August 13, 427 DF (Tuesday Evening)

Post date: Nov 9, 2014 6:39:01 AM

This, our tumultuousness Tuesday, will go down as one of the longest Tuesdays of my life, of that I am sure.

I do not begrudge the members of our gang who have chosen to set out on their own to set up a second encampment. I am in some measure proud that we of the "red bandanna brigade" will, in some ways, provide them some measure of safety. They have left with a larger bounty than we've ever had, and with that they should be able to establish themselves nicely. If things go well for us we will meet up with them again, and perhaps we can together escape these rags and find some measure of lasting comfort and gainful existence.

If things go well for us.

It is a big IF right now.

It was Aria who surprised us by suggesting we go after the dickwad Hounds right away with bold action to get them to think twice before continuing their attacks on us. I turned it over in my mind. It could be risky – the hounds were always a larger and more proper gang than we are, not to mention their hounds – but I have seen such shows of force work before. I didn't want to be foolish about it, though. If the dickwads were all at home we'd be overwhelmed, but if not, a surgical strike could be just perfect.

All of us who remained went. I had some qualms about bringing Sedora to this, but leaving her behind alone was a far worse option, and it'd be best for her to learn how to handle herself inside of a planned attack, with me at her side guiding her along. And it was a good plan. With Bardeen scouting their base of operations, we would have a headcount and recon and we could choose if and how to engage, catching them by surprise and giving ourselves an advantage, perhaps even taking their dogs out of the picture before things got in too deep.

Bardeen fully cocked it up. I don't know what his idea of recon was, but before we knew it he was running back towards us, shouts and dickwads following. I unsheathed my blades and leapt forward into the fray. Dogs, dickwads, and a brute of a man... they were becoming too much to handle. Careful teaching and controlled situations were out of the question now, and discretion had to be thrown to the wind. I called out to Sedora to join me.

Her gift is impressive. I realize now I'd really only caught a glimpse of it that night a few months ago. She is a brave girl, she did not flinch, did not hesitate. Without her aid we would have been sunk. As it was I got knocked down, and only came to after the last of our foes were put down. And put down they were. It was a good chunk of the Hounds, I think enough to send our message. It was a moment of triumph.

A brief moment.

From the rooftops above a Ghost Faced Killer dropped into our midst. And it really was a drop, enough to knock it out and break its mask. I seized the opportunity to take them out before they could awake – there is a reason their members are deathly feared, and I wasn't going to give them an opportunity to demonstrate why with us as their subject.

What ensued was not what I would have expected. I think now that, in my surprise at Aria's suggestion earlier and being so busy projecting forward what might be that I missed the signs. I've seen it before, when too much happens and too much changes and too much of one's world gets upended in too short a time. People go crazy. And for Aria today was probably much more than she's ever been through. She tried to stop me from taking out the Ghost Faced Killer, struck me, even. Maybe she didn't fully understand how much of a danger they are, how much more skilled and nasty they are compared to even some of the arena fighters. She wanted to talk to them, as though they would speak to us nobodies... I'm not even sure any of them ever speak from beneath those masks of death. Whatever her motivations, Aria cursed me out and besmirched my character in ways that made me wonder if we'd really spent all these years together. I won't lie, it hurts when coming from someone you've given yourself to protect.

The immediate situation though was much more pressing. We'd made a very big spectacle, and there was no denying what was going to happen soon. When we beat our hasty retreat we left Aria behind in the cage where she'd joined the killer, whom by some miracle did not kill her when they woke, and rather simply pantomimed and drew things in the ground, perhaps to taunt us. We just narrowly escaped the city watch. But our escape may have been a tenuous one. Min Han and I later saw both a Mage Hunter and a Knight of Ayl on the scene when we went to check it, and the stockade, out. And I thought tangling with a Killer would be bad enough.

I can only hope that if Ayl is indeed blessing Aria and her actions, Ayl will guide his followers off our trail.

Aria. We don't know where she is. Tomorrow we will regroup and see what we can find out. And see what an upturned Tuesday brings to the Wednesday of the slums. Tonight I saw another Killer on the rooftops run away in terror, pursued by an acrobatic long-coated figure. Who has ever seen a Killer run?

Truly nothing is the same anymore.