found it!

june said i could use this blog if I wanted, so i will here, because i have had an experience that i wish to share.  also, i do not have a phone.  not all of us live off tens of thousands of dollars in inheritance.  how many thousands in soda, june?

firstly, i have received an email from the entities known as Nemesis Counter.   how strange that dimension beings adapt so well to our messaging system.  perhaps they don't, actually, which is why their messages are so garbled.  mine simply read:

"identified

you are the catalyst's shadow"

somewhat obvious.  but i like it, somehow.  i do not mind being june's shadow.  his refusal to kill is one of the reasons i trust him so, but it also makes him soft.  i can cover this weakness for him.  i assure you, i am not soft.

but that message was shortly after the new year.  onto the main reason i made this post.

i have been hunting for some old comrades of mine, who were enslaved to Him along with me for years.  and together, we broke off our bonds, shortly before I began to contact june through this blog.

two were dead.  one has re-entered His service.  my friend laura was the last.  i did not hold out much hope that she would be safe.  but i was eventually able to track her down to a city in the south.  it was nighttime when i found her.  i didn't think that it might be a bit suspicious to approach someone at night.  its still hard for me to consider these things.  the sorts of things normal people just know.

it was at a dock.  she fearfully brandished a gun at me.  i wore my mask.  she suspected i had relapsed.  she did not understand that i wear it to shield myself.  i tried to explain myself.  she had become paranoid, and would not listen.  she told me to leave.  i told her i was looking for something of mine.  a cassette tape.  this is the true reason i looked for my friends.  i would not have risked two of us being in the same place without good reason.  this tape is important.  but i will clarify that, later.

she warily agreed that she would return it to me.  i put down all of my weapons and stood back with my hands behind my back.

that is when Obstruction held me to the ground.  i heard a gasp from laura.  so i was not betrayed.  not fully, at any rate.  clapping, Rhodes himself emerged from the darkness, flanked by jade.  the maniac girl was practically slavering at the chance to kill me.

"Very well done, Laura darling.  She's such a slippery fox to catch, and here you had her laid out before us like a present."

laura protested.  "You said she wouldn't be hurt!  You said you were going to protect me..."

"Oh my dear, I am protecting you.  Do you know what your friend has done to those like you?  Like herself?  Killed them.  Slit their throats, split them open, tortured information out of more than one.  She is violent and she is dangerous.  I am restraining her for her own sake, you see.  She will be much more at ease in the service of the Tall Man again, without all of these troublesome thoughts and without her new master."

"not a MASTER." i spat out.  "no one dictates my fate anymore.  not you.  not june.  not HIM."

"Now that's an interesting word.  'Fate'...What is fate?"  he seemed truly contemplative, now of all times.  "Was this all preordained?  Are we merely puppets dancing on the strings of the cosmos itself?  To wax eloquent, at any rate.  I have wondered this many a time myself, whether my actions are truly my own, or if myself and June are mere pieces on a chessboard.  Perhaps we are.  But I tell you, I have no interest in being a pawn."  he gave me his horrible, warm smile.  "It's why I like you two so much, you know?  You hate the idea of someone else moving your path just as much as I do.  You're like me."

i thrashed, violently, and was slammed harder into the ground for it.  this is why rhodes is so dangerous.  not because of any weapon he has.  because he knows what will dig at you, undermine your ability to think clearly and plan against him.  he is like june in one regard, perhaps: he too, understands people to an astonishing extent.  june uses that skill to help others.  rhodes uses it to tear them down.  and you wonder why i am on june's side.

"Now then." he held out a wad of bills to laura, who recoiled.  "For your trouble, miss, a bonus."

she shook her head, mumbled that there was no deal she'd made, that she had not sold me out for money.  rhodes would not give up.  "Come on, this makes no sense!  It's done!  Please take the money, Laura.  I promised it to you, and I am a man who keeps his word.  Don't make a liar of me."

she made a mistake.  "I don't NEED to!  You ARE a liar!"

his eyes...narrowed.  those green, shining eyes had found new prey.  "If there's one thing I cannot stand, it's a liar...and you dare to call me one?  After I compromised myself for your sake!  After I hid the true reason you agreed to my deal.."

laura choked back a sob and pointed the gun at him.  he was not deterred.  i could do nothing but watch, obstruction's hand over my mouth.  rhodes approached her slowly, arms out wide.  "There were the five of you, then...the five who broke free.  What a story!  Through friendship and force of will, you finally defied your dark master and returned to the world of the sane!  You were free.  Oh, what a wonderful word, free.  But...like every group of friends, there were...problems.  Things left unsaid.  Crawling, ugly thoughts hiding beneath your consciousness.  Old grudges, never resolved, criticisms held back in the name of friendship.  You were worse than usual, since let's face it, none of you were exactly stable members of society even after breaking free."

He stared down the barrel of the gun, the grin of a predator closing in on a meal.  "You didn't even provide anything substantial to the group, did you?  It was Brandon who thought of the idea.  Dylan gave you all the courage to go forth with it.  Sharleen comforted those who needed it...you most of all.  Rachel, ah, Rachel, your best friend, and one of the most deadly fighters you'd ever seen.  She kept you all safe and alive.  She fought on and on against anything that tried to hurt you.  You did NOTHING.  You were the load, the dead weight.  You saw your friends, how incredible they seemed to be...And in your heart, you envied them.  That envy, left to safely grow in the depths of your heart, began to morph into true, spiteful jealousy.  That was how you grew to despise your saviors..."

he gently pushed the gun down, and cupped a hand around her trembling, terrified face.  "Oh, you of such an ungrateful heart!  It is understandable that you would envy those more remarkable than you...And thus I don't blame these feelings you had.  No, I blame you for how you acted on them.  Mistrust.  You were the first to leave.  You broke the bonds of fellowship the five of you had, and perhaps made them grow to distrust each other, too?  No, no, don't look away.  You know I speak the truth."

she was frantically whispering "no."  as if he cared.  i did my best to escape, to no avail.  and rhodes continued, showing no mercy.

"Your sins did not end there...Oh no.  They only grew in scope.  Not only did you break your sacred bond, you proceeded to actively betray she who was your greatest friend, to whom you owned your freedom.  You came to ME.  You asked for my protection.  You did not trust her, when YOU were the one who broke trust in the first place.  And now you stand here, and committed your last, greatest sin to date.  You lied.  To me.  I know the truth, Laura, and I know your heart.  It is as black and rotten as a heart can be."  his words grew sharp, his sentences short and stinging.  "You are beyond pity.  Beyond mercy.  Merely a parasite.  You drain the life out of others to no benefit other than your own.  Your friends are dead.  Your last one is about to be.  And it is all.  Your.  Fault.  And in the end, you attempt to shove the blame on me.  I have only ever told you...the complete and total truth."

her tears were coming in droves, her body shaking like mad.  i worked as fast as i could, edging a knife towards me with my elbow without obstruction noticing.  he watched, passive as ever.  but i was too late.  what rhodes said must have been true, on some level.  it always is.  she had her secrets laid out in the open, in front of me.  the last person she wanted to know them.  she saw no other escape than the gun in her hand.  i could only watch as she shot herself in the head.  her body crumpled and fell, and there was silence.

only for a moment.  for rhodes' other side emerged, and he laughed, he laughed loudly and it rang out.  "Ahahahahaha!  Too easy!  Too fucking easy!  What a fucking dipshit teenager!"  hand pressed to his face, he laughed seemingly uncontrollably, hunching over.  "Sure, you ditched the group cause you were JEALOUS.  But it's not like that's the only thing that happened!  Try Dylan selling you all out!  Rachel abandoning you!  Hahahahaha!  Fucking drama queen kids practically do my work FOR ME.  You only got yourself to blame, idiot.  If you hadn't decided to be such a pissy little brat and dare accuse ME of LYING, I wouldn't've had to tell Rachel all your deep dark secrets.  In the end, I'm blameless...as always, hahahaha!"

i got my chance.  the knife found its way into my hand and i cut deeply into obstruction's leg.  he grunted with pain and released me, and i dove forward, rolled, and threw my knife, aiming directly for the center of his twisted skull.  he moved his head fast, not fast enough.  it cut deeply into his cheek. he yelled, but i gave him no chance to retaliate, catching his swinging hand by the wrist and twisting it, breaking his fragile bones.  in my fury, i beat him, and i do not regret it.  i took some joy from hearing his cries of pain.  but that fury blinded me to jade, who cut my arm before i could retreat.  a pained chuckle came from rhodes.

"See...?  We're not too different after all, Rachel...you love my pain, just like I love yours...Some things never change, DO they?"  standing upright, he stepped back, wincing.  "But you got the drop on me...and I think I'm more interested in letting you stew on your late friend's fate than killing you.  We're leaving.  You can have the tape, too, it's my gift to keep things interesting."

so he knew.  i am hardly surprised.  jade supported him and they retreated into the darkness.  obstruction limped afterwards.  i stood in his way, glaring into his eyes.  i was ready to kill him for holding me back, but...what i saw in there made me stay my hand.  he is nothing more than an empty shell.  still, i challenged him.  "you killed her every bit as she did.  as he did."  no response.  and he left.

i stood there for some time, holding my friend's hand.  i remember that is how you show that you care for a friend.  i remembered eventually how little point there was in doing that for the dead.  i took her gun, and the tape.  and i gently put her body into the bay.  laura loved the water.  i thought she'd be happy in there.

this tape.  it was our greatest weapon against Him.  it produced a sound that repelled Him.  brandon was a genius who spent years with the limited resources he had at hand, recording and rerecording different types of static from the television.  he theorized that the interference caused by videos of Him went both ways, and that His power could be disrupted with the application of technology.

and it did work.  perhaps the reason brandon relapsed and i neared relapse is that it only temporarily blocked out his terrible presence in our minds.  but it worked.  how many things can you list which work against Him?  i will give this to june.  he can make good use of it.

i do not know what to say about laura.  just...please do not judge her.  she was a good person.