pinpoint the nearest bomb and Muffin grabbed a column, tore it out of place and tossed it in the way of the explosion just as it went off. The support beam took the brunt of the explosion and all of the shrapnel and kept us safe. Muffin was knocked unconscious and suffered some, major for a normal person, but minor for him, injuries. Portnoy was somehow completely unharmed and seemed just as surprised by this fact as we were and Dr. Malice... Well he was decapitated by a piece of shrapnel, but he'd be back of course. As we recovered from the explosion we could hear other survivors. Most of them injured, crying and occasionally screaming. Sally appeared to of lost consciousness as well leaving just Lisa, Portnoy and I still awake and ready when the servants moved in. Two groups entered one from each end of the atrium. It looked like Timberwolves on one end and the others had nothing identifiable about them which was worrisome as it meant they could be any number of different kinds of servant.
Also unfortunately it seemed these two groups had their act together a little more than most and were working together as opposed to the crossfire shootout I had been sort of hoping for as our only reasonable chance to survive this. Both sides seemed to be doing a sweep and we stayed down just watching them. We got up after we saw they were shooting every body they saw in the head to be sure they were dead. Me and Lisa stood up and Portnoy stayed down on the ground at which point those near us immediately turned their attentions on us. Attentions of course also included guns and we turned and tried to flee behind cover as gunshots went off behind us. Upon hiding behind one of the few columns that wasn't torn out of place or too badly damaged. I turned to look at where The Servants were attempting to figure out a plan. At this point I saw that one of the Timberwolves had turned on the others and had killed two of them and was now running through a hail of gunfire as the rest of the Timberwolves opened fire on the traitor. I took this as a sign that Dr. Malice had found a new body and that there were now four of us fighting which was slightly better odds than they were before.
There were about ten of the Timberwolves and about five of the at the time unidentified servants. The Timberwolves were at current busy with Dr. Malice and so the unidentified servants were moving on us now. Two of them stopped near Sally and Portnoy and prepared to execute them. Portnoy acted at this moment rising up in one movement a knife in his hand and gutting the immediately identified servant standing over him. I say immediately identified, because as the knife sliced it's way through the servants body a swarm of blackbirds launched out of the wound and swarmed Portnoy who backed away flailing wildly.
Something somewhat strange happened here. Well two strange things, but one of them was Portnoy strange and the other was a more normal strange. The more normally strange thing is one of the birds seemed to suddenly veer sharply for no adequate reason and collided with the head of The Nest about to execute Sally. This knocked him off balance and his shot instead hit the floor just by her head which seemed to wake her up. She woke with a start, grabbing her didgeridoo case and swinging it at the servants feet sweeping them out from under him and causing him to fall to the ground his gun going off and I swear suddenly twisting so that the shot hit another nest in the head. Sally looked around, holding her didgeridoo case like a weapon. Seemed to realize where she was and bolted, which I can't really blame her for. In the Nests' surprise none of them really tried to stop her and she managed to get away. They were probably also more concerned by the inferno that was Portnoy.
He was holding a short sword now and it was aflame as was his knife and he was slaughtering his way through the birds that were attacking him. The three nests that were still alive however were taking aim and so at last Lisa and I decided to act. Lisa dived out from behind the column we had been hiding behind and tackled one of the Nests at the knees then rolled off of him and delivered a bone breaking kick to the side of another one's knee. This took down two of them, but the last one was going to shoot Portnoy and I couldn't let that happen. I didn't know what else to do so I threw the Pocket Watch at him. I don't know if it was guided or I just got a really lucky shot, but it hit the guy right in the chest and immediately it did the same thing to him as it had to the puppet last time. Within seconds there was nothing left of the guy. His clothes, skin, muscle, bone... all turned to dust. Even his gun seemed to disappear.
At this point The two remaining nests seemed to just stop moving as did The Birds which worked fine for us. Lisa took advantage of their distractions to knock out one and Portnoy decapitated the other, the flaming sword apparently managing to cauterize the wound so the birds couldn't get out. The sounds of gunfire had moved on elsewhere, apparently Dr. Malice had managed to lead the timberwolves out of the atrium to a different part of the mall so we used this chance to escape.
I grabbed the pocketwatch, Lisa and Portnoy grabbed Muffin and we hurried out of the mall. Dr. Malice would be fine and likely catch up with us later.
We didn't find Sally outside, but she showed up at, Lisa and I's current livingspace a few hours later looking ashamed and relieved when we told her no one had been hurt.
So... yeah. I killed another person, Muffin is a lying bastard who almost got us all killed and the absolute worst part out of all of it...
Apparently the stupid plan worked. The mall massacre was on the news later that night and one of the reports was about a survivor who had been hiding and who had spotted a man matching The Man in Grey's description standing on one of the upper floors overlooking The Atrium watching the whole thing.
I ended up risking my life and all my friend's lives to get him to show up so I could talk to him and he actually showed up and I didn't get to talk to him!
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