A/N: I return triumphant! How've you guys been? I've been pretty great. I'm working two jobs now, the added activity has knocked me down a few pounds, and my fiancé got me both seasons of BF5 on dvd for Valentine's Day! I have now rewatched the first season and most of the second, as well as completed most of the research I mentioned on my profile. Also, while looking for names for an RPG character, I stumbled across what I think may be the origin of Tezz's name! Tjaž is a Slovene name popular in Hungary and the Czech Republic. It's the short form of Matjaž. So, Tezz's name might actually be a form of Matthew or Matthias. Weird.

A note on this chapter's title: In keeping with the theme used up to now, I have named the chapter after something black. Almost any type of transistor can be called a black box, but it is generally something viewed in terms of input and output, rather than the decision making process or other functions; not how something works, just that it does. Black box theory is also used in many fields such as philosophy and psychology. However, the term black box is most commonly used to refer to the flight data recorder, the component of an airplane broken open and check by investigators in the aftermath of a plane crash. Also, one of the expansion packs for my favorite card game, Cards Against Humanity, which Spinner is playing here, is called The Biggest Blackest Box.

Spinner and his friends crowded around a coffee table in a cozy apartment, snickering and muttering, shushing each other. Three boys nudged and elbowed each other as they put their cards down on the table, barely stifling their laughter as they awaited the judgment of their sole female party member. They were on the edge of their seats, as much as the Drake family's overstuffed couch would allow them.

"Come on, Kitty," Spinner said eagerly. "Let's see who the worst person in the room is!"

Kitty smirked and shuffled the three white cards, still face down, before picking up the black card. "Once again, the question is 'The class field trip was completely ruined by blank.' " Kitty flipped the first black card over and stifled another giggle. " 'Expecting a burp and vomiting on the floor.' Heheh." She flipped the next card, less amused. " 'The penny whistle solo from My Heart Will Go On.' Hey, I like that song…"

"You would," Bink muttered darkly.

Frowning, Kitty flipped the last card and let out a sudden bark of startled laughter. " 'Eating all of the cookies before the AIDS bake-sale.' Pfft, OMG!" She laughed helplessly. "That's not funny!" she insisted, still guffawing. "That's not funny, that's terrible! Oh, jeez, 'AIDS bake-sale' wins!"

Spinner grinned at his laughing friends and took the black card to mark his victorious round. "Suck it, bitches! TijuanaGenius for the win!"

Kitty's laughter became strangled as she ran low on air, and she reached into her vest pocket for her inhaler. When she stopped choking, the girl still snickered lightly, her voice raspy. She shook her head at Spinner, even as Tag and Bink continued to cackle, and wiped a tear from her eye. "You crazy sonuvabitch."

Tag's barking laughter went on the longest, but he finally calmed down, taking the opportunity to take them all off topic. "Speaking of crazy, you'll never guess who walked into Zeke's yesterday."

Bink eyed him coolly. "Weren't you banned from there for excessive use of adult language?"

"Hey, temporarily!" the Italian crowed in defense. "Anyways, I was there getting' a slice when in staggers none other than Janet Wheeler."

Kitty scoffed. "No… They actually let her out?" The girl snickered. "That freak? After what she did?"

"Allegedly did," Bink corrected, ever the devil's advocate.

"Allegedly shmallegedly!" Tag rolled his eyes dramatically and waved his hand, completely dismissing Bink's words as stuff and nonsense. "Everybody knows she killed poor old Jack."

"Yeah, Bink, don't be such a stick in the mud. Besides, even if she didn't chop her husband to bits, she's still nutty as a fruitcake. The whole town square incident with Cash was—"

She stopped abruptly, her eyes wide as she stared at Spinner, completely mortified. Kitty cleared her throat and looked away. "Well, she's dangerous. Let's leave it at that."

Spinner glanced back and forth between his friends, all of whom seemed reluctant to meet his gaze. He had watched the exchange with a neutral expression. The gamer felt guilty for not coming to the defense of Vert's mother, but at the same time, the way they ridiculed her left him afraid. Spinner got the impression this was a commonly held opinion in Handler's Corners. The game shop was the only place he could really get away from everyone at the Hub, and he wasn't sure about disagreeing with the group… Kitty and Tag had stopped because former deputy Roy Cash had come up in conversation, and Spinner was debating whether or not he should use the awkward pause to point out he was friends with Vert and that Janet was actually pretty nice, when their host finally returned.

Strider tiptoed into the family room and gently closed the door behind him. "I think we're good," he whispered. "Thanks again for being so understanding about the change of venue, guys."

Spinner was grateful for the change of subject relieving the pressure of his choice. "Hey, no problem. You can't help it if you're kid's sick."

"I don't know that he really is," Strider said warily. "He threw a tantrum yesterday at Zeke's and has been freaking out consistently since then. If he were a few years younger I'd swear it was colic, but with all the whacky things he's saying, I just don't know."

"So he's being a little sourpuss, big deal. Kids'll be kids, right?"

"Not my kid," Strider insisted. "Junior is normally very well-behaved. But after he saw that woman yesterday—Tag, you were there. The middle-aged blonde who talked to you?"

Tag's eyes widened and he crossed himself, muttering a mix of Italian and Yiddish. "That was crazy ol' Mrs. Wheeler. She was definitely having some kind of episode."

"Yeah, well, crazy or not, while she was staring at you like she wanted to bash your head in, stuff started floating around. That was when Junior started crying…"

Spinner remembered hearing about the levitating objects from Hope. The diner had experienced some paranormal activity around the time the key had vaporized, all revolving around a strange woman with a headache. But he barely had time to acknowledge that the woman in question was likely Vert's mom before a piercing shriek sounded close by.

Junior, so tiny and pale, came running in with tears streaming down his face. The little boy in the Super Mario Bros. pajamas cried hysterically and ran right for his father.

"I don't like it, I don't like it!"

"Kiddo, hey, shush…"

"Daddy!" he sobbed, gratefully scooped up into the man's arms. "I saw the scary lady again! It's too dark, I can't make her go away!"

Strider held the boy close and rocked him. "Now, that's enough of that. She can't come anywhere near this house. How can she, when we're got our brave band of warriors to protect us?" The game master smiled and showed his boy his favorite adventuring party, and Spinner gave the kid a little wave.

Junior sniffled. "But Daddy, the shadows are alive!"

"C'mon, munchkin. You can sleep with the lights on."

"But Daddy—!"

Strider passed his palm into front of his son's face. "Sleep," he commanded.

Spinner stared as the boy went limp in his father's arms, and he wasn't the only one gawking after them. But at their confused expressions the game master only gave them a wry smirk.

"Installing that post-hypnotic suggestion was the smartest move I ever made as a parent. No 'but Daddy I'm not sleepy,' just snores." He gave an apologetic wave as he carried the child off to bed once more.

They called the game there, though they had not even started Pathfinder as planned, and promised to pick up where they left off at the next session. Tag, Bink, and Kitty went one way, and, though they invited him along, Spinner went another. He thought the walk back to the garage might clear his head.

Spinner really hoped that Junior's nightmares were nothing more than flights of fancy.

The elder Cortez was concerned enough as it was that a supposedly fictional deity had been represented in a battle zone. If Sage was unable to recover any information on that zone and Sherman couldn't translate the glyphs, then all they had to go on was H. P. Lovecraft's work. The gamer had admittedly not read many of the original works of the Cthulhu mythos; he found Lovecraft's work to be a bit too flowery in its prose, and the author's xenophobic attitudes did not endear him to the modern reader. Lovecraft had been instrumental in the creation of the Cosmic Horror genre, however, and his influence on the geek community was still felt nearly a century later. Spinner had played an RPG by the name of Call of Cthulhu, and as a result, had basic background knowledge concerning the mechanics and setting of the stories in which the beast appeared. In the game and the few Lovecraft stories Spinner had read, dreams were just as real as anything. The dream world was more dangerous than reality in some cases, being a place where this world and others intersected. Messages could come through and minds could be corrupted by antediluvian horror beasts from beyond space and time or some other equally trite description. And if strange things were happening around Mrs. Wheeler, who had painted Cthulhu and a storm shock, and all of those aforementioned strange occurrences happened around the same time the battle key had disintegrated…

If this were a game or a movie, he could predict exactly where this was going. He recognized all the major tropes, he would know the exact plot and probably figure out who would die first—not who would die, period, just who would be first; cosmic horror stories almost never had a happy ending. This was real life, however, and there were too many variables to definitively answer the question of what was coming next. But Spinner looked at what all of these clues were adding up to and didn't like it one bit.

The elder Cortez looked up at the sound of an approaching motor. The Chopper slid to a stop just in front of him and Zoom took off his helmet.

"Dude, where the hell have you been?" the scout demanded.

"My game got rescheduled. I was at Dragon's Wing, then—"

"And you turned off your comm link?"

Spinner checked his wrist and saw all the angry looking text messages. "Oh, jeez, I accidentally set it to silent mode. Is everything okay?"

"Not really," Zoom admitted. "Big trouble at the Hub, also big trouble at Vert's mom's house, also Vert's mom is at the Hub and in trouble." Zoom tossed the gamer his spare helmet. "Hop on!"

The pair of them barreled towards the Hub at a breakneck speed.

Mrs. Wheeler escaped being abducted by an entity from another dimension with the help of her son's daring heroics, but something was wrong. She had been…touched, somehow, by the creature's otherness, contaminated by a strange power. And just as Spinner had dreaded, many of the past few days' bizarre occurrences were connected to her in some way. The levitating objects at Zeke's diner? Mrs. Wheeler was there. Spinner reported the nightmares of the Drake child and his father's sighting of Janet to Vert and Sage. There was still no new information concerning the enormous statue of a winged humanoid with a cephalopod head, but Mrs. Wheeler was in no shape to be questioned.

"I didn't understand all of the explanation," AJ admitted. He squirmed slightly and hissed in pain as Tezz continued to treat his bite wound. "But basically it sounds like an interdimensional alien attacked Mrs. Wheeler because she's psychic or something and Vert had to bring her in through the tunnels before it ate her brain."

Zoom nodded gravely. "Thanks for the recap."

"But where does that leave us now?" Spinner asked, shaking. "What if that…whatever it was gets into the Hub? Even calling us back was a risk. It could have followed us back in!"

"That's why I said to use the salt flat entrance," Vert said. "I figured it couldn't get there from the house so quickly. We've got everything else buttoned up tight."

"Ok, but what if it can control her mind remotely, like when Krytus took over Sage?" Agura asked. "I mean, if this thing was in the same room with her all the time, people would have noticed. It can't have been that close."

"We don't know that," Spinner pointed out, annoyed. "If it can access one human mind, maybe it can do more. Maybe this thing's been around the entire time but everyone's just been mind-whammied into ignoring it. Or maybe it glamours itself into looking human."

"It was wearing a suit," Vert said softly, his body giving an involuntary shiver. Agura put an arm around his shoulder, and he gratefully leaned into her.

Their leader looked so pale. In all their time fighting in the battle zones, Agura had never seen him so scared. The huntress supposed that the zones were something he was better equipped to deal with. In the battle zones, there were more enemies in more factions, but with his team by his side, they were on even footing. Running into something so otherworldly on his own, and in his own home, was a completely different animal. Now his mother was hurt, and he had been helpless to stop it. She hated to see him so shaken and vulnerable.

The huntress gave her lover's shoulder a tender squeeze. "It's okay, Vert," she told him. "She's safe. Sage and Sherman are looking her over right now."

The crimson one shook his head, running a hand through his hair. "You didn't see that thing, Agura. It… It wasn't human, but it sure dressed like one..."

Tezz glanced up from where he was finishing up with AJ's bandage. "I believe you mentioned that before, Captain. You said that the creature wore a suit and tie?"

"Almost like it was trying to pass for human," Vert said.

"What did it look like?" Agura asked.

"It didn't look like anything," Vert said. "It had nothing to look like anything—no eyes, no nose, no mouth—no face at all. No mouth, but it was hungry. No eyes, but it was always watching." His face was haunted and he had begun to sweat. Suddenly, Vert became aware that his teammates were staring at him and he coughed into his fist, composing himself. "Where its face should have been was a complete blank. It was like someone went over it with an eraser."

Spinner whimpered loudly, making his teammates look around in fright. They had been so focused on the captain's tale that they were almost afraid the monster had appeared. But the room was bright and empty, save for the Battle Force 5, and they were safe. Yet, the gamer still shivered and keened…

"Aw, what's wr—Ow! Dammit, Tezz, that hurt!" AJ rubbed his arm where he had been unexpectedly injected with an antibiotic. "Spinner, what's wrong?"

Spinner shifted from foot to foot, fighting the urge to run. Closing his eyes, he took a few deep breaths.

He had thought about what would happen next if this were a movie. He had considered what actions his character would take if this were a game. What Spinner had failed to take into account, however, was the outcome of this being a creepypasta. The team had barely accepted finding references to a literary character in a battle zone, and Spinner doubted they would like any better that they had just run into something that came from the internet.

Puffing up his chest, Spinner pulled up his tablet and did some quick googling, searching the term 'slender man,' and pulling up an eerie black and white image of a very tall, faceless man with disproportionately long limbs. He turned his tablet so the others could see. He knew the answer as soon as he saw Vert's deathly pallor, but Spinner asked the question anyway.

"Did he look anything like this?"