13/13/13

“China Templars have successfully pacified the country sir!” Shouted one of the Seraphim excitedly.

Ptolemy sighed. Naturally, the totalitarian-run countries were the easiest. What was the difference from one tyrant to another?

This was the flaw in compartmentalizing the districts. True, it made it difficult, if not impossible, for the Templars to break down in civil war or cause another world war, but it basically meant that the districts could, more or less, treat the Mundane’s however they wished with no regulation or restraint.

“Well, that’s not strictly true... they weren’t allowed to do anything to jeopardize our oh-so-precious ’Masquerade(The ‘Bay of Pigs fiasco’(No, not the one with JFK- the other one, the one you don’t ever hear about.) being a rather infamous example. Sure, a bunch of people died, but hey, whatever keeps magic secret, right?)’”

Ptolemy sighed. What was wrong with him? It never used to bother him that the Templars had skewed priorities.

“Not since Romulena... and Simon.”

Ptolemy cleared his head as he once more approached Alax. “We tracked them to a dilapidated gym. My men are investigating it as we speak.”

“Are you sure about this?” Asked Red as she held up Tyrone like a shield in front of her.

RUMBLE!

“No, but we will be dead anyway if we stay here.” Pointed out a terrified Tyrone.

“Good point.” Whimpered Red. She then let out a mighty battle cry- or a battle squeak anyway- and charged into the bullets, using Tyrone as a meatshield.

Tyrone braced himself and closed his eyes, expecting to explode like an orange in a blender, but instead, all he felt... were people poking him all over?

He opens his eyes right as a gnat flew into one of them, irritating it. Tyrone quickly plucked it out.

He paused to look at what he has in his hand. It was no gnat, it was a bullet! A deformed bullet! A bullet had hit his eye- No; bullets were hitting his whole body! And they were bouncing off him harmlessly!

Tyrone was too stunned for words.

CRASH! OW!

Or he was, until Red’s adrenaline-fuled craze caused her to keep running right past the turret, and right into a wall.

“Sorry, Tyrone!” Shouted Red with a groan as she scooped herself off the floor.

“Actually, I’m fine.” Admitted Tyrone, surprised. He didn’t feel hurt at all!

Tyrone shook his head in amazed disbelief. “Bullets, smacks, full on running into a wall! Nothing hurts me!” He turns to Red “Do you... do you have some strange power that makes me invulnerable?”

Red just shook her head and pointed to the stairs, which were covered with more bloody instructions

IT’S NOT RED. IT’S YOU, YAH BOOB! BIG FAMILY SECRET AND ALL THAT!

LONG STORY SHORT: YOU AND YOUR FAMILY ARE INVULNERABLE!

Before either could fully digest the implications of this-

RUMBLE!

The building rumbling was, naturally, their que to run to the next floor below.

“Seriously? Those frack-heads were actually on to something?” Stated Ptolemy incredulously. The Seraphim nodded.

“It would seem so. The data and sociological manipulation techniques pioneered by the Middle east Templar coalition have allowed all the other districts to humanely and preemptively pacify all religious groups(After the fall of the Ottoman Templars the now numerous and liberated Middle east Templar districts joined forces to form the ‘Reformation project’: a study directed toward predicting, analyzing, and preventing religious fanaticalism and its consequences. They considered it the biggest threat to global stability, should the ‘Masquerade’ ever be broken. Now, this on its own wouldn’t have been so bad, if they didn’t begin masterminding every religious terrorist attack in the world, from that point on. This caused quite the outcry. But between the new compartmentalization laws, the reluctance to cause yet another Templar civil war, and the council’s skewed priorities when it came to ‘preserving the Masquerade’, they could do nothing.).” He admitted impressed

Ptolemy said nothing. What could you say, when one of the most reviled sects of one’s order had all their numerous atrocities vindicated?

Nothing. Nothing at all really, except go to give Alax his hourly report, and maybe see if he’d be up to splitting some whiskey…

On the floor below were two security doors, and a corpse. The two kids gaped at the rotting piece of a person before them, its body covered in maggots and flies.

After emptying their stomachs, they steeled themselves to read the bloody riddle the postmortem man had scrawled out in his final moments.

THAT BAG I GAVE YOU IS PERFECT FOR THIS!

GIVE THE DUST A TOSS! TOUCH ANYTHING THAT GLOWS!

FIGURE OUT THE CODE! GET THE STORY ‘FRAGMENTS’ IN THE RIGHT ORDER!

ONLY ONE DOOR IS SAFE!

“You understand any of this?” asked a baffled Tyrone. “Not in the least.” Admitted an equally baffled Red.

RUMBLE!

“OKAY! OKAY! WE’RE GOING!” Shouts an annoyed Tyrone as he unwraps the pouch from around his arm and throws the dust contained within around the room.

Of course. Thinks a resigned Tyrone as he sees that the only thing glowing is the corpse.

Red tries to just poke it with a nearby stick, but nothing happens. With nothing for it, they close their eyes, count to three, and touch it together.

FWOOM!

They look around, amazed as the glow from the corpse turns to shooting stars. Flying around the room at high speed, the stars each hit a different part of the room, and everywhere it hit, a ghostly figure appeared.

Needless to say, Tyrone and Red quickly retreated back up the stairs-

RUMBLE!

Which thwarted the buildings latest rumble to cause the stairs to collapse.

With nowhere else to run, they tried to cower behind some rubble. Tyrone takes the mirror shard out of the pouch and uses it to see behind the rubble. There, he sees three identical ghosts frozen in place.

Tyrone frowns, but slowly he and Red walk out to them. They try to touch one-

My first is dressed to impress-

Both kids jump back in fright. It was speaking! After a few minutes of repeating the phrase and walking about for a bit, the ghost returned to its original position and remained frozen. The two of them just stared in wonder-

RUMBLE!

The impatient and unstable building groaned. Without waiting for another prompt, they got to work.

First, they ‘activated’ the other two ghosts. Causing them to wander about and mutter similar phrases in the same creepy monotone voices-

My second is for the money-

My third instructed the maids to milk-

After some minor ‘experimentation’, Tyrone learned that by touching them in a certain way, numbers appeared from one through three.

’Get the story fragments in the right order. The RIGHT o-r-d-e-r. Thinks Tyrone as he paraphrases the instructions to himself.

Tyrone felt his heart pound as the building continued to shake while he closely re-examines the ghosts. It was like... it was like they were three separate clips of a man walking in a squiggly line. In other words, ‘fragments’ of a story!

Quickly, Tyrone numbered the ‘fragments’ from first to last-

ZAP!

The two had to shield their eyes as the fragments merged into one. The echo of a ‘man’ shambled from one side of the room to the next, and kept walking!

“What!? It never went that far before!” Shouted a confused Red. Tyrone watched with interest as the specter headed toward one of the security doors.

“Oh! I get it! By successfully aligning the ‘story’, we must’ve ‘unlocked’ a final fragment!” Stated Tyrone, remembering typical videogame ‘logic’.

“Hey! It choose a door! And it’s typing something into the keypad! Now’s our chance!” Shouts Red excitedly.

Sadly, this excitement didn’t last. While it WAS typing the code, it did so while covering the keypad with its hand.

The frustrated duo clawed through the hand in a attempt to, well, do ANYTHING really, but to no avail.

Red sighed in defeat as the specter opened a specter version of the door.

“Well at least we know which door-

SLASH!

GAH!

Red blinked, not sure what had just happend. One second, the specter was opening the door, the next, ‘something’ behind the door ripped it to pieces and threw the specter right where the corpse was.

“Oh, so that’s how that happened.” Thought both kids morbidly.

For a moment, neither spoke-

RUMBLE!

And with that, they were back on track! “Okay... Okay. Well, at least we know which is the right door NOW.” Tyrone tried to rationalize-

“How?” Interrupted a frantic Red. “How do we know it’s safe!? You realize we’re trusting the words of a nutcase that was writing in blood! Both doors could be death traps for all we know!” She shouts with ever increasing hysteria.

Tyrone sighs. “Red, it’s the only way out. If you have a better idea, I’m all ears.” He then goes back to figuring out the code.

Red fumes, but knows Tyrone is right. ”This is stupid! Stupid building! Stupid monocled weirdo! Stupid ghosts! Stupid corpse! Stupid doors! Stupid Riddles! Stupid gun turrret... Wait.”

Thought Red as she got an idea. She looks at her friend who’s busy pacing back and forth.

Okay, I’m pretty sure the ‘My third instructed the maids to milk-’ is a reference to the 12 days of Christmas, so the third digit must be 8! ...As for the second-

Suddenly, Tyrone found himself grabbed by the legs and hoisted into the air-

“Sorry!”

CRACK!

“Just trying to not DIE!”

SMASH!

“I’ll make it up to you later, I swear!”

CRASH!

Red panted in exhaustion, but looked in satisfaction at the hole she’d made in the ground, using her friends invulnerable body as a cudgel.

Tyrone, unhurt but nauseous. Regains his bearings and is about to angrily shout at Red-

RUMBLE!

“Be mad later! Survive now!” Screams Red as she carries him under her armpit and jumps down to the next floor.