Greg Vs Raid 9-16 (Patreon)

Chapter 15: The Hunted

Écho.Two soft syllables for something so… so… complexe.

A wave of sound and substance folding back through space, carrying its own aftertaste, and refusing anything like a clean death. An arrogance in that, unexpected for something that was just the relapse of a memory. Hearing an echo was an experience all on its own, but seeing one…

Now, that was more than beautiful.Cold metal pressed against his jeans, the shattered catwalk up above the abandoned factory floor was his chosen vantage of watching the echo in motion. Better than the one he was borrowing, at least; this provided a far cleaner view of the whole room.

The senses of the fool below were a mess, a smear of panicked light and sound that came from…

From…

Trickster, the name came to him as he nodded. Yes, Trickster. That’s what he called himself, the jester dressed as a stage magician. 

Heart drumming from a panic the fool had no reason to properly feel yet, Guillaume barely held back from rolling his eyes at the frantic thud-thud-thud he could almost feel in his own ribs, phantom rhythm bleeding through.

It was not the only bit of bleed, of course.

Trickster’s eyes, his second window to the world, darted wildly from side-to-side, face slick with terror-sweat. The world through them was too bright, over-saturated even, the crumbling concrete walls pulsing and breathing like living tissue in time with his own panicked chest.

“Where are they? Krouse, where are they?” The square-jawed heavy-shouldered cape shouted down at Trickster, voice raw and cracking as he rounded on his leader. “Is she even picking up the phone? We got fucking mobbed out there, man!”

Guillaume shook his head, tongue moving in a silent tut. Desperation made everyone ugly, whether the cause was desire or fear. It was the closest cousin to panic that way, a half-sibling to fear.

“Shut up, Luke! What do you fuckin think?” Through his own eyes, Guillaume watched Trickster grip his cellphone tight, knuckles white and rigid. The cape was a string pulled a hair too tight and already vibrating on the knife-edge of nausea. “Let me think! J-just shut up!”

The sound of the shout, high-pitched and shrill, hit the air and... rebounded. Shut up shut up shut up SHUT UP. 

His little sister’s acoustic trap was beautiful in its own way, sound bouncing off the damp concrete walls; amplified yet not audible. Not in the normal way, at least, not unless you were Master-resistant and listening for it.

Guillaume knew very well it was turning the man's own frustration back on him layer after layer, the air inside his head thick with its own noise.

Nicholas was already hard at work, Guillaume feeling the change in the room on his skin, temperature dropping a good three degrees with the sort of heaviness he imagined people felt with ghost stories told after dark. The edge of his brother's field was a prickle at the base of his skull even from here, high on his perch, a feeling that said prey.

Through Trickster’s eyes, the panic spiked, a full-body flinch as the man’s breath hitched with a failed attempt at a gasp. The amygdala hijack was its own classic, and it always worked the same way.

The lizard brain immediately screaming flee.

“Oh god. Oh god, what... Krouse, we have to go. We have to...”

“We have to what? What? Huh!?”“Don’t y-!”“Don’t what, Luke! We already fucking’ lost Noelle when Coil’s base went… fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.”“...nggghhh…” 

“What about Oliver?!”“Oliver will be fine, what about us?”

“I can’t see them!”

“I-I’m trying...” The blond girl, her black-and-red costume the most aesthetic of all her teammates, raised her hands. Both of them shook so hard, even the tiny pathetic spark she could muster in her palms guttered out barely a second after it came to life. 

Good job, Nicholas.

She was terrified of her own shadow, her own power, her little suns. It was literally child’s play for Valentina to take that fear, that tremor of "I can't," and reflect it right back at her, take that reflection again, and do the same, as many times as the field could hold. Panic feeding panic feeding I can't feeding more panic. “I CAN'T!”

Guillaume tapped out a near-silent beat on the railing, the noise from several voices below drowning out everything else. Ice-blue eyes trailed down across the railing to his siblings, the eager little bastards waiting for blood.

 Alright then, là. He was bored with the piggyback anyway.

The Master let the second set of senses fall to the back, the window into his mind free from the loud unrefined panic that was the man’s blunt instrument of a mind.

With a sigh, he stepped from the shadow of a rusted girder, his boots barely making any sound on the grated metal.

Below, on the cracked concrete floor, the Travelers still hadn't seen him; all too busy arguing about ‘where they were’ to bother even looking for the ‘they’ in question.

Too busy to even notice Romeo waiting in the shadows among them, a coiled spring waiting to burst into rage. 

“Messieurs.” His voice barely carried, but with an audience on edge, an interruption like his could not be ignored. “Mademoiselles.”

As he expected, all flinched as one. Trickster’s head snapped up, his vision blurring with the sudden movement and the film of fear. Guillaume gave it a little push. A subtle distortion, just for him. A 'nudge' to his optic nerve, making the catwalk seem to sway.

“You,” Trickster breathed, the word a wet gasp.

“Moi.” Guillaume allowed himself a small, patient smile as he let his gaze slide off their impressive leader and onto the rest of of the Travelers one by one; the young woman in the wheelchair, her face a mask of strained calm, the skinny girl with blonde hair, the angry man built like an American footballer, and the ugly one wearing a dog-mask frozen with fear — her mutts whimpering and shuddering on the ground, heads down and as immobile as their master.

“This is... impolite. To arrive unannounced,” Guillaume said, his tone one of mild, reasonable complaint. “We have been looking. For Jean-Paul.”

“We don’t kn-”

“No, no, not Alec,” Guillaume tutted again. “Not Regent. Jean. Paul.” He would not allow them the freedom of denial with honest falsehoods and neither would he allow his little brother the same.

Besides, Guillaume preferred his real name. His family name.

“We don’t know him!” Ballistic shouted loud, flinching again without realizing it as the echo came back, each one audible to listening ears. Know him know him KNOW HIM.

“S’il vous plaît,” Guillaume’s voice tightened, politeness thinning on his tongue at the unnecessary volume. “Do not lie. It’s…” The young Master flicked a hand, dismissing the thought. “It’s coarse. Now, my dear little brother has been with you for well over a month now. We saw him, your spectacle made the news, you know?. So,are you going to help us… or not?”

“H-he’s not here!” Tears streaming down her face, Sundancer was the first to break, the girl’s knees almost giving way from underneath her. “He’s not! He ran! When the... when the weirdness started... he just... he took off! He’s gone!”

Guillaume tilted his head, long black curly hair shifting over one shoulder as watched the girl with careful eyes. The tremor in her voice, the way her eyes darted not to her teammates, but to the exit.

Unfortunately, she was telling the truth.

“He... ran,” Guillaume repeated, words tasting like ash in his mouth as he held back from glaring at three of his siblings in the shadows, their little bouts of fun in this city as obvious as it was maddening. 

He ran. The disloyalty. The waste. All this effort. And all for nothing.

Ice blue eyes turned back to Trickster, an idea coming to mind. As much as he hated his sibling’s behavior at the best of times, their methods of stress relief were as effective as they were annoying.

“That is... a shame.” Guillaume’s voice was still a murmur, but the warmth was gone, leaving only the cold. “Ah, well, Florence was looking forward to this anyway.”

“Who the f-” Ballistic was the first to speak and the first to be silenced as Guillaume spoke the trigger. 

Florence’s power, and Florence’s choice; a simple, melodic phrase in French, soft as a lullaby. “Souviens-toi de la poupée.” Remember the doll.

The compulsion his dear little sister had planted weeks ago with a touch, a smile — a child lost in a mall — now unspooled in Ballistic’s brain. If they come for the boy... kill the one you hate the most.

"Luke?" Trickster said, his voice thick with as much of Nicholas's fear as his own as his teammate went silent and turned his way. "Luke, what are you..."

Guillaume touched Trickster’s senses again, not to ride, but to scramble. He blurred the man's vision to a watercolor smear, numbed his hands, filled his ears with a dull, rushing static.

Ballistic’s face was a mask as blank as it was hateful as he leveled his hand at Trickster, three ball bearings in his palm.

“LUKE, NO!” 

The scream from Sundancer was loud but the sound from Ballistic was deafening, the sound barrier breaking. 

Trickster went down, his body jerking as Guillame held his senses tight, distorting his proprioception, blurring the lines between his own body and the world, refusing him a single chance to use his powers to avoid this.

Ballistic fired again as Guillaume dropped from the catwalk, boots making a soft thud on the concrete.

From the far entrance, a small, furious roar. “MINE!” 

Oh, Romeo. His brother might have been small, but there was very little to ignore about him when his rage power flared. The eight year old screamed again as he launched himself, not at Ballistic, but at the dogs, strength surging and reddened veins bulging on his pale skin.

Bitch shook her head, the girl finally breaking from her panic as Romeo’s powers allowed the induced fear to catalyze. “JUDAS! A-ALEC! SIC 'EM!” The dogs were not immune to his brother’s aura either, both of them meeting Romeo’s charge as they grew with each step.

Sundancer screamed even louder but that didn’t stop her from hauling Genesis’s wheelchair, the girl dragging it backward towards the nearest exit. Guillaume ignored the noise as he walked through the chaos, the son of Heartbreaker drawing a thin stiletto from a scabbard at his hip, nine inches of the blade shining in front of his face.

In seconds, he reached Trickster, the Blaster bleeding from six holes in his chest as he stared up at Ballistic, the teammate in question crumbling in confusion and staring at his hands. 

"Wh-what did I do?” He stared at his hands, scrambling backwards as he shook like a child. “Oh god, Krouse... What did I..."

Trickster’s head lolled as his eyes, no longer borrowed, landed on Guillaume as the Master knelt beside him. His shadow fell over the fool’s face, no more smile anywhere to be found on his face. “Il n'a jamais appris.” He never learned.

The stiletto slid its way into Trickster's throat with little resistance, the carotid and spinal column severed in one motion before Guillaume pulled it out.

He did the leader the courtesy of looking him in the eyes as they dimmed.

A simple end. That was the only thought in his mind as he stood, eyes on Roman as his brother swung a dog through a wall before leaping onto the head of another. As always, the oddly quiet boy gave as good as he got. 

With the exception of Bitch, the remaining three travellers were already fleeing. 

Guillaume let them, the message already sent. Jean-Paul was gone. The hunt would have to... adapt.

Sighing, he touched his earpiece. “Florence. Il a couru.” He ran. “C'est fini, ici.” 

He turned to his other siblings as they stepped down from the catwalks above. “Nicholas. Roman. On s'en va.”