Roughly an hour later there was a knock on Nico's door. A loud quick one. He guessed it was Toby even before he went to open it. Unsurprisingly he had been right. Toby wasn't wearing his mouth guard or goggles anymore and that was a bit surprising, more so because of the scar on one side of Toby's mouth. It was more than a scar really, Nico could see a couple of Toby's teeth through it. He wondered if that made it hard for Toby to eat.
"You ready to go?" Toby said skipping back, he either hadn't noticed Nico staring at the scar, or he was used to it, Nico suspected the latter. Nico nodded, yes he was ready to go, or as ready as he would ever be, he was still nervous. "Good! First introductions already here." Toby said waving someone who had been hidden in the shadows forward.
"This is Masky, the other one of Slenders Proxies." The man was taller the Toby and wearing a white mask with black lips, wide black eyes and arched eyebrows painted on it. Hoody was close behind Masky, as if drawn to him by a magnet. Masky nodded regarding Nico carefully, Nico could barely see the wide blue eyes behind the mask but he could feel them on him.
"Don't mind him, he doesn't like the entire idea of 'trusting'. Well anyone besides Hoody, not even me." Toby said waving a hand in a shooing motion and giving an overdramatic pout.
"It's nice to meet you Masky." Nico said stepping forward and holding out his right hand to shake, at first he thought Masky was going to refuse. Then Hoody elbowed him gently and Masky sighed and gripped Nico's hand a little too tightly, giving it a shake before letting go again quickly. Nico retracted his hand raising one eyebrow quizzically then shrugged. Hoody and Toby hadn't said he needed to watch out for Masky and until proven wrong he would trust their word.
"We've already told Masky about you so lets go meet the others! Jeffs confined to his room for now and I think Sally and L.J. are out playing in the woods, so we'll start with BEN, he's downstairs." Toby started down the hall to the stairs, Nico waiting for a moment not wanting to have his back to Masky, but Masky showed no signs of going ahead.
"I-it's okay. Go." Hoody said waving Nico to go ahead. Nico sighed and did, he listened to the footsteps of the two behind him, they were so quiet. He probably wouldn't have noticed them if he wasn't listening for them. Nico would have to learn that trick, he could think of many, many more ways it would be useful than just to sneak up on people to kill them.
They followed Toby back down the three corridors to the stairs, and then down to the ground floor again. Nico tried to keep track of where he was being lead, but all the doors and halls looked the same to him and he soon got lost. He suspected finding ones way around this house involved more remembering to count how many doors you passed than looking for landmarks. He would count on the way back since it would be useless to start half way through now .
Toby finally stopped outside of a room, he knocked on the door. There was no answer, Toby knocked again. When there was still no answer Nico assumed they would have to leave again, but Toby just walked in. Unsure of what to do Nico followed him in and looked around what seemed to be just an office. There was a laptop on the desk and a few gaming systems against the wall, he assumed that's what they were, he had heard of them but never seen one. Nico got even more confused when Toby marched over to one of the game systems and knocked on it, there was no response unsurprisingly and Toby knocked again.
"Come on BEN it's almost dinner time this is not the time for a nap! Besides we brought a new member of the household to come meet you." Nico remembered something about BEN spending most of his time in a game, but he still didn't believe anything would happen until the thing turned on on it's own. A text box showed up on the blackness of the screen.
Go Away! Said the text box and the thing started to shut down again before Toby started poking it this time.
"Not till you come out and introduce yourself!" Toby said, the atmosphere darkened and Nico had the distinct impression that BEN was about to do something.
"Slenderman said to introduce him." Masky interrupted the climb of energy in the room, it hovered at the same level for a moment before the speakers let out a burst of static that, sounded oddly like a sigh and the energy vanished. The screen on the game turned white and after a moment someone began to push their way out of it. After a moment a boy with a green hat, blond hair, and a green tunic type thing was standing on the floor in front of them. He looked fairly normal despite having just come out of a game, until he opened his eyes. Nico repressed the urge to step back when he saw that the area that should have been white was black and the pupil was red. Blood began to slide down the boys face from his eyes and Nico shivered.
"What did you want?" BEN asked, Nico could still hear a low level of interference under BEN's voice as if he was talking through a speaker.
"It's nice to meet you BEN, my name is Nico Di Angelo." Nico took the initiative introducing himself to the… person? Video game character? For now just BEN. "I'm a son of the Greek god Hades, Slenderman wants to know more about how my powers work, so for now I'll be living here." BEN reached out to shake Nico's hand, but as soon as they touched it was like Nico had touched a live wire and electricity was running through his arm, Nico pulled away quickly, BEN grinned.
"So what can you do that's caught the old man's attention?" Ben asked still grinning, Nico didn't like that smile. BEN looked like he was dissecting every aspect of Nico's mind, wondering how best to drive him insane, and BEN was enjoying every minute of it. Nico didn't look away, he had to hold eye contact to prove he would not be BEN's prey because Nico had seen enough monsters to know what a predators stare looked like.
"I can raise the dead." Nico answered calmly still holding eye contact. "I might be able to do more I only found out about my powers recently."
"Huh that's pretty impressive death boy." BEN said shifting his weight to his other foot. "Now when are you from?"
"Pardon?" he was shocked though he tried not to show it, he hadn't mentioned to any of them that he wasn't from this time. BEN smirked, obviously Nico hadn't done such a good job of hiding his surprise.
"When are you from?" BEN repeated slowly still smirking. "There's no mention of you on the internet, with records beginning to be digitized if you were born when you look like you should have been I would have found you by now. When are you from?"
"You don't have to answer him." Nico had almost forgotten the Proxies were there, Toby was almost never quiet for this long and even now it had been Masky that spoke. He was glaring at BEN. "He's just trying to play one of his games, best not to let him inside your head. He'll never leave."
"Aww, Masky were you given orders to spoil my fun?" BEN whined but his smirk didn't slip. "Or are you just jealous that I'm still free to play my own games, and don't have to be a pawn in anyone else's?" Nico saw Masky stiffen and he decided he didn't like Ben much. For a moment Nico thought that Masky would attack BEN, but then Hoody rested his head on Masky's shoulder and Masky relaxed.
"Slenderman wants Nico here, if you drive him away then you'll have to answer to Slender." Masky warned BEN ignoring what he had said before. Masky was taking his own advice not to let BEN into his head. Nico made up his mind that he would follow Masky's advice as well if Masky trusted it enough to follow it.
"Fine." BEN said crossing his arms and scowling. "Now are you done? I was in the middle of something." Nico nodded and looked at Masky who nodded as well. "Good." BEN grumbled and slid back into the game system, once he was in it turned off with an annoyed snapping sound.
Mask turned and left the room immediately, Hoody tapped Ticci-Toby on the shoulder bringing him out of the trance he had been in, staring at the wall and muttering soundlessly. So that was why he hadn't interrupted before. Toby jumped and dashed after Mask, Hoody waited for Nico to go first but Nico didn't mind having Hoody at his back so he went.
"If you start having nightmares about a statue that looks kind of like BEN, but with blue eyes, or about your legs being sewn together and a mask sewn to your face let us know." Masky said suddenly as soon as they were out of the room. "It's one of his little tricks to drive people crazy, if Slender finds out he's doing it to someone in the house he takes away BEN's access to the internet for a few days."
"Okay I'll keep that in mind." Nico said grimacing, as a demi-god he had enough nightmares on his own without help from any help from sarcastic computer programs.
"Ya, the only time BEN is bearable is when you're playing videogames with him, and even then it has to be video games that aren't Majora's Mask. Try playing Mario Kart with him some time, that can be fun and it'll get you in his good books." Toby said fully back to reality, though still a bit more subdued than Nico had come to expect. Nico nodded, he had never played video games before, he had no clue how they worked, but with how some of the other kids had talked about them at camp Nico thought he would like them.
"Alright, who am I supposed to meet next?" Nico said, he hoped the others (besides Jeff and E.J.) were more like the proxies than BEN. Nico wasn't sure how many sadistic video game characters he could stand.
"Let's go outside and try to find Sally and L.J.!" Toby suggested enthusiastically. "Smiling Dog will probably be with them, so that's killing three birds with one stone!"
"That's a good idea Toby." Mask said in a tone of over exaggerated surprise, Toby stuck his tongue out petulantly at Masky before running off. Masky followed Toby, and this time Hoody fell back to walk with Nico at the back of the party. They walked in silence as Masky and Toby started fighting, but the silence with Hoody wasn't awkward at all. Nico didn't feel any pressure to make conversation and he knew Hoody didn't either, so they let the quiet stand. Nico counted the doors to the exit this time and got to eleven, this was a big house.
When they got out of the house Toby sprinted into the woods. Nico expected they would follow Toby and was surprised when Mask just sat down on the doorstep. Hoody sat down on the ground in front of Masky but Nico decided to stay standing, he didn't really know what was happening. They stayed that way as they waited for Toby to come back, Hoody and Masky seemed to be staying unnaturally still, Nico fidgeted shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
After maybe five minutes Toby came sprinting back out of the woods laughing madly with a dog at his heals, the dog was panting happily and snapping playfully at Toby's heals. Toby didn't seem to mind even though there was a couple of places on his legs Nico could see blood. Toby kept laughing and dancing around to avoid the dogs snapping… human teeth. The dog stilled when it saw Nico and stopped panting, but still it's lips were drawn back in an unnaturally large smile even for a dog and it's teeth were definitely human.
Nico shivered, so this was smiling dog, it seemed to act like a normal dog but as it growled at Nico, he felt a little sick. It wasn't a natural thing to see a dog with human teeth like that, even though it didn't really seem like it should be, it was scary. Hoody stood up and stepped forward to meet the dog, ruffling it's pointed ears.
"This is Nico." Hoody told the dog kneeling down to it's level and gesturing for Nico to come over. Nico swallowed and went over, the dogs ears pricked and it stared at Nico. Nico tried not to let his fear show, he had heard somewhere that animals could sense it. He held out his hand and the dog sniffed it, most animals ran away from Nico because he felt like danger and death to them but this dog seemed interested. After a minute a sniffing the dog licked Nico's hand and he relaxed, Nico ran his hand over the soft fur of the dogs head then straightened as two more figures came out of the woods.
One was a little girl with long brown hair and green eyes, she was wearing nightdress that had either been pink and had bleach spilled on it, or had been white and had blood spilled on it. From the pattern Nico suspected the latter. She was dragging someone much taller behind her, a hunched monochrome clown with a large sharp-toothed grin. The girl, Sally he assumed, was chattering happily to the clown and the clown, L.J. laughed. The clown was so big that Sally could only get her hand around one of the clowns long, knife like fingers, but Sally didn't seem to mind and the clown followed readily.
"Sally, L.J., this is Nico." Toby said making a motion like he was presenting Nico, Nico felt very uncomfortable as the two stared at him. Sally let go of L.J.'s finger and clutched a bear to her chest with both arms, staring at Nico with wide eyes over the bears head. It was hard for Nico to believe that the little girl could be a killer, she looked so small and innocent, but there was blood all over her dress. Nico very much doubted it was her own, besides she lived here and apparently everyone here except him was a killer.
"It's very nice to meet you, L.J." Nico said to the clown first then smiled gently at Sally. "And you too Sally."