OH CRAP I SLEPT THROUGH JUNE

Right, cause THAT reference isn't gonna be dated at all.

I understand that that things have been pretty quiet around here.  Well, okay, I won't lie, things have been more silent than an order of monks who've just heard the worst holocaust joke ever.  But it's not my fault.

...Okay, it is my fault.  Kind of.  The first month, anyways, was definitely just straight up, me not posting.  Nothing was happening.  The FBI dudes took me to a hospital and pulled all the broken bits of glass out of me (fucking ow, did I forget to mention?), then set us lose in the streets again.

Then...silence.  No proxies.  No Rhodes.  No Sinatra.  Nothing.  Oh dude those last four sentences all started with No.  ...erm, anyway.  The underworld of monsters, maniacs and the people who they target has been a quiet one these last few months.  Who knows why.  Slender himself is supposed to go dormant for long periods of time.  That could have something to do with it.  Regardless, I haven't seen the stick for a while, now.  Don't think for a second that we're in the clear, though.  He'd love that.

 Let's just pretend that this isn't a Chris Nolan movie and we can just fast forward to the bits where stuff actually happens.  Rae and I had managed to stay out of trouble, but...You know how it is.  Sometimes you get a chance to breathe, so be sure to enjoy it, cause it won't last.

A bridge.  A big city.  A river underneath.  I grew up going in and out of Boston, and it was weird to be back.  One thing's never going to change, though, and that's that it will always be too hot or too cold.  I don't get how ANYBODY lives there.

(Incidentally, if you're going to start that "Cambridge or Boston" bullshit, explain to me how a few yards of water makes one city two)

The Charles has always been a bit of an unimpressive sort of river.  Sure it's pretty and all but it's tiny and I certainly wouldn't want to swallow any of it, considering that MIT on it.  Those undergrads probably release mutagens for lab reports.  Still, it's something quite familiar from my childhood, and damn if it didn't feel good to see it.

It was a cloudy day.  Rumbling lightning.  And there we were, on my bike, headed across the bridge into THE OTHER PART OF BOSTON THAT IS NAMED CAMBRIDGE.  And who should be standing in our way but the psycho squad themselves.

Nonplussed, I accelerated.  I've always thought tire tracks would vastly improve Rhodes' suit.  I certainly hoped he didn't expect me to stop for him.  What's his problem, anyway?  He just shows up and tries to kill us.  Doesn't he have an evil scheme to be attending to?

Rhodeskill was sadly not to be.  One moment we were charging forward, the next, we just...stopped.  I felt my bike crumple, just, fall apart, like it'd been held together with masking tape.  And something hit me in the face, hard.  Something invisible.  some sort of wall.

Dazed, I picked myself off the ground and looked up at his grinning face.  "Red light!  ...Get it?"

"...Hilarious."

I tried cutting his chest, but he slammed a foot on my arm.  I saw Rae and Jade clashing to my side, Obstruction and Shift apparently just watching.

"Does it feel nostalgic to be back here?  This was where you first met one of us.  Poor Ray.  Not a very bright lad, but he was loyal."

I'd forgotten about him, to be honest.  It didn't make me very happy to remember, and he saw that, laughing.  "The first person you couldn't help.  The list went on after that, didn't it?"

Jade fell back, with a cut arm.  Rhodes frowned and snapped his fingers.  Obstruction jumped to, slamming Rae against the railing before restraining her.  The snake stepped down harder, maybe trying to get a gasp of pain out of me.  I wasn't giving him it.

"You know, June, this is getting old.  All this dancing about, me showing up, you escaping because of some ridiculous coincidence..."

"Okay, cool, leave us alone, then."

He spread his arms wide like the ham he is.  "Don't you GET it?  You're not DOING anything!  You can wander around and try to help anybody you run into, but you're fighting the fires, not the pyromaniac.  Treating the symptoms, not the disease.  What you never understood, and what makes me the one who'll win our little game, is that you can't always sit back and wait for your chance.  The wise make their own luck, and CREATE the chance.  Just countering His influence won't do anything.  Ineffectual and pathetic.  He probably doesn't even notice."

Here he sighed, and looked at me with mock sympathy.  "Aah, but I understand.  The balance of power is not in your favor.  I have eyes and ears everywhere, cats paws whenever I need them, and you...have a catatonic maniac, an overhyped piece of metal, and a bike.  Oops.  HAD a bike."

I gritted my teeth.  Somehow, he had a way of finding what I was brooding on and rubbing it in my face.

"The fact is, there IS no way for you to stop Him.  Redlight is back and, in my personal opinion, better than ever.  That man won't be roused by your taunts, nor shocked just cause you did something so fucking stupid he never saw it coming.  He's relentless, and this is ALL he has.  So, you two have a bit in common.  But two equal powers cancel out.  You'll never get past him even if you ARE his equal, which I doubt."  He shifted a bit, looking up into the sky.  The grin was gone, and a musing look appeared on his face.  "And he's nothing to the Big Man.  Trust me on that.  No, you've been doing nothing because there's nothing for you to do.  I honestly think it's sad."

And back down at me.  "Don't you?"

I replied, "TASER RELATED PUN!" and jabbed him in the leg, sending however the fuck many volts through his body.  Idiot.  Did he forget I had a hand free or something?  Rhodes just loves his fucking hannibal lectures.

That made him stumble back, hissing in pain.  I got to my feet and flicked open a knife...But things never stay simple with me.  It's like Rhodes and I are double weirdness magnets, all the way across the sky, and when we clash there's bound to be something else freaky that comes along.

A pale mist fell over the area.  There was a flash.  The proxies were on the ground, grabbing their heads and screaming in pain- except Rhodes, who was on his knees, hat rolling away across the road, a vicious and desperate look in his eyes, and a grim snarl on his face.

Rae was motionless, reaching for a mask that wasn't there.

And I heard things.  A crackling fire.  My dad, telling me we'd do something about this, and failing to tell me just what.  A child's laugh, a gunshot, a collapsing building...

I turned around.  He was there.  Motionless, silent, stiff.  Just ten feet away.  The air stopped, the world almost seemed to vanish around him.  There were leaves on the ground- where did they come from? - black leaves.

And then a fell wind began to blow.  Smelled like trees...and bodies.  Rotting flesh.  And he took a step forward.  Just one.  Behind me, the screams became uncontrolled howls, somebody was hitting their head against the railing, and I just stood there.  My head was...empty.  I thought how weird it was that after all the effort, he just needed to show up once, decide he'd had enough, and that'd be it.

His arms spread.  Were they arms?  Too long.  More than two.  And they came forward.  For me.

I heard Mom.  And Dad.  and Vivian.

It was like waking up from a nightmare.  I snapped to.  Nothing was different - screams, smells, memories - but I didn't feel like a zombie anymore.  I was scared...terrified.  But I didn't care.

There's a world between being afraid and surrendering to your fear.  Did I ever mention I'm bad at giving up?

I started forward.  He stopped.  Just, stiff, still, like he usually is.  For a second, then the arms started lashing out.  I ducked one, sidestepped another, and ran right forward.  They wrapped around my arm, my leg, my stomach, and those parts started to go numb, dead- I still didn't care.  I hit one of the arms with the taser- and it felt like the air around me was static.  Something...WEIRD happened when the electricity connected with him.  A loud ringing noise almost deafened me, and he seemed almost as confused as I was.

And it gave me my chance.  One step, two, three, a leap forward, and I screamed with every bit of defiance and will to live I had in me, as I punched him right in his stupid blank face.

All I know next is that I went over the rail.  Down towards the water.  but the arms were still around me.  He was coming too.  I vaguely wondered if he couldn't swim.

Then I sat up on a mattress in a dimly lit room.  I was in my perfectly dry clothes.  My stuff was strewn about what seemed like a rundown ground floor flat.  More than a little lost, I opened my computer.

The clock said August 1st.

Lost time.  I've never lost that much time all at once.  I don't understand what happened- where I went, what I was doing.  All I know is that I've been gone for a month and a half.  Rae's missing, and no activity from Team Rhodes.  All there was was the previous post on this blog.

Another weird thing - who brought me to that flat?  I talked to the man at the front desk, and he seemed surprised to see me.  Said the room had been payed for, but that he was drawing a blank on who gave him the money.  He didn't think it was me, though.

Mysteries.  More fucking mysteries.  I've had it up to here with em.  For now?  Just gonna try to find Rae again.

I'm back, people.  Let's roll.