"So tell me..." The old lady asked in a mutter, glaring up carefully at the figure looking down at her. "What exactly is you're name, you supposedly didn't get the chance to tell me before nailing my hands to this wall."
"Oh." Responded the shadow with a slight laugh. "I guess I didn't, you're right, after all. My apologies for that. It's always best to get to know someone before you die." He stepped closer, drawing forth some kind of sword with a hook poking out right at the tip of it, most likely melted into the weapon to be able to rip through the victim's flesh easier. "My name is Johnny C. Don't ask what the C stands for." He shrugged. "Because I don't know, either. But for now, you can just call me Nny."
The victim didn't nod. Didn't speak, didn't move. She must have figured it was best not to do anything, which in this case, was very true on her side.
"Now i'm guessing that you're wondering why you're hands are nailed to the wall?" Johnny asked, though didn't dare give any time for her to answer, because he had already known it. "Well, I did, after all, give you a warning to leave while you still had all four limbs attached to you're body. Am I right?" Johnny questioned with a smirk, raising the weapon just above the cranium. "Well, you ran out of time."
Only now did she begin to panic, which had seemed that she had just been holding in all her fear and saving it for just this moment. "Oh god, please no, don't kill me!" She screamed, kicking out to make some sort of shield so that the villain couldn't get to her. "Please! I have a daughter, and a very nice family, you-"
"Yes, you had told me that you had a daughter before you made that stupid decision to disobey. But one that likes to talk shit about people behind their back, people like me. I don't like people like that." Johnny held back a laugh at the lady's attempt to shield. Her legs were short, and his arms were much longer. "Just like the rest of those pretty people in this world. People who just happen to act like you're friend that one evening, then they descend behind you're back, lies they speak with those bloody dolls!" He lowered the knife to the victim's throat. "How many people has she hurt in this world? GODDAMNIT, HOW MANY?!"
She flinched at the sudden change of tone in the murderous voice, shivering with fear. However, Johnny didn't even try to notice this, he never did with most of them.
"So, now you understand why I must kill you, yes? You have given birth to that careless thing you dare call a child and of course, you've hurt someone in this world by doing just that. So yes, I must kill you now."
But he was cut off by a scream. No, not from the lady, but from just outside the barriers of his house. And it had sounded familiar, of course, why wouldn't it? The creator of this story was running out of ideas and she was about to throw the computer out of any nearby window. But of course, she didn't, or you wouldn't have been reading this story right now.
"Stay." Johnny hissed, commanding as if he was talking to a dog, then began to lock the door as he left. It was slow, but it was silent. Screams of horrified protests emitted from the other side as he began to make his way up the old steps that he followed up a short way, stopping as he reached a ladder that had been built into the wall.
Sometimes I wonder how far this place is underground. He thought, eventually stepping onto wooden floorboards of the main level in the house. He grabbed a knife from the drawer and tried to creep over to the window silently without creaking the old boards. He knew who that scream came from, and if he made any noise, it would scare them off, with no doubt about it.
Glaring out the open window, he saw them both, but he was quite surprised at what he saw.
A black-haired girl crouched next to a limp figure, shaking it as if trying to wake it up. And Johnny immediately recognized it as Devi, and her annoying friend that always followed her around, Tenna. The scream he heard had come from Tenna obviously, though it wasn't one of those irritating Omg- I- Haven't- Seen- You- In- Forevs screams that always came from bratty little females, but a horrified one.
Knowing that Devi was either dead or knocked out on the ground, the watching Johnny knew that it was safe to go see what terrible disaster had happened now.
He carefully leaped over and out the open window with a single bound, but he soon realized his mistake and turned to stop the falling window from slamming shut.
Tenna let out a gasp and looked up at the source of the noise as a loud WHAM! had sounded from the window that Johnny had failed to save, though he was already hidden within the dark shadow of the broken houses around the ruined neighborhood that crumbled around him.
Tenna kept staring wide-eyed as if expecting some dark wolf to morph straight through the brick wall. Johnny became slightly irritated as he ran out of patience.
Why can't she just go run off a cliff or something? He growled to himself, staying silent in the darkened shadows, waiting for her to just look away for a moment. And when she did, a skinny figure zipped past and stopped just as he passed the annoying girl who was still trying to wake her friend up, who was obviously not planning on waking up anytime soon. Johnny gently tapped her on the shoulder as he stared down at the limp figure on the solid ground.
Tenna stood with a gasp and jumped up from her spot, spinning around to face him and backing away slowly. "Who the hell are you, stranger?" She growled, snatching a purse from her shoulder. Johnny, of course, flinched, expecting that she was going to hit him with the zebra-striped accessory, as he had been hit with them like a puppy caught chewing on the table many times before. But Tenna just slowly unzipped the bag-like structure, reaching her hand in and pulling out a dark skeleton dog-toy and squeaking it a few times before violently shaking it in her hand in defense. "I have a Spooky, i'm not afraid to use him!"
"I'm not here to hurt you." Johnny laughed, poking the squeaky toy once. "And Mr. Spooky isn't going to help you much in a fight with me, anyways. Though guns are always optional."
Tenna raised a brow and glanced down at Spooky for a second before staring back at the tall man standing in front of her. "How did you know his name...?" She questioned cautiously, stepping forward a bit closer. "Do I know you?"
Johnny stayed silent, just staring down at the limp Devi for a long moment before deciding to respond, though not to answer the girl's question.
"Just call me Nny." He sighed flatly, keeping his eyes locked on the figure. He decided that it was just best not to tell her his actual name. Because surely Devi had told her best friend about how terrible Johnny was? And he didn't want to form any trust issues with Tenna right now, not yet anyways.
"I see. Well alright, 'Nny'" Tenna smiled holding out her hand in greeting, but Johnny just stared at it before glancing away again.
"So uh..." He pointed down to the familiar face. "What happened to Devi? If i'm right, people don't just die out of nowhere."
Tenna gasped, pulling Spooky a bit closer to herself and took a quick look down at the still Devi on the ground. "Excuse me, Mr. Nny, but she is not dead!" She suddenly got back on her knees again, continuing to look for a pulse on the fainted body. But eventually she stopped, narrowing her eyes up at the man again. "Seriously though, how do you know all our names?"
Johnny realized his mistake, but remained silent, trying to avoid this conversation. Tenna obviously wasn't bright enough to recognize a very familiar face, but he feared that his name might bring it back. "I'm a friend of hers." He lied, looking away again. "I'll explain later. Right now, we should really be more concerned on getting Devi back home."
Tenna nodded silently, though just kept staring mindlessly at the surrounding houses. It wasn't exactly the best place to live, where the walls seemed as if they were about to collapse in a jumble of bricks and dust around them, and maybe if they were lucky, a few lifeless bodies to top it off. But Johnny didn't seem to notice the inconvenience of the long abandon neighborhood, it was about as best as he was going to get around here, plus the fact that it was free to live in that crumby place.
"But who's gonna help us? It doesn't look as if anyone's lived here in years by the looks of it." Tenna broke the silence, giving a slight sigh of relief as she finally found a pulse.
"Pffeh, you rely too much on the help of others." Johnny mumbled, leaning to pick the limp Devi figure off of the frozen ground. One arm just under her shoulders, the other tucked under the fold of her legs to support. She was surprisingly light for someone who just sat in her apartment all day, hadn't been out of it for months. When was the last time she had even eaten?
Johnny couldn't help but give a small laugh at the fact that Devi would have already violently murdered him by now if she was even half awake.
"Hold on, hold on. I don't even know you. How am I suppose to know you're not just some stalking creeper dude trying to kill us and take over the world?" Tenna questioned, raising a brow as she pointed to her striped purse. "Spooky seconds that."
"If I were really doing to kill you... why wouldn't I have just already killed you by now?" He responded quietly, starting to walk away with the fainted Devi. He wasn't going to let anyone tell him how he was suppose to do things. "Especially Spooky. If I were to kill anyone, he would have been first."
Tenna stood for a second, just staring after him before actually making any sort of effort to catch up. "Well maybe you're taking us to some killing machine down the block. Would you be able to tell the difference?" She asked with laugh, starting to act more like herself now, which automatically told Johnny that it was going to be a very long walk.
"Depends." He managed with a small half-hearted smile down at Devi again. "Is it someone who's kicked you're ass before, or one of the more cheery people? Like you."
"Hey, well for you, it's none of the above. You haven't kicked my ass before (as if you could), and you're not exactly the cheery type of guy, either." Tenna snapped back, though still held the huge signature grin glued on her face. "So it only proves my point even more."
Johnny let out a huff of air, his breath turning to fog in the crisp wind as he walked, deciding not to respond to her comment. "So, you never exactly told me just what happen to Devi... Did she just hit her head or something?"
"That's one theory." Tenna chuckled, skipping over the tiles on the road. Johnny, however, wasn't too worried, cars hadn't drove down this broken street for a while, and the chances that one would just happen to pass by after days of silence was at an all time low at the this point. "But I dunno, we started taking the shortcut home and she just... Froze, started pointing, and then she fell."
"Ah..." Was all that Johnny managed to say, a pang of guilt sparked in his eyes. He knew exactly why Devi must have been so terrified. How could she have been alright with going down the same street of the house that an insane psycho lived in? Not to mention the dreadful night that he attempted to 'immortalize the moment'. He was glad that Devi had actually gotten away, though. He couldn't even bare to stand the thought of her dead, not now.
Tenna was quiet the rest of the way, which gave Johnny plenty of time and silence to plot out his plans for how he would go about this whole situation. Devi would surely do something if she found out that Johnny had helped bring her home, wouldn't she? And with Tenna, there was no way that he could make her shut up long enough to keep a secret. Yes, Johnny would have to think of this very carefully. He decided that he would figure out all the complicated discussion part later. What would he do after Devi was alright, though?
Well it's simple. He began to think, rounding a corner of one the old brick buildings, Tenna fell a bit further behind, walking a bit slower to read some of the things written or carved on the already cracked walls. First, I gotta tell Tenna to keep her mouth shut for once so that Devi won't try to kill me the next morning, then I'll stay close to the apartment until Devi starts waking up. After that, I guess I'll just leave her to be... again. He let out a quiet sigh, glancing back at Tenna to make sure that she was still following. And surely, she was, just very slowly. After all, it was Tenna. No, bad plan. I have a few things that I need to apologize about first before I just get up and leave her all alone again, I'll just have to risk-
"NNY!" A panicked scream sounded from behind. Obviously it was Tenna, who else would have been following them? Well, she was pointing at something be hind him. And Johnny almost dare not to even look, but honestly he was quite glad that he chose to do just that. Facing forward now, he could clearly see two blinding, almost sun-shaped, lights that forced him to squint to be able to see just what was behind it. But at least he was smart enough to know that it was coming after him.
Just as it neared a few feet away from his face, Johnny quickly grabbed to the collar of Devi's jacket to be sure that he wouldn't drop her and end up as road-kill, then made a swift leap to safety of the so called 'sidewalk' only inches away. There was just one tiny problem. Just as he was sure that he would make it, the vehicle still managed to slam into one of his legs right in mid-air it seemed, making him loose his balance.
Shit, no! He growled at himself, noticing that Devi had slipped out of his hands, too. Meanwhile, the author was busy trying to get the point across that this must be a slow-motion scene, because if Johnny took that long to jump, he would have already been dead or almost dead by now.
Johnny landed on his side with a huff, not having been able to regain his footing again. The pain in his leg and side were almost unbearable as he sat up, but the criminal just didn't seem to notice it, he was too concerned on making sure that nothing had happened to Devi. And luckily, she had fallen on sidewalk just a few feet away, still limp as a blade of grass, though. Scrambling to his feet, Johnny had no other choice but to check for any signs of blood on her body, seeing that Tenna wasn't going to help at all as she still stood stiff as a tree, with absolutely no wind, still shocked about what had just happened. Now lucky for Devi, she had managed with only a single bruise on her shoulder and just a few tiny scratches down her arm from the rough cement.
Picking the limp figure up again, Johnny began to walk, snapping back at Tenna. "Are you coming or what?" He growled, pointing up at the sky. "It's Tuesday, damnit." Though he wasn't really afraid of the U.F.O's right now (He had much better things to worry about), his anger was just in result from trying to hide embarrassment from not being able to dodge that car. Running? Sure. Fighting off a pack of gang members? No problem! But jumping out of the path of the car? No way in hell. There was just... something suspicious about that dark vehicle, something that Johnny just couldn't understand about it.
Tenna finally began walking, getting the nerve to speak up again. "You're really going to walk all that way... with a broken foot?"
Authors note
I gave you guys a little present by making this whole chapter in Johnny's POV, because, well, Devi is kinda knocked out and I suck at making little dream scenes XD. Oh and... Tenna's back? o.o Weird way to end a chapter? Yes, well, I thought it was kinda clever. Because after all, what would happen if Johnny really did have a broken foot/leg? He wouldn't be able to stay with Devi or anything, yes? Which means... PLOT TWIST OF HELL. Or maybe Tenna's just trying to scare him? (Let's be honest, Tenna is that kind of person) You'll find out soon I guess 83. Also, get ready for the end of this 'season' for the book in Chapter 5. Every 5 chapters, there is going to be a new season of the book, with the exception of a filler story in between them. But don't worry, there are going to be about 10 seasons, so you'll have plenty of chapters to read either way XD. After 5 chapters though, I take about a week's break without writing, then I post a new chapter (However long it takes me to do that), sometimes there will be a filler story. It's simple XD