Nico dodged out of the way hitting the wall immediately, gods damn it he should have taken a moment to look behind him. E.J. approached slowly thinking that Nico was trapped, Nico's breath came in short bursts now because of the smell, ten times stronger now that E.J. was so close. Nico doubted any of the others would come to his aid, he needed to show E.J that he could fight for himself, or he would just be back next time Nico was on his own. With that in mind Nico tried to stay calm as his mind scrabbled for a plan. He then noticed the glint of something metal, a scalpel, in E.J.'s hand.
It turned out Nico didn't have to plan, as soon as E.J. lunged again Nico's body took over, instinct and training moving his limbs on their own. Nico dropped to the floor to avoid the blade and kicked out at E.J's legs, missing the knee but making a solid connection with the shin. Nico heard a grunt and E.J. stumbled back a couple paces, giving Nico the room he needed to roll to the side farther away from E.J.. Nico leapt to his feet and stepped away from the wall so it was no longer at his back.
E.J. made a small snarling, gurgling noise but seemed hesitant to attack Nico again, Nico glared back. He knew he could be quite scary when he wanted to be and right now he did, he relaxed the hold he kept on his power most of the time. The room darkened slightly moving out from Nico's body, and everything seemed colder. His eyes blackened with anger, sadness, and the feeling of death that made most people feel uncomfortable around him intensified.
"No matter how tough you believe you are you are still just a mortal. Do you really want to pick a fight with someone who is half God?" Nico asked coldly, staring at E.J. with dead eyes. E.J. took a involuntary step back, hesitated, then took another.
"Maybe not." He said nodding slightly. "I can see now why Slenderman is so interested in you, I think I too would like to study your powers from the outside for a while. Though, I can't promise I won't try to dissect you again at a later date." Nico couldn't tell if E.J. was joking or not, but he had the feeling he wasn't. It didn't matter for now though.
"It was nice to meet you." Nico said crossing the room to the doorway where Masky and Hoody still lingered.
"It's almost supper time, so I'm sure I'll see you again soon." E.J. said turning back to his cleaning. Nico made himself wait until he was out of the room and a little ways down the hall before he slumped against the wall. He was exhausted, he had thought he had used the last of his power to summon the cat for Slenderman, but then instinct and desperation had made him call on more and now he felt empty.
"Are you alright?" Masky asked as Nico breathed deeply straightening his back against the flat wood of the wall.
"I've used more power today than I knew I had." Nico said softly frowning. "I'm sure in the long run it will help me have access to more, but right now I feel empty, I don't know if I've ever felt quite this bad before." Nico knew he hadn't but very little of that actually had to do with his power being gone, so he didn't mention it.
"Oh." Masky said shifting awkwardly, neither he or Hoody had any powers at all that Nico knew of, so he supposed they wouldn't understand, it didn't matter.
"Where did Toby go?" Nico asked suddenly noticing the twitching boys absence, he had seemed pretty keen on following them around earlier why would he have left. Masky and Hoody both shifted awkwardly and exchanged a look through their masks.
"Well you know Toby's crazy... he has voices in his head, they're the ones who tell him to kill. Most of the time he gets along with them... they can sort of compromise, and Toby sort of functions in his level of insanity. but sometimes he kinda… goes sane I suppose? He starts trying to fight the voices in his head and get back to who he was before his sister died. He stops functioning for a bit while that happens for a bit until he gives up. and he and the voices go back to co-existing."
"That's what was happening when he was muttering at the wall earlier, so he's had to go back to his room till that's over. Sally's gone with him because if Toby was left alone when he's like this he'd probably bite his hands off."
It was Nico's turn to "oh" awkwardly, so Toby hadn't been exaggerating at all when he had said that he was insane. Nico could understand why he supposed, if what Masky had described was the alternative, insanity would be a much more enjoyable state. "Does that happen to anyone else here?" Nico asked wondering if it was a common occurrence, but Hoody shook his head.
"No, the rest of us are pretty stable in our levels of sanity." Masky expanded on Hoody's denial. "Hoody is pretty sane, by societies standards, most of the time and L.J. and Jeff are completely insane all the time, the rest of us fall somewhere in the middle." So that was why Hoody stuttered all the time, even as one of them it could be scary for a sane person to live with a bunch of insane murderers.
"So why do you stay?" Nico asked Hoody, too tired to think about if it was a rude question. As an answer Hoody quickly grabbed hold of Masky's arm, tightly as if he expected someone to try and separate them. Nico nodded, that was a pretty clear answer, Hoody and Masky were best friends, inseparable even, and as the more bold of the two Masky chose where they went, Hoody just followed. "Fair enough." Nico said blandly, Hoody relaxed a little and let go of Masky's arm, slipping his own through the crack of Masky's instead so their arms were linked.
Nico looked away, their easy affection was hard to watch. He and his sister used to share affection like that, but that had stopped even before her death when she had joined the hunters of Artemis. Nico took another deep breath biting the inside of his lip, now was not the time to think about that, now was not the time to cry. Nico pushed himself away from that wall, pushing down his exhaustion and emotion in the same action.
"Is there anyone else I should meet?" He asked wanting a distraction "Someone I won't need to use my powers to impress? I won't be able to use them again until I've slept."
"No, if you can't defend yourself properly right now it would be better if you met Jeff at dinner, where there's a 'no fighting rule" Nico wasn't sure if he was relieved or not. He wanted a distraction but he also didn't feel up to meeting anyone else. He wondered how social he would be expected to be at the meal, most of the creepypastas didn't seem like very social creatures but people were sometimes very different in groups than on their own.
"How long till dinner then?" Nico asked.
"We don't know." Masky said shrugging. "Actually Slenderman is probably cooking tonight since we're showing you around, E.J.'s not allowed to cook for the group and Jeff's grounded. We should go help?" Masky glanced Hoody. Hoody nodded. "Do you want to come help Nico, or do you want to go back to your room? It won't be long before dinner but you might be able to have a short rest." A rest sounded good but Nico knew from experience he wouldn't actually manage it, he couldn't sleep until he was about to pass out now, and he didn't want to be alone.
"I'll help." Nico decided trying not to look to tired, though he knew he had bags under his eyes and probably looked like death.
"A-are you s-sure?" Hoody asked cautiously.
"Yes I'm sure." Nico said. Hoody nodded and started to lead the way, Masky and Nico followed.
The kitchen was at the back of the house and looked newer than the rest of the house though that didn't mean much. All it meant was that the stove seemed to run on electricity rather than wood, and it had a fridge, though both looked like they were probably some of the first models ever produced. The kitchen was clean though and large with a rack of pots and pans hanging in the middle of the room above a stationary island with a few old metal stools around it.
Standing by the stove, looking very out of place, was Slenderman. He had to bend slightly to fit in the room even though the ceiling was quite high, Nico was sure Slenderman would have had to teleport in because he wouldn't have fit through the door. There were two very large pots on the stove and the room smelled like tomato sauce, chasing the smell of E.J.'s office out of Nico's nose. Slenderman turned towards them, Nico blinked in surprise to see that he was wearing an apron with a checkered pattern on it, of course Slender wouldn't want to get his suit dirty.
"Hello sir, is there anything we can do to help?" Masky asked politely unthreading his arm from Hoodies and clasping his hands behind his back.
"I think not children." Slenderman said waving a wooden spoon he was holding at them before returning to stirring the sauce. "The pasta is almost finished, though I suppose you could set the table if you wish."
"Alright." Masky said going over to a cupboard and taking outfour plates which he handed to Nico, before taking five himself. "Will you get cutlery Hoody?" Masky asked, Hoody nodded already halfway to a drawer in the island which he opened and started pulling knives and forks out of. "Do you use a spoon to eat pasta Nico? E.J. and Hoody do."
"No." Nico said confused, no one in his family had ever used spoons when eating pasta. Wouldn't the noodles just fall off the spoon? That didn't seem very effective. He shrugged it off and followed Masky out of the kitchen through a different door than they had come in, and into a large dining room. It was richly furnished with a long wooden table and cushioned straight backed chairs that must have been quite hard to keep clean, they were setting nine places today but it looked like the table could have sat twice that.
He noticed that Masky and Hoody didn't set the place at the head of the table, only the sides, Nico didn't understand why but he followed their example and left it bare. Just as they finished Slenderman walked in carrying four bowls, two of pasta carried in his hands, and two of sauce carried carefully in his tentacles. He put them down delicately at either end of the set places so that all at the meal could be served faster.
"Alright, dinner is ready." Slenderman said and this time it echoed in Nico's head in a way that made him sure the call reached beyond him and to everyone else in the house. Hoody and Masky sat down leaving a space between them for Nico, which he took gratefully knowing that they would much rather sit next to each other and were doing this for his comfort. Nico's suspicions about the call were confirmed when people began to trickle into the room, E.J. came first then Sally.
"I've wrapped Toby's hands so he can't bite them or claw himself, but he won't be down for dinner." Sally announced skipping over to the table, pouting at Hoody for having the seat next to Nico, and then climbing up on the chair next to Hoody. BEN came in next grumbling something about an interrupted game, L.J. came in with Smiling Dog on his heals who slipped under the table quickly to wait for any dropped food scraps.
There were two empty spots now, not counting the unset place at the head of the table, one of them must have been for Toby who wasn't coming, and the other must be for Jeff. Jeff wondered in a few minutes after L.J. and after Slenderman had taken his place at the head of the table. Of course he couldn't eat since he didn't have a mouth so why would he need a plate? Everyone else had started serving themselves. Nico couldn't help but be taken aback by Jeff's appearance, the black rimmed eyes, burnt white skin, black hair and scarred red smile were quite a disconcerting combination.
Jeff scowled around the room and stormed over to a seat across from Nico, one down between L.J. and BEN. He didn't notice Nico at first, staring down at his plate angrily, and then getting himself a serving of pasta. Nico shrugged, Jeff would notice when he noticed. Nico had only just realized how much of the emptiness he had been feeling was hunger so he wanted to focus on his dinner as well. It was really good, it almost could have passed for Italian, though not quite, Nico couldn't help but wonder where a creature who couldn't eat had learned to cook but not enough to ask.
"Who are you?" Nico sighed, so Jeff had noticed he was there. Nico looked up at Jeff who was staring with wide unblinking eyes.
"My name is Nico." Nico said politely. "It's nice to meet you, Jeff."
"Huh" Jeff said fairly unconcerned. "And what are you doing here?"
"Well I'm a Demi-god, son of a mortal and Hades the Greek god of death and the underworld. Slenderman wants to know more about how the power I got from my father works. And I don't have anywhere else I'd rather go." Nico explained easily. Jeff raised an eyebrow skeptically.
"It is true Jeffry, he has showed me a sample of his power, it is not much now but I believe with some nurturing it shall become great. Besides I believe he will fit in well here." Slenderman's comment was directed at Jeff but everyone else could hear as well. "At the moment he is quite tired though Jeffry so I would thank you to leave any fights you wish to start until tomorrow." Jeff scowled and looked down, obviously not willing to disobey Slenderman, but not happy about it. Nico sighed, so tomorrow there would be more fighting, fantastic.