WARNING
Chapter rated: High Teen
For: violence, mild blood, mild gore, and brief anatomical description of death scene
Personally, I read books/manga with this level of stuff around 13/14, so "Teen" is relative, but to be on the safe side, I'm putting in this warning.
Also, high Teen for an unpleasant event that is necessary for Harry's transition.
You have been warned.
-Crow
Harry blearily opened his eyes. Sunlight kept pouring in from the window, filtered from the overcast. He welcomed the light, it was a much more welcome transition from waking up to Petunia Dursley's banging and shouting and then sitting up in complete darkness. However, he couldn't deny that a little extra sleep was always welcome.
Outside, the trees were green and there were actually signs of wildlife around the mansion, though mostly heard through the fog around it. Harry thought it was a welcome change to arriving in the late fall when everything was barren, dead, and gone. Slendy had shown him the nature paths around the place and Sally would play "Save the Princess from the Dragon". At her insistence, he'd be the "prince" to rescue her, the "princess", and Toby would gladly play the part of the "Dragon".
Harry got very adept at dodging the actual fire blasts the excitable pyromaniac threw at him.
The young boy pulled on his glasses and got ready for the day before stumbling down the stairs into the kitchen-
*FWEEEEE!*
He jumped as his eyes focused and he found Laughing Jack blowing a black and white paper noisemaker in his face. Looking around the room, he saw a few odd streamers and balloons as well as the "Happy Birthday" banner draped across the table. They'd brought out that banner for Toby, Jeff, Brian, Tim, and Sally's birthdays over the last few months.
"Happy birthday, kiddo!" The monochrome clown cackled. He was pretty excitable whenever the word "party" was brought up in conversation… or implied in a conversation… or even if he misheard it for another word.
Harry sat down at the table (or, rather, was pushed into the seat by Jack) and saw Sally was already there in a conical hat with balloon and confetti designs. BRVR was already under the table delving into a dog dish of raw, red meat, but the physical computer program still jumped up and nuzzled a bloody cheek against Harry's hand.
Laughing Jack set down a plate of what he called "a light breakfast". Essentially, picture a large, fluffy pancake on the plate, then add whipped cream and strawberries, then put a waffle on top. Layer on a blackberry spread with some more whipped cream. Finally, top it with a slice of French toast and make the entire thing white with powdered sugar followed by drowning it in maple syrup and adding a large dollop of Rainbow-sherbert ice cream on top with a bright red cherry.
Stuck into the top of this conglomeration were a couple special, edible sugar sparklers and a white and blue fondant candle lit at the top. Then coat it in multi-colored sprinkles and edible paper confetti and you've got an inkling of what the breakfast was.
Harry made doubly sure to brush, floss, and mouthwash after just looking at it.
Eyeless Jack walked in with a small clipboard of his most recent research and saw the sugary mountain sparkling away in front of Harry. He turned to LJ, "And just what is that?" He asked, pointing in the general direction of Harry.
"It's not nice to call people 'it'. We all know that's Harry. We got him a couple months ago.
Remember?" LJ said smirking.
Jack's left eyebrow twitched over his socket. "Not him, that!" He said, pointing more directly at the pancreas's nightmare.
"It's his special birthday breakfast!" LJ said cheerfully… or was it tauntingly.
"Jack, I've seen pancreases- Hell, I've eaten pancreases, and I can tell you that that… sugar-coma on a plate will cause it to jump out his mouth, screaming, and commit seppuku with that butter knife."
Harry snickered at the mental image before addressing the doctor. "It's alright, Jack, I probably won't eat it all anyway."
Sally grinned. "If you want, I'll take half." Her eyes sparked.
Harry cut the massive confection in half and put the bigger portion on a separate plate for Sally. She greedily dug in with a spoon with a food-muffled "'Fank 'oo" to Harry. The young wizard suppressed a grin at the Jacks' polar opposite expressions.
Eyeless Jack could make a Greek-play-style mask of his face and it would be the perfect representation of "horror".
Laughing Jack had an expression of absolute glee. Partially because his cooking was being appreciated, partially because he knew the destructive capabilities of two eight year olds.
Eight.
"Hey, I'm eight now!" Harry exclaimed.
"'oo juss' figerred 'at out?" (You just figured that out?) Sally asked, surprised.
Harry blushed. "Well, yeah, I mean I knew it's my birthday, but I never really thought about how we're the same age now… kind of."
Sally shrugged and delved back into tackling the French toast sector of the breakfast.
A few minutes later, Slenderman walked in, took one look at EJ's half-eaten creation on both of their plates and groaned. "Excellent, now we have twice as much sugar-high-induced terror to deal with today." He sat down at the table and turned to Harry. "Happy Birthday, Harry."
Whether from all of the well-wishing this morning or quite possibly the pure, saccharine energy coursing through his veins, Harry seemed to glow in his seat. "Thank you, everyone. This is so wonderful!"
"Yeesh, it's not that big of a deal. What did you normally do on your birthday?" LJ asked casually, sipping extra- sweet hot chocolate despite the heat.
He made a small choking noise in his mug as the implications of his question hit home and he, along with the others, glanced at Harry and saw his glow diminish a bit. "Well… they didn't really do anything. Dudley… er, Dudley Dursely would usually get a lot of presents and go somewhere special on his birthday. I usually got a longer list of chores. The only time they really acknowledged it was my birthday was when Aunt Petunia said something like this day being the day I was brought in like a 'plague on the world'."
He plucked a strawberry from the waffle-pancake layer and nibbled on it. LJ made a save by snorting. "Wow, what assholes! And ignoramuses! How could you possibly relate to the real 'plague unto the world'; Me." He said smirking pointing a thumb to himself. Harry chuckled at the antic and EJ continued.
"Yep, grade-F humans right there." The doctor said casually. "I'm not sure the Slorchers in the depths of the Underrealm would eat them. And they eat anything tastier than mud and feces."
Harry made a disgusted face, but nodded in agreement. Slendy had left him a book on some of the creatures and cryptids both in this world and the Underrealm. Slorchers were giant, black slug-things made of tar-like ooze that oozed around the depths of the Underrealm. He imagined one of Toshio's pokemon called "muk" in a slug form that essentially ate anything that wasn't bedrock.
LJ bounced up. "Yeah, don't worry about it, kiddo. You're never gonna have to darken their doorstep again."
EJ hid a small smile. "Or what's left of their doorstep." He murmured, sipping some coffee.
Slendy raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment. He turned to the now-eight-year-old and put a few manila folders on the table. "Harry, today there is something I need to talk to you about. You see-"
"WHASAAAAAAP!"
Slendy groaned as the pale, skeletal form of the Rake walked into the kitchen. The cryptid used one of its long talons to pierce a slice of meat out of BRVR's plate and ignored the growling Pokémon in favor of popping the bloody slab in his toothy maw.
"So, what's happening?" Rake asked through tendon and muscle tissue.
"Well, before I was so rudely interrupted-" He glared at the pale dog-man who shrugged nonchalantly. "Today, I'm afraid I've been called away on assignment. Additionally, LJ has one as well and, I'm sorry Jack, but you'll have to put your experiments on hold. Someone specifically requested you for this assignment." He stood and handed a manila folder to each of them as he spoke.
"Aw, c'mon!" Laughing Jack whined, browsing his file. "This is, like, the third guy this week! Can't the council just ask for somebody else?"
"Read the description." Slendy said, sitting back down and sipping his tea.
Jack returned to the file. "Subject in guardianship of a young female… age 9… wants 'imaginary friend to protect from-'" He scowled, exposing a lot of teeth. "Okay, you got me. I'll go."
"Excellent." Slendy turned back to Harry. "Now everyone will be out of the house, today, so I would like you to stay in your room. You may practice your meditations and I figure we won't be gone more than an hour or-"
"Bo-ring!" Rake interrupted. Slendy glared, but the cryptid just rolled its eyes and continued. "Look, Slendy, I've been thinking-"
"Rarely a good sign." LJ commented, smirking.
"-the kid's already seen someone offed, no offense," He amended at the entity's wince. "And you keep saying he's probably gonna be valuable to the Council, so… what if he shadows someone on their job? He won't do the actual… thing, ya'know? He'll just watch. Get comfy with it."
Slenderman sat back in thought. "Well, I will admit your idea has merit to it, Rake, but I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea."
"So give him someone with an easy job today. It is his birthday, after all." Rake countered.
Harry cleared his throat, causing the entity to "look" over. He spoke in as determined a voice he could "Slenderman, I think I'm ready."
The faceless being regarded him for a moment before nodding. "Very well. I suppose it will be beneficial to you to at least have some degree of experience." He turned back to the stacks of manila folders. "Let's see-"
"Hey, Slendy." Jeff said, walking in the kitchen.
The entity sighed. "Apparently, in addition to being Harry's Birthday, it is now officially interrupt-Slenderman-day."
"Huh. Well, Happy Birthday, kid. And I'll be sure to mark my calendar for next year, Slendy." Jeff said, carved grin widening.
Slenderman's exasperated posture suddenly relaxed and he projected an aura of "grinning" if he had a face. "Why, Jeffery, I believe you may actually have timed your interruption perfectly, I see your job today is rather easy. Just a quick in-out kill in New York City. And since you're so happy about Harry's birthday." A black tentacle pushed Jeff, heels digging in the wood floor, towards the birthday boy. "I've decided that as your personal present, which I'm willing to bet you've either forgotten or gotten a small keychain, you may take him today and then show him around New York."
"What?! Slenderman, I totally got a real gift for Harry!" Jeff protested.
"Is it a keychain?"
"…"
"Thought so." Slenderman set down his mug and stood up. "Plus, I'm uncomfortable sending him with the others. Laughing Jack has an… unsavory character. Eyeless Jack has a rather dangerous cult that sprouted up in Utah. Everyone else is either out of the country or dealing with difficult "clients"… or is the Rake."
"Hey! I'm still here you know!"
"Jeffery, yours is an easy job, close by the Mansion, and you can show him around the city."
Jeff's grin quirked to the closest thing to a frown he could manage before glancing over at Harry. Sure enough, big, pleading, emerald green eyes were looking back above a small quivering pout.
Jeff rolled his eyes. "Whatever, fine. Just let me grab my hoodie and stuff."
Harry nodded and bounded up the stairs, grabbing his gray hoodie from a hook and slipping it over his shirt. He picked up a small wallet with a few dollars of allowance and put it in his jeans' front pocket. The excited eight-year-old ran outside and found Jeff waiting already glamoured in his mousy-haired, blue-eyed appearance.
Jeff glanced over and raised an eyebrow. "What's got you so hyper? You're literally going to see someone get killed… Aw, jeez, did you already snap, ya little psycho?"
"Ha ha. No, I'm still fine, thank you very much. I'm excited for seeing New York City! We're so close and yet I've never been there before! Although, I'm not looking forward to the killing part, but it has gotten easier." He admitted.
Slenderman had "family movie nights" with the tenants. Mostly horror, creature feature, or slasher films, but on Sally's night to pick, they'd usually end up with something like "My Little Pony" or "Barbie's Adventure". Aside from the occasional fluffy, pink, sparkly movies, the features helped him get more used to seeing his foster family come home drenched in blood.
Jeff nodded. "Good enough for me. Let's go." He started walking off into the forested area, following one of the many twisted paths. Every now and then, he'd glance behind him to check if Harry was still following before turning around and continuing.
Eventually, they walked into a small clearing Harry hadn't visited yet. It was just an opening in the dense trees with a small stone dais and pedastal in the center of a now-familiar symbol charred into the ground. It was a large circle a few meters in diameter with an X perfectly slicing it into quarters with the small, stone dais in the center of the X.
"Where are we?" Harry asked, spinning slightly in place to look around.
"It's a permanent Slender-port location." Jeff replied walking up to the stone.
"Slender-port?" Harry asked giggling.
Jeff snorted. "Yeah, it sounds stupid, but it's a good name. So, there are two ways to 'Slender-port'; first is to be in contact with the guy himself which means you can essentially go anywhere, but like I said you're pretty dependent on Slenderman. The other way is to use one of these. This is one of three or four around the Mansion. With it, you can reach certain "set" points around the world in pretty much any major city and a few minor ones. Look here."
Harry walked over to Jeff as he started activating runes on a crude map of the world etched into the stone. He tapped a few more shapes on the sides and the map shone with one bright blue flame-like light hovering above the East Coast of America with the label "New York; Central Park".
"Normally, these are used by official Proxies, but since you've been hanging around Slendy so much, you're sort-of radioactive-"
"Wait! What?!" Harry yelped.
"Calm down, kid, it's not like that! Yeah, you hang around plutonium long enough you're gonna die. You hang around Slendy long enough when he's emitting, you're gonna die if you're on his bad side. You are not on his bad side. You are not gonna die."
He rubbed his nose, eyes upward thinking up a comparison. "It's more like a suntan, I guess. Normally, radiation doesn't work like that, but Sigma radiation is really weird even by L.J.'s physics-nerd standards. As you get exposed to it more and more, you either develop Slender Sickness if you get it in a strong-enough dose or if you get it in tiny doses, you get sort-of used to it.
"Again, like the suntan, you gain a resistance to it. Though, you get benefits, too. You can use these terminal-things to get around. Tim and Brian can even teleport short distances on their own since they've been with Slendy for a really long time."
"So, I'm not going to die?" Harry confirmed.
"Well, I mean someday, yeah, but probably not anytime soon and I'm sure it won't be from Sigma." Jeff said, shrugging. The small, blue dot shifted to red.
"Alright, it's charged up. Ready?" The killer glanced over. Harry gave an affirmative nod and Jeff tapped the small light. The charred pattern around them briefly glowed red in the grass when the world around them suddenly plunged into darkness. Unlike Slendy's normal transportation, there was no rushing sensation, nor even the sensation of movement. The only thing he could see was Jeff, himself, the inky void around them, and the glowing red symbol under them.
Harry felt something solid beneath him, like the red symbol was on an invisible platform in the void, but that was it.
This experience lasted only a brief moment when the world suddenly came back into existence in a swirl of green. Harry blinked in surprise and found they were in the middle of a grove of trees. Looking around, he could see only trees and just above-
"Woah!" Harry exclaimed. All around them, just above the treeline, were the tops of buildings hemming in the entire area, breaking the illusion of nature.
"Yeah, yeah, okay, now pay attention." Jeff instructed. He pointed to a small scratch in a tree. It was a simple circle with an X engraved in the bark. "This, is called an 'Operator Symbol'. It's Slendy's personal signature. Literally. We think it's his real name, but he doesn't say. Anyway, Slenderman himself sometimes goes around and carves these into rocks, trees, buildings, and even fused sand. They become permanent links to the Mansion or a couple other 'Slender-port' spots.
"Now, close your eyes and 'feel' the symbol." Harry did as instructed and focused on the area he'd last seen the Operator Symbol. He became aware of a small "tingling" or "pull" at the edge of his mind along with a faint ear-ringing if he concentrated.
"If you focus, you'll be able to locate these from where you are. Try it out." Harry, again, closed his eyes and "felt" around. He managed to detect the strongest pull from the one right by them, but he felt three or four more faintly. "Follow them, and you just need to activate it to travel back to the Mansion. K' let's go."
With that, Harry followed the glamoured killer through the small, dense patch of trees and onto a main walkway. Harry hurried to keep up while looking at all of the different people walking by.
People in shorts and sweatbands ran by, some even jogging with dogs on leashes. Teens traveled in groups, chatting, playing with their phones, or even arguing. Men and women sat on benches scattered along the walkway reading, eating, sleeping, or a combination of the three. Preteens and Kids rocketed by on skateboards, skates, or unique variations thereof.
"Holy shit, it's a Lady Gaga wannabee." Jeff murmured, hiding a snicker.
"Who's Lady G-," Harry looked-
-and had to double-take.
The woman in question was wearing a dress made completely of red, plastic angles jutting out like shards of glass. Her hat was likewise red plastic and covered platinum-white and cherry-red hair in a short bob. Her handbag was also dyed red leather with small red buttons.
"Don't stare," Jeff muttered in his ear. Harry quickly looked away, blushing at the impoliteness. As they passed, he heard the woman mutter something about "fashion" and "uncultured kids" while practically feeling her glare boring in the back of his head.
"This way." The pale-skinned teen directed the younger boy through a few other paths until they finally came out to the busy streets. "Welcome to Manhattan!"
Harry gawked at the unbelievable amount of people around him. The Dursley family never took him to London and Privet Drive was sparse population-wise, so he'd never seen a crowd like this before. All around him, men, women, teens, children, dogs, and other beings clamored left and right trying to get somewhere. Thousands of people of different cultures and religions mixed and mingled in the ebb and flow of the sidewalks, adding to the noise of the city.
Cars and taxis drove by the street. Occasionally, men or women in sharp business suits would shout out for a Taxi and hop in the nearest one or the first one that stopped. Above the streets were ads, billboards, lights, and signs attached to the sides of buildings advertising everything the city had to offer.
He felt Jeff pull him over to the side of a building that had a small void from the flow of people. The disguised murderer glanced around before pulling out his phone and checking the time. "Well, I've got some time to kill before I kill, hehe, so what do you want to do, Harry?"
Harry raised an eyebrow at the pun, but looked thoughtful at Jeff's real question. "Well… what is there?"
Jeff grinned, "In New York, what isn't there to do. C'mon, kid, follow me."
Jeff led him through the grid-like streets of New York, passed thousands of shops, stores, kiosks, beggars, stands, and people. So many people.
Jeff bought him a "New York Bagel" and promised him it was a pretty big deal, apparently. Personally, Harry thought it tasted marginally better the bagels at the small bakery in the local town (but, then again, compared to the Dursley family's food rations, anything tasted better).
They casually went through a few public museums and shops, but didn't buy tickets for attractions or anything terribly expensive. Jeff only had a few dollars on him and Slendy would probably need to have some extensive cranial damage (assuming the entity actually had a brain in his head) before he'd let the teen killer have a credit account. Jeff, himself, admitted that he'd probably max it out within the first week.
What caught Harry's eye was the number of art works scattered around. Some were stuck in store windows, others were graffiti on a wall, and still others were placed in the middle of throngs of people. The walls were murals of colorful paintings and images of people, places, events, or sometimes just tags of large, bubbly letters.
The other art was mostly… "confusing" was the right word for it.
Harry spent almost five minutes staring, with his head cocked to one side, at a black and white cube. A lot of younger people in their 20s with really bizarre outfits were standing around and gushing about how it was a symbol of something or a statement of some abstract social commentary.
As they walked away, Harry turned to Jeff and asked, "That was art?"
The teen shrugged, "No clue. I'm not an artsy-fartsy kind of guy. That modern crap looks the same to me- things that an art teacher would give an 'A for Effort' sticker in 3rd Grade- but, hey, apparently that black dot on a white canvas is worth millions, so…" He shrugged again, trailing off.
Harry shook his head, confused at it all. "I prefer more… dynamic art, if you know what I mean," Jeff commented.
Harry's mouth downturned, "Do you mean…" He lowered his voice, glancing at random people not remotely paying attention to them, and leaned in conspiratorially, "your 'jobs'?"
Jeff grinned, "Well, yeah, I guess that counts as dynamic art, doesn't it?" He stopped and put his arms out in front of him, "The dash of blood, the chunks of guts, the aroma of fear, the work of my trade is misunderstood by so many… especially in Law Enforcement."
Harry was honestly surprised that the literal confession to murder went completely unnoticed by anyone around them.
As they walked down the crowded streets, Harry heard sudden mismatched sounds playing random notes from a street corner. Jeff shrugged and let Harry lead them towards the sound. The corner was populated by several people, each with different instruments including a guitar, saxophone, horn, and fold-out synthesizer keyboard. Some other man had created make-shift drum sets out of some trash cans and empty containers.
The mismatched sounds were from the individual musicians playing their respective instruments tuning notes in preparation, some to the notes of the pianist. People gathered around as they tuned and chatted to one another. One of them put out a large, glass jar in front of the group and some bystanders already threw in spare change and a few dollars. The men smiled cheerfully before one turned to the rest.
"Okay fella's, let's play."
The drummer started tapping a lid rhythmically, producing a steady cymbal sound. The man with a bass guitar picked it up with a steady pluck from a low note, forming a deep, jazzy base.
"And a-one, and a-two…"
The saxophone and horn began playing a strong beat. It was a strong, upbeat music that was punctuated by a few notes or solo moments with the piano. A few patrons around them had taken partners and were swinging around and dancing wildly to the music.
After a few minutes, people kept filtering in and more people danced in the sides and tossed in money to the jar. Towards the end of the song, Harry put in a few of his own dollars in the jar, eliciting a grateful tip of the hat from the horn player. Jeff eventually led them away as the group finished up their piece and one of the players thanked the crowd and they began packing up for the evening.
As they walked away, Harry turned to Jeff, "What was that?"
"It's Jazz. They had Jazz in England, right? During WWII?"
Harry shrugged, "I'm not sure. It seems like the kind of music Mrs. Dursley would screech at for being played in the house and Mrs. Figg usually just listened to classical tapes, but I liked it. It was fun." He smiled.
"Mrs. Figg? Who's Mrs. Figg?"
"My old babysitter," Harry explained. "She was nice, I think, but she had a lot of cats and it always smelled like boiled cabbage."
"Eech," Jeff gagged, "I hate cabbage on a good day. Can't imagine it boiled. That's just nasty." He shuddered at the mental image of slimy, green, smelly cabbage leaves being swallowed.
They continued down the streets, passing a few more solo musicians playing saxophones, clarinets, violins, and guitars. A couple of street artists were marking up the concrete sidewalks with intricate chalk drawings that people were careful not to step on. One of Harry's favorites was an optical illusion one that made it look like it was a steep cliff downward to a ravine. The artists smiled thanks in return for his praise and continued to shade a particular bit.
The summer afternoon wore on and Jeff bought a hotdog from a vendor for Harry. It was enormous even compared to a normal hotdog! Harry blinked owlishly at the wide variety of condiments and bits on top of the mini-meal. He and Jeff brought them over to a nearby outcrop to sit on as they ate in silence, watching the flow of the crowd around them.
Jeff finished up and glanced at his watch. "Well, it's time." He tossed the wrapper in a nearby trash bin.
"Time for what?" Harry asked, wiping mustard off his face.
Jeff raised an eyebrow, "Did you really forget why we came here in the first place?"
"Oh." Harry's stomach twisted slightly at the thought. "Why did we wait so long?"
"Well, a) I thought you'd enjoy the city more before we got to the killing part and b) our intel around here told us the guy is pretty much a nomad and never stays in the same place, but always comes back to this one alley around the same time."
Harry hummed in reluctant understanding and followed Jeff as they navigated the grid of streets and buildings until the teen turned right into an alleyway. The alley branched several times until they came to a dilapidated part of the area. Aside from dead rats, the occasional cat (eating said rat), a few abandoned clotheslines, and a multitude of overflowing trash bins, the alley was deserted. Jeff directed Harry behind a dumpster and motioned for him to be quiet.
They stayed quiet for about five minutes. Every passing second, Harry became a little more hopeful that the job information was wrong and they wouldn't have to kill someone today.
*click clack click clack*
Harry peered around the dumpster and saw a woman in somewhat noisy shoes busy looking at her phone screen walking casually down the alleyway. He guessed she was pretty engrossed in whatever was "so important" as she nearly stepped on one of the rat carcasses… twice.
He turned to Jeff and whispered, "What are we-"
"AIEE!"
He and Jeff quickly ducked back into cover and peeked above the dumpster lid to see a bedraggled man in a worn-out coat holding the woman at knife-point. "J-J-J-JUST SH-SH-SHUT UP AND G-GIMME YOUR P-PURSE!" He roared at the terrified civilian.
He was extremely thin, his worn out clothes clinging loosely to his frame. His hair was clumped and falling out in odd patches, leaving glaring bald spots. His teeth were crooked, yellow and a number were missing, leaving blackened gums. His skin was clammy and pale except for a red, puffy shadow around his blood-shot eyes.
As he held the knife, Harry saw his hand was trembling and convulsing, but not with nervousness or conflict, but something else as the criminal's entire body sometimes twitched like Toby, but much less naturally, like Tim when he's anxious or stressed.
"Stay away from drugs, kid." Jeff murmured. He dropped the glamour and resumed his eyelid-less, permanently-smiling self. He turned back to Harry, "Stick around, okay?"
Harry nodded and the teen turned back to the scene and flipped up his hoodie hood. By now, the woman was holding out the purse and the drug-addict snatched it away, but kept his knife just under her chin with a malicious glint in his eyes. "P-p-pretty women like you sh-shouldn't be alone this t-time of day."
"Stealing a woman's purse. La-a-ame!" Jeff called out. The would-be rapist turned violently at the sound of the new voice. He quickly moved and pinned the woman to the wall with his elbow and redirected the knife on Jeff.
"I-I-I'm warnin' you! Stay the f-f*ck away!" The thief slurred, still twitching. His 5 inch blade gleamed in what little light of the afternoon made it down between buildings.
Jeff laughed. "Yeesh, I know 'size doesn't matter' and all that, but seriously you're compensating for something with that bread knife you've got there." He pulled out 'Beatrice', one of his 8 inch kitchen knives. "Now this is a knife, small fry."
The druggie roared in anger for his pride and let the woman drop to the ground as he began slashing wildly at Jeff, who kept dodging the blows easily. Harry crept from his hiding spot and quietly made his way back to the woman, picking up the forgotten purse and dropped phone along the way.
The woman was catching her breath from being practically choked for a few moments. Harry handed her stuff over and she wheezed out a quiet 'thank you' along with a look of pure confusion at the scenario presented.
She was assaulted by a random stranger who almost choked her to death when another random stranger with the palest skin she'd ever seen suddenly appears and decides to fight her first attacker with a knife he happened to have on him. Meanwhile, another random kid with emerald green eyes walks up and hands over the stuff the thief tried to steal.
Even for New York, that was a new one.
She saw that the kid was staring wide-eyed at the white-hooded figure. Following his gaze, her jaw dropped as she saw the older boy pull off multiple acrobatics while avoiding the blade of the enraged man. He flipped off walls a few times, ending up right behind the first guy and just snickering as the confused druggie wheeled around.
"Stay still, ya freak!" He snarled.
The woman noticed the boy next to her flinch and the hooded figure stiffen slightly. The mugger took the opportunity and managed to slash at the teen's arm. He jumped backwards and clutched his left arm where some red started bleeding outward along the white fabric underneath his palm.
The mugger grinned cockily.
"So, you think I'm a freak?" The pale teen grinned under his hood. "You don't know the half of it."
The hand that was applying pressure to the wound rose and lifted the hood off of his face. She gasped as his face came into the light.
His unblinking eyes were a beady gray surrounded by shriveled, blackened skin. His skin was scarred, waxy, and white and his nose was scarred over and easily blended in with the surrounding face if not for an off-angle shadow. His hair was black and scraggly and fell to his shoulder blades. But what was worse was an awful, carved grin slashed into his cheeks.
The mugger gaped. "W-wha-what the hell happened to you?!" He demanded.
Jeff shrugged. "One really, really bad day. Anyways-," He raised his knife and jumped forward, taking the offensive.
The mugger stumbled, suddenly having to take defensive measures against the scarred killer. The woman kept looking on in horror as they now began a dangerous dance against each other. The raven-haired boy leaned over and whispered hurriedly in a faint British accent. "Run away, Ma'am. It's not going to be good."
She didn't need to be told twice and jumped to her feet, packing her phone in her bag and high-tailing it back to the main road as fast as she could.
Harry heard a strangled cry from behind him and saw Jeff back away from behind a dumpster, wiping his knife casually against his white hoodie. Jeff looked up and nodded to Harry solemnly.
"You ready to go?"
"B-but how are you going to move around? You've got b-b-blood all over you." Harry asked, still eyeing the dumpster hiding the corpse from his view.
Jeff wordlessly raised an eyebrow and his gaunt, macabre face reverted back to the mousy haired glamour complete with a perfectly white hoodie. "So, you ready?"
Harry nodded mutely and followed the teenager as he started walking away. Eventually, they made it to the main city area and Jeff stood still, seeming to stare off in space. After a moment, his shoulders sagged. "Dammit. The Port we got here is too far away. There's another pretty close by, so let's get moving."
Harry closed his eyes and repeated the action he did back in Central Park. There were about two or three signatures. The other two were faint, but the nearest one was further away from the way they came.
They kept walking away as the evening fell. They got further and further away from the large buildings and businesses and streets became more and more desolate until eventually they found themselves in a dilapidated neighborhood.
The houses were covered in brightly colored graffiti. Cement walls crumbled and wood supports creaked and groaned around them. Harry saw cats discretely moving about in the shadows and the occasional dog growling and skulking around rotting remains of dumpsters and trash bins.
He shivered as the temperature dropped with the sun. "Why are we here?"
"Slendy likes to put the Port locations in out-of-the-way areas. So that means abandoned houses, basements, forests, parks, museums, alleyways, even farm fields."
Harry continued walking, nervously glancing around at the sounds of rats skittering by, when he suddenly started, "Oh bullocks! Jeff, your arm! I completely forgot!"
Jeff snickered. "Really? 'Bullocks'? Where'd you even hear that word?"
"Uncle- er, Mr. Dursley liked to swear... a lot." Harry admitted.
Jeff scowled before returning to his neutral glamour. "Don't worry about my arm. It'll clot and I'll have EJ look it over when we get back. It'll probably need some stitches, but… meh." He shrugged.
"B-but what about that other guy's blood? You've got-… it's-" He pointed mutely at the bloodstains from the man mingling and mixing with the bloodstains from the slash.
"Worried about my health, kid? Aw, I'm touched." Jeff said sarcastically. "Don't worry. Second benefit to Sigma exposure. You're essentially your own walking radiotherapy. I haven't had a cold in years. All the viruses, bacteria, fungus, and shit gets blasted with Sigma instantly. It's like tossing a snowball in a furnace. Those little bastards have no chance." He grinned, already unconsciously plotting the demise of countless airborne microbes that dared infiltrate his lungs.
Their shadows lengthened against the cracked cement walls. Jeff glanced at the sun rapidly falling in the horizon. "C'mon, Harry, let's hurry it up." They quickened their pace along the cracked, desolate road.
History tends to forget places like these. Abandoned houses, forgotten neighborhoods, even entire towns brushed to the side and unnoticed except by the exceptionally bored web-surfer on Wikipedia or the extraordinarily lost on road trips.
This neighborhood was no exception. The entire location was almost completely forgotten save for a very small few which housed the occasional runaway, criminal, and homeless. The isolation made it a prime location for gangs, drug labs, and drop-off points for less-than-legal contraband. Among these were two volatile gangs; the Diamonds and the Black Scarves.
The Black Scarves started up as a result of two other gangs falling apart after their leaders and a substantial amount of their members were arrested or killed in an all-out showdown a few years ago. The group dealt with drugs, but specialized in illegal and slightly-less-than-legal documentation forgery. Birth certificates, death certificates, passports, even fake IDs for rich kids looking for booze. Another prime product for this gang was what partially inspired their name; illegal weapon trades. Black scarves with black ink and black guns. Their mark was, as the name suggested, a black scarf, black necklace, black collar, even a black tattoo around their throat.
The Diamonds controlled their "turf" above a certain street. They mainly dealt with the drug trade; heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, meth, even stuff from waste beakers of the illegal chemists who made it, but they also had a hand in the illegal human trafficking rings. Their tag was specifically white clothing. White scarves, white caps, white pants, etc.
By sheer dumb luck, that included white hoodies.
As Jeff and Harry walked to an abandoned parking garage, seven sets of eyes followed.
All of which had black surrounding their throats.
"Alright, kid, stick around." Jeff's voice echoed in the empty building.
They walked through the large, cement building. It was a couple stories high and slabs had already fallen through, revealing the steel rebar inside the structure. Occasionally, a rusted car on cinderblocks would lie in a forgotten parking spot, but it was mostly very empty.
Every few feet, Jeff would pause and note where the signal was coming from, directing them further up the levels.
After making it up to the fourth story of the building, Jeff walked up to a heavily graffitied wall. Sprayed on images had names, tags, pictures, and symbols. The scarred killer looked up at the wall and swore. He put his hand against the wall with his eyes closed and kept moving his hand around, trying to find something.
His eyes opened and he smirked with success, before the wall around his hand distorted. The paint seemed to peel away, melt off, or dissipate into air, leaving a foot-wide radius of clean concrete with a small, black Operator Symbol in the center, glowing slightly red from the job of removing paint.
Jeff knelt down and inspected the carving, "Okay, the symbol is still intact, but that clean-up job I did needs it to cool down first. Just stick around, it should be good in a few minutes."
Harry nodded and let his eyes wander around the graffiti as Jeff pulled out a phone and tapped away at it, idly.
*Clang!*
Harry started out of his thoughts at a loud, reverberating sound of metal on metal.
*Clang!*
Jeff looked up from his phone and stored it away in his pocket.
*Clang!*
Down the ramp of the parkway, a slim figure was banging a rusted pipe against the exposed rebar of the building as he and six others slowly advanced towards them.
Two guys led the pack. A large, black man easily in his early 20s. He looked like he was almost completely muscle mass under his jacket and a black, leather dog collar with silver spikes was around his neck. He had a couple switchblades in his hands, both gleaming threateningly in the dying sunlight.
In front of him, a slim Hispanic guy in a black fedora had the rusted pipe grinned cockily. He had an intricate, elegant black band tattooed around his neck. Practically dripping off of him was a blonde girl in skimpy clothes that would have Petunia Dursley calling a "harlot" at neighborhood tea sessions. She didn't have a weapon besides a small purse on her shoulder, but she had a silk, black choker around her neck.
Surrounding them were four others. An older white teen with a scraggly, black beard had two, large knives in his hands and two more in holsters at his side. He had an elastic, black band around his throat. A younger white teenager had a black bandana partially around his mouth, a silvery fedora and a metal baseball bat in his hand.
Behind them, two short figures strutted, trying to be intimidating. Both looked barely older than BEN. One was a young black kid with a small switchblade in his hand. The other was Latino with a pair of gloves and a pack of wires and tools at his side, in both hands were a particularly sharp screwdriver and a sharpened leather awl in the other. A plain, black scarf was around both of them.
Jeff casually put himself in front of Harry and didn't break eye contact with the people approaching. Harry anxiously glanced at the Operator Symbol, but it still radiated heat he could feel from their position.
"What're you doin' on our turf, man?" The large man said, arms crossed. Jeff grinned at the group, "Just passing through, you know?"
The Hispanic fedora guy scoffed, "Yeah, 'just passing through'; well we don't really appreciate a Diamond strolling through here."
Jeff frowned, confused, "A diamond? Sorry, I'm not one for jewelry."
"The gang, tonto. Your hoodie is the giveaway." The Hispanic kid piped up behind them.
"And what is wrong with my hoodie." Jeff growled. Harry shrunk back a tiny step. Jeff was pretty vain about how he looked… like, really vain.
The girl spoke, "White hoodie; white Diamond. You're one of those bastards North of the Street Border. Like my boyfriend said, we don't appreciate you people on our turf." She sidled against the Hispanic, who smiled at her before turning back to the pair.
Jeff shrugged, "Look, it's just a white hoodie. I'm not a member of a gang or anything. Seriously, we're just on our way home, 'kay?"
The Hispanic guy raised an eyebrow as he registered Harry hiding in the shadows behind Jeff's leg. "Huh, looks like he's got a brat with him too. What's the matter, kid, cat got your tongue?" Harry nervously shook his head, retreating further behind the slasher's legs. "Well, where are our manners? We didn't even introduce ourselves, yet." He chuckled. "My name's Black Jack, I'm the leader and Brains of our little squad. And this here," he pulled the girl closer, "Is Kitty, my girlfriend."
Kitty waved mockingly at Harry with her fingertips. Black Jack continued, "The two kids over there are Lil' Vince and the one with the tools is Hotwire. The guy with excellent hat tastes," the teen in the silver fedora nodded appreciatively, "is Silvertongue. The guy with the cutlery is Knives-"
"Huh, 'Knives', I like it." Jeff comments.
Black Jack cast him a humored look before finishing up, "And this here," he reached up and patted the large black man on the shoulder, "Is Mamba; the muscle of the group."
The large man growled lowly, but Jeff didn't flinch. The girl angled her head behind Jeff and looked at Harry. "So, kid, how-about you go run home to mommy, 'kay? You don't wanna be here when things get, ugly."
Harry felt his foster brother tense, but he maintained his composure… or he might have used a glamour to cover up a scowl.
"Nah, let him stay," Jack said, "You see, kid, this is what happens when you choose the wrong side." He gestured to the others and they brandished their makeshift weapons.
Knives grinned, brandishing his namesake weapon, "Yep, once we're done pretty boy here'll be needing some plastic surgery for the slashes on his face."
Jeff ticked, visibly shaking at the verbal insult. Harry was backing away, eyeing his brother more like a grenade primed and ready. He was dangerously close to-
"Haha! I get it! 'Cause he'll be ugly." Mamba snickered.
Harry's breath caught.
His eyes shifted to Jeff, who was stock still.
Jeff was stuck in a mental loop.
Ugly.
Ugly.
Ugly.
Ugly.
"I think we broke him." Kitty tittered.
"Yeesh, a true man doesn't freeze up when insulted. He fights back. He takes action!" Black Jack scoffed, smacking his pipe against the concrete for emphasis.
"You think I'm ugly?"
The voice was rough, husky, and easily unheard if it didn't have a dangerous undertone to it. The seven gang members looked at the tense form of the teen. He stared, unblinkingly, at them with a lopsided grin.
"You think slashes are ugly? I don't." He murmured.
Kitty leaned over and loudly whispered, "Freak-alert."
"I remember when I woke up after the accident happened and… hahaha, I couldn't have been happier! Finally, I was perfect!" He giggled. He ran a hand through his mousy brown hair-
No, wait-
Scraggly, black hair seemed to stream from where his hand ran along down his shoulder.
He looked up at them and his skin had gone back to its deathly pale white.
"What the Hell!" Knives exclaimed.
"But I couldn't keep it up," Jeff continued. "I had to keep looking at my face. I was beautiful! So beautiful! But I got tired. My face got sore from smiling and my eyelids got heavy. I had to keep smiling. I had to keep seeing."
He grinned. "They had to go."
His glamoured eyes blinked and when they reopened, the eyelids vanished into shadowed, burnt circles around beady, gray eyes.
His grin widened-
And widened-
And split-
"Aren't I beautiful?" He whispered hoarsely.
The dying, summer evening light contrasted against his white and black color palate. White skin, white hoodie, black jeans, black trainers, black hair, black eyes.
It enunciated the bright red bloodstains splotched against his white jacket.
Probably more in a panic and fear than actual common sense, Silvertongue cried out with his bat swinging and aimed right at Jeff's head. The mutilated murderer caught it easily and gave an unblinking glare at the would-be-assailant. "You're a kid, aren't you?"
Still struggling to get his bat out of Jeff's iron grip, the gang member only nodded and stammered out, "S-sixteen."
Jeff's face was passively the same, but his body language conveyed disappointment. "Sorry, standard procedure has an 18 and up policy." He ripped the bat from his hands and jabbed at the back of the guy's head and his eyes rolled upwards as he passed out on the floor.
Jeff turned to the other six. "Well, you two," he gestured to Lil' Vince and Hotwire, who were terrified at the sudden shift in dynamics, "are obviously just kids. Slendy'd skin me alive. You're definitely a safe bet," He pointed to Mamba, who cracked his knuckles in anticipation, "And you," He pointed at Knives, "look about 18. Shame, though. I kinda liked your nickname… until you mentioned the plastic surgery."
He whipped out the large blade he used earlier, "You are especially dead for that. As for you," He aimed the knife at Black Jack, "You're right. A real man takes action."
There was a beat of silence.
Then, he lunged towards the Hispanic gang leader, knife gleaming. Black Jack blocked his attack with the pipe and sparks screeched off the two weapons colliding. The gangster grabbed his arm and they were in a deadlock between the two.
Harry was frozen, unsure what to do to help the situation, when he felt two pairs of arms grab his sides. He found himself between the two youngest members, Lil' Vince and Hotwire. Both were eyeing Jeff fearfully, letting the older, larger members take on the terrifying teen.
Harry just watched as Jeff and Jack struggled. Harry saw the large man, Mamba, edging towards Jeff from behind. He let out a cry of warning.
Jeff spun, pushing away Black Jack in the process. The younger man stumbled and while he regained his footing, Jeff spun around, slashing at the larger man. Mamba was more agile than his hulking figure and managed to back away from each arcing slash of the kitchen knife.
Suddenly, Jeff recoiled as a glint of silver flashed by his arm. His hoodie started bleeding red around the glint and Harry heard a loud *clatter* against a wall as a custom-made knife impacted with the wall. Harry followed the trail of the knife back to its namesake Knives, still in mid-position from the throw.
Jeff slammed into Mamba, making him stumble backwards from the unexpected action. The killer then seemed to almost flash over to Knives, who barely had time to parry the knife with his own two blades. Both blade-savvy wielders were locked between blades, both hovering precariously close to the other's face.
Jeff grunted against the surprising young man's strength and was too focused on the knife, he didn't think about Mamba until a dark shadow fell over him.
*WHAM*
Harry screamed out as Jeff toppled from a hard punch to the side of the head. Knives put away his weapons, both he and Mamba staring down at the prone form on the floor.
Mamba chuckled, "Guess the freak-o's gotta glass jaw-"
With a shout, Jeff jumped up from his position and tackled the large man's upper body. The behemoth fell, head thumping against the concrete floor. He stared dazedly at the grinning psychopath straddling his chest. Then, felt his shoulders and head being quickly raised and forced back down.
A few more times and he was out like a light; a small bloodstain under his mildly concussed (but, remarkably, still functioning) noggin.
Knives backed away, eyes wide as he watched the muscle of their gang being mercilessly pounded against the concrete until his eyes rolled up and the mad teen stopped. He took up a more defensive position at the side of Black Jack, who'd retreated backwards. Kitty cowered next to him, eyes flickering between the pale teen and the downed figure of Mamba.
"Black Jack! J-Jackie! Do something!" She urged, shaking her boyfriend's shoulder. He winced and cast annoyed glances at her with each shake.
Jeff got up off the unconscious man's chest, glaring down the others. His face had streams of fresh crimson down them from the point where Mamba whacked him over the skull. Kitty shrieked as she felt a strong pair of arms force her to shift a couple of steps. It took a few moments for her to gauge her situation.
She had a psychopath with a knife in front of her-
-and her boyfriend behind her.
"You're using me as a SHEILD!?" She screamed.
"Don't think of it like that, babe," Black Jack said smoothly, "Remember Silvertongue? He can't hurt kids under 18. It's like the boogeyman, he can't touch you; you're 17."
"The boogeyman?! THE BOOGEYMAN?! This is NOT a loose toy under the bed, Jack, this is a real, f*cking person! HE'LL KILL ME, JACK!"
"Trust me, babe!" He hissed, ensuring he was completely behind her, holding her in a death-grip to keep her from struggling. He glared at the unblinking killer, nonverbally taunting him.
Kitty, meanwhile, jerked in his arms, trying to pry herself away, punctuating each word with a grunt of effort, "You. Abso-lute. Bastard! You're. Basing. My. Life. Off. A. THEORY!"
"Relax, doll." Jeff said, stunned at the first verbal response in the fight from him, Kitty stopped struggling, "Every guy knows not to hit the girl." His grin widened.
He drew his knife and curved his arm around his body. He whirled and let the knife go.
Kitty screamed as the gleaming blade seemed to fly straight at her-
-but watched as the blade moved mid-flight.
The knife suddenly took a right curve in the middle of going straight for almost 7 whole feet. It curved, like it was following an invisible string around them- well, her.
Black Jack was almost slack-jawed as the knife suddenly curved just a few feet away from impacting his girlfriend. His mind barely processed the weapon's trajectory and his eyes widened as the blade's angle kept moving closer and closer-
He jumped backwards.
The blade breezed right in front of his jacket, inches from where it would have impacted his ribcage, but stopped curving as instantaneously as it started. His eyes followed the continued momentum as it slowly dipped down from gravity.
Knives roared in pain as the knife buried itself in his thigh. It didn't bleed too much, indicating that it luckily missed any important arteries. The young adult watched as the edges of his vision started dimming as pain registered and was hardly aware that his legs gave out under him and he was prone on the ground, careful about the protruding blade.
Kitty stood in a daze, her mind barely processing the fact that seconds ago a knife was heading straight for her head. She was a few seconds away from being dead.
"Damn, rotten boyfriends," She mumbled. Then her legs turned to jelly, she slumped to the floor, and passed out.
Jeff, meanwhile, was squared off with Jack, keeping the distance between them, but circling and waiting for someone to give up their guard. The excitement caused Jeff's blood pressure to break the clot in his arm. It began bleeding into the hoodie more, deepening the red stain and
Unknown to them, Silvertongue recovered from the blow to the head and stood up as he looked around. The freak was circling around Black Jack warily. The two newbies managed to hold down the brat, which at least helped somewhat. Mamba was down, but his chest still rose and fell with breath. Kitty was also passed out close to where Jack was. Knives was shuddering and whimpering softly, grasping his thigh and not removing the gleaming knife blade buried an inch or two into the meat.
The white-skinned creep had his back to the 16-year-old. He took advantage of the situation and reached for a bat, slowly but quietly stumbling his way over to the unsuspecting psychopath.
Harry watched with baited breath as his foster brother stood, facing the young man. Each were willing to kill. Each had probably killed before. Now it was a matter of who got the first (and last) blow.
A glint of silver caught his eye and he saw the teen Jeff first knocked out, Silvertongue, slowly walking up to Jeff, silvery baseball bat gleaming. He opened his mouth and suddenly felt a cloth shoved into it, unable to do anything but make muffled gagging noises. Vince leaned over, "Don't worry, it's clean, bro."
Harry looked pointedly at him, to convey 'that's not helping!'. Vince just shrugged and turned back to the fight. Harry looked around frantically for anything to make noise, anything to spit out the gag. Anything!
He needed something to warn Jeff!
He needed something to help Jeff!
He needed-
The ward of Slenderman remembered winter. Slendy brought him to a playground in California or somewhere still warm, he remembered those people and the ice cream van. He had his power!
His unique power.
He felt around mentally, trying to get in contact with the energy. It was a lot easier thanks to the meditation and also the somewhat dire situation. At last, he found that small pool of energy in his chest and began to manipulate it, like breaking off a chunk of clay and kneading it.
He thought about what he wanted to do. He needed something to get Vince and Hotwire off of him as well as stop Silvertongue. Black Jack might also be nice, but Jeff's in the way, so he had to be cautious.
He relayed his intentions to the blob of energy and it began to take shape. It changed from an unimaginable, white substance to a volatile, red beam violently circling in place. It gathered speed and momentum in himself until he let it out with a cry.
A red ring, like an energy pulse suddenly pushed out from his center. Hotwire and Vince were both knocked back and knocked out from the energy while the ring extended its radius to Silvertongue as well. He flew off of his feet and landed, already knocked out, his bat clanging against the cement.
Unfortunately, the loud noise, combined with the thuds of three bodies, distracted Jeff. While he had his head turned, Black Jack struck!
He whipped something out of his jacket, tossing away his knife as he did so, and ran straight into Jeff's body. The experienced killer was too surprised and the older man got the upper hand, pinning Jeff down.
Harry saw, to his horror, that the item Jack took out was a sleek, black gun. It was angled just between the two, with both Jeff and Jack struggling for the angle, but despite Jeff's experience; his injured arm, probably concussed head, and general position under Jack meant the gun's barrel was slowly, but surely angling its way towards Jeff's head with Jack's finger still on the trigger.
Harry's mind was frantically weighing the decisions and possibilities, each getting more and more reckless as the gun got closer to its current target. Then, unable to stop himself, he was suddenly running towards the pair, he picked up the iron pipe Jack had lost earlier. Jack glanced backwards towards the echoing *clack* of footsteps across the concrete and saw the tiny, black-haired figure rushing towards him with the heavy pipe wound backwards like a baseball bat.
*WHAM!*
The pipe made contact with his head and he was flung off of Jeff, the gun went clattering across the ground. Harry kept at it.
*WHAM!*
*WHAM!*
*WHAM!*
Harry slammed the pipe against every part of the human anatomy he could reach, which equated to every bone in the leg, every toe in the foot, and a number of good bruises in the torso. Jack stumbled backwards each time.
Harry grunted, punctuating each syllable with a whack, "Don't! *WACK!* Hurt! *WACK!* My! *WACK!* Brother! *WACK WACK WACK!*"
The gang leader shielded himself, frustrated that he couldn't seem to be able to get over his shock at the miniscule kid using his own pipe against him. He could only stumble backwards as each blow seemed to hit a different spot each time.
It seemed too soon that he reached near the edge of the structure. The cement underneath him was cracked and the rebar had rusted to a brittle red-brown rod embedded in the concrete floor.
The boy got frustrated and wound up taking the pipe and simply throwing it straight at the older man's head. The metal struck the side of his cheek, sending a loosened tooth flying as well as a few flecks of blood, landing on Harry's clothing. Harry found he could "feel" the pipe with his ability and it came whizzing back to his hand like a boomerang.
Severely disoriented, he tripped over a chunk of missing concrete and fell backwards against the crumbling edge. Harry leapt away as he saw him fall.
Black Jack screamed as the floor gave out from under him and he fell three stories to the pavement below. The rebar protruded from the wreckage dangerously and the falling leader landed right onto it. The result was the steel spikes tearing through the body, ensuring that if the fall didn't already kill him, the impalement would.
Harry stood at the top of the building, directly in front of the gaping hole that was once somewhat solid ground. He stared down at the spread-eagle figure lying on top of a large pile of rocky rubble, iron pegs protruding grotesquely from his torso, limbs, and one in the center of his face.
The boy numbly let the lead pipe slip from his hands. It bounced on the pavement and fell into the rubble itself, lost in the twisted rebar and concrete. He couldn't pry his eyes away from the deceased figure.
"Woo!" Harry quietly turned and saw Jeff get up and dust himself off before walking over, "Nice job, kid! I seriously owe you one! Another minute and I'd have a new hole in my brain."
He nudged Harry away from the precarious edge, "You saved my ass, so you're alright in my books. Sorry for doubting you earlier."
Harry barely registered as Jeff lead him to the wall. The Operator Symbol had long-since cooled. The shadows swirled around them and they were gone.
Everyone there was unconscious (or, in Jack's case, dead) so none of them saw them leave, but the distant wail of sirens indicated that someone had heard the commotion, saw the wreckage, or heard the scream and phoned the NYPD.
Mamba and Knives (real names Marcus Williamson and Jeremy Bates) both received medical attention and survived their encounter with the legendary Jeff the Killer. Kitty, Silvertongue, Vince, and Hotwire (real names Sarah Anderson, Anthony Summers, Vincent Cross, and Carlos Sanchez) were taken in for questioning, but released as minors. Black Jack [Age 19] (real name Juan Garcia) was eventually interred.
Police found no footage of the two mysterious figures leaving the crime scene. The story about the "guy-in-the-white-hoodie" changing his appearance was discussed, but was largely unexplainable and left out of official documentation.
The knife in Jeremy Bates' leg was analyzed, but came up with prints that were destroyed beyond recognition. Forensics admitted that the prints looked almost melted, like the suspect had badly burned his hand at some point. Ultimately it didn't help the investigation.
They cross-referenced the story with another, different story that came in across town earlier that evening. A young woman reported a mugging in an alleyway. She said that two figures, a white-skinned teenager and a black-haired boy, appeared and the teenager fought the mugger while the boy warned her to run. Police determined the alley she was during the incident.
They discovered the mutilated corpse of her attacker. Forensics was able to match the blade used in the murder to the one left in Mr. Bates' leg, but beyond that, there were no prints, no conclusive DNA, nothing. Only two pairs of footprints heading towards the location of the fight before vanishing.
The boy, however, gathered some interest after the description perfectly matched the description of the abducted child a few months prior in a Californian park. Once again, dogs couldn't sniff them out except around the location of the fight and, even then, it was like they vanished in thin air. More people from an obscure department called ADMA kept nosing around, asking for leads, but they eventually left after almost 2 months of questioning and investigation.
While still investigating the crime scene, Detective Parker, a simple crime scene photographer, was taking note of some of the witnesses' testimonies. They all agreed that the two were initially just standing and staring at the wall before they came in and started the fight.
Though, the testimony of Carlos Sanchez [Age 11] (aka "Hotwire" on an account of attempted car theft with two cousins) sparked something (once he got past the rambling). "We got there, and, like, the place was like usual, I mean, our guys would go there and… hang out, y'know. But, it always smelled the same. Don't look at me like that, but it always smelled like mold and car oil and rat crap and weed, but this time it smelled, like, all chemically. Like this one time my cousins were screwing around with some old paint cans. They burned shit, boiled shit, y'know?"
The record showed that for the sake of getting the rest of the testimony on a more-important murder case, they were willing to overlook the implications of minor crimes of the boy and his relatives to get to the main point. "Okay, so we get there and the entire place smells like someone was burning paint. It sticks around and it really burns your nose, y'know? There were only those two and they were standing in front of the graffiti wall with some weird-colored smoke coming off of it. No clue why they did that, no clue why that'd happen to a wall, either. After that, we started the fight, but I still got no idea why they'd burn a wall. Now can I go?"
The minors were sent home, serving no time in Juvie due to their experience with the more dangerous criminal still on the loose and the police department being unable to implicate them directly with any gang activity besides just being there. As it was, they and their houses were watched regularly over the next 12 months in case the psycho ever came back.
He never did.
Mamba and Knives were of-age, so once they recovered they were charged with attempted assault, but got off pretty light considering they were pretty badly wounded and were willing to cooperate in the investigation. They couldn't implicate any of them for any crimes committed by the gang itself at that time and were also watched regularly for the next few months for the mysterious figure in white.
Back at the crime scene, Detective Parker approached the wall. True to the kid's testimony, the wall was coated in layers of graffiti, but looking closer at it, there was a small patch, about 5 inches in diameter, where the paint was gone all the way to the cement. Looking at surrounding art, he could tell that it wasn't intentional and there had been something painted over this, but it looked like the edges had been burned away completely without leaving scorch marks on the cement itself. There were even shriveled shavings of the paint lying curled on the floor beneath it.
What was more, in the exact center of the circle of missing paint was a simple symbol carved or possibly burned into the concrete itself.
He snapped a photo.
AN: Now before you go off on me for having Harry kill, remember Naruto? That Inari kid on Naruto's first mission shot a bolt through a guy's head! He was 3/4 Harry's age! Plus, multiple fanfics of Harry have him starting to kill off Death Eaters or do pretty evil/adult stuff at an early age.
Just don't replicate this stuff. Creativity, not Reality.
It was just necessary for Harry to adapt into the roll/initiate the process of Pasta-dome.
This is a work of fiction, any relation to anyone living or dead is completely coincidental. Seriously, I have no idea what gangs are real nor do I know anything about actual gang culture, so please be lenient.
I have little to no idea the justice or crime system in New York, so if I overlook some clause that would implicate them further, I apologize.
Also, I don't live in New York and have never visited, so if my city layout is incorrect I apologize for that, too. It's based off of my sister's trip there along with some quick google images and some "Castle" episodes.
I've seen in comments and in PMs that people think the characters are a bit OC; and they're right. The canon characters are just creepypasta monsters. They kill, torture, maim, and laugh while they do it.
I don't want just creepypastas. I want people. I want intelligent beings with hopes and fears, dreams and memories. From those that bury memories under cold indifference or permanent smiles (Jeff) to those who hide themselves from pain in silliness and childish exuberance (Toby) to those who protect (Slendy) to those who play (Sally) to those who fear (BEN).
As an amateur writer, I can say that it definitely adds a new layer of personality or "soul" to a character to have things beneath the surface.
AN: On a lighter note, I just realized, in the Doctor Who episode "The Shakespearean Code", the doctor read the seventh book of Harry Potter where Harry saved the world with Expelliarmus. Then, Shakespeare saved the world with Expelliarmus... coincidence? I think NOT!
This conspiracy theory brought to you by:
-Crow
-The little sister of Crow (current Beta)
Extras Alert:
I originally had two different methods of murder for Harry. One involving a piano and another possibly going beyond M. If anyone is interested, I'm more than willing to send a PM with the two chapters.
Additionally, if anyone is interested in the Extras from the abduction chapter, I still have those on file. So, even if you're new to this story, but still want to read the *Extras*, don't be shy to send a quick PM.