August Intruder- Chapter 205- How's It Hanging? (Patreon)

Ariadne was panicking. She had been panicking for hours while they hid in the port, within a room that was supposed to house… sardines? Anji wasn’t sure.

What he was sure about, though, was that portals did not just appear out of nowhere and vanish people, then disappear.

He was also sure that he was not supposed to be a citizen of the United States being smuggled into Tatelat without the proper and necessary travel permission.

In obeying Naymond’s orders and then not doing anything to make the creepy man who called himself an Oath not kill him, he had officially made himself a criminal.

What was the punishment for smuggling oneself into Tatelat?

Five years imprisonment and a fine?

How much was the fine again?

Five thousand dollars for minors, if his memory served him right, which he was certain it was not.

While he contemplated his budding criminal record, Ariadne chewed her fingernails in panic.

“This was not supposed to happen like this,” she was muttering.

Her contact was not picking up her calls. Which was completely reasonable since the internet was awash with stories of portals appearing out of nowhere, in civilized areas too. People were dying, those that were not Gifted were turning into things that they should not turn into.

A boy had turned into a table… a fucking table. How did anyone who witnessed that come back from it.

Oh my God, he realized.

After this event—if there was an after—therapists would make so much money. Like truck loads. A lot of children would need a lot of therapy. He’d seen a portal appear and swallow a man and he was already shaking in his boots.

“I didn’t sign up for this.”

He hadn’t even realized that he’d said it until Ariadne gave him a scathing look.

“Do you think I did?” she spat. “Do you think I wanted Nay to throw me out of the house. It was all that bastard’s fault. Rich kids with rich parents thinking they can do whatever they want and get away with it. Somebody has to show them.” She went back to biting her fingernails. “Somebody has to show all of them.”

Anji said nothing to that. Instead, he focused on a worry different from Ariadne’s growing insanity: Naymond.

Mr. Hitchcock was no longer responding to his messages, and he had left eighteen since this afternoon. He was not proud of it but times like this called for unhealthy amounts of panicking. And Anji had panicked into his chat with Naymond.

This was not what he had in mind for his life. But he was already in too deep. If he had been with just Ariadne, he would’ve been able to escape. Ariadne couldn’t do shit to him even if she tried. But there was the Oath guy. He looked like someone who could do shit to anyone he wanted to. And why not? He killed people with a touch of his hand, turning them to husks.

The very thought still sent shivers down Anji’s spine. He had to see things through.

And while now was his chance to escape, he just had to be trapped in a room on a boat with the world going to shit outside.

He checked the time on his phone. It was almost five in the morning. The Oath guy had been gone since around eleven or ten yesterday.

Maybe he wasn’t coming back. There were too many absurdities that Anji felt that would be a safe line of thought. The man scared him shitless and he would be the first to jubilate if he could just confirm that the man was dead.

He needed him to be dead. It would help him live with a smile on his face.

“Ariadne,” he said very carefully.

She raised her head to look at him.

“Do you…” he hesitated. He didn’t know why. “Do you think he’s dead?”

Her look did not stop being scathing. “Dead or alive, I’m paying that bastard back for what he did to me. Then I’m fucking Naymond up.”

She returned her attention back to her fingernails.

Yep. It was official. She had lost her mind.

Maybe it was time for Anji to call it quits and—

Something fell to the side of the room and the both of them turned their eyes to it. They found the man who called himself an Oath standing there, right next to the wall where nothing had been a moment ago, covered in blood and guts wearing only his torn boxers.

Anji thanked God his genitals weren’t hanging loose.

The man waved them away. “I’m fine,” he said with a sleek smile. “Battered and bruised. But fine.” He looked at his hands, then ran it through his head, sleeking it back with blood. “In fact, I’m better than fine.”

Anji had never been more afraid of a smile than he was now.

Naymond had to do something or Melmarc Lockwood was screwed.

…

Tonight was not going well for Naymond at all. He was practically out of mana. Any other use would activate his mana fatigue. [World of Insight] was deactivated. He could not see or hear anything beyond what he was supposed to be able to see or hear.

It felt like being blind and deaf at the same time.

That was not counting the pain he was currently in, held up against the wall by a spike to his abdomen that reached out of his back to pin him to said wall.

Miori watched him. “I don’t understand.”

“I have that problem, too, sometimes.” Naymond coughed up blood. “But not all the time. It’s easier to understand if… if…”

Miori stepped closer. “If?”

Naymond blinked at her. “I’m sorry?”

“Ah,” she mused, stepping away. She looked at his abdomen. “The blood loss is getting to you. You’ve begun to ramble.”

“Rambling’s kind of my thing.”

She stroked her jaw. “Is it now?”

It was a bit disheartening to know that everything he’d done had been in vain. The grenades, the gunshots, the skills. Miori stood before him, in spite of it all, unharmed. It made Naymond feel a little pathetic.

He hadn’t expected to win against her. No. But he hadn’t expected his plans to fail so woefully. The pain was more from failed plans than actually defeat.

“You know,” he muttered, tasting so much blood in his mouth. It was too metallic. “I might actually have to cut down on my iron intake. It tastes like a smithy in my mouth.”

Miori sighed. Gently, she held the spike and pushed it a little deeper.

Naymond groaned, then growled, then screamed in pain. She moved the spike for a few more seconds before finally releasing it.

“FUCK!” he roared.

Miori said nothing to that. With the word out of his system, legs dangling, Naymond let his head hang for a moment. He needed to catch his breath, which was impossible with all the pain he was in.

“I think there… I think.” He gasped for air for a moment. The words were hard to bring out. “I think I might have internal bleeding.”

Miori looked at the bloody mess of a body that was Naymond and gave him a flat look. “Jokes will not help you here, Mr. Hitchcock.”

He showed her a bloody grin. “But they are.”

She slapped him.

He felt a tooth shift. Turning his head, he spat. Yep, it was definitely a tooth.

“My dentist is going to be so mad about that,” he gasped. “But I guess he’ll like the pay for replacements.”

Miori sighed. “Who sent you?”

“Yo…”

Her brows furrowed. “Yo?”

He smiled. He couldn’t help it. It was just too funny. “Yo mama.”

Miori frowned. “I do not enjoy these things often, but I will enjoy this one.”

She placed her palm on Naymond’s chest.

“Whoa, lady,” he muttered through the blood and pain. His vision was waning, darkness clawing at the edges. “You gotta take me to dinner first.”

Miori press. There was pain. Then there was a crack. Naymond’s eyes bulged open. The pain shot through him. He cried and roared and screamed and begged.

Miori cocked her head to the side and took her hand away. “Despite all your arrogance, you can beg? I am surprised.”

“Please.” The pain was too much. Naymond couldn’t see out of one eye properly. “Please. No more.”

“Then tell me who sent you?”

It was a difficult request to follow. Who sent him? Naymond didn’t want to give up the answer. But the pain, it was too much. He would die here, but all he could do was pick how he died.

Wasn’t that what anyone had? The choice of how to die.

He pulled his head up to look at her. Her face was a blur. His eye was almost swollen shut. This… this was pain. This was what it meant to be at the mercy of your enemy.

Sorry, he apologized, knowing what had to be done.

“Who?” Miori repeated, “sent you?”

His head too heavy, Naymond allowed it to loll back down. “It was the professor.”

“The professor?” Miori frowned, thoughtful. “Which professor?”

He met her gaze. “Professor X.”

“Professor X.” She turned away from him, thoughtful. “A man ruling a syndicate that guides you. I cannot say that I am surprised. He sounds like a man with an intelligent mind. A connected network.” She paused, stroked her chin in casual thought. “We will have to breakdown his network. We will need to figure out what it is called, find those like you, bring it all to the ground.” She turned back to him, concentration on her face. She had a purpose now. “What do you call yourselves?”

“The X-men.”

“Pretentious,” she scoffed. “Arrogant. But what should I have expected. She sent two men to ruin an organization as big as ours. His hubris will be his downfall. We will find him. I assume you are not yet willing to tell me where his hideout is.”

Naymond shook his head. “I am. Just… no more.”

“You poor thing.” She touched his bloody face and he did his best not to recoil from it. “We could’ve avoided all this pain. Where does he hide?”

“The X-mansion,” he answered. “Also called the,” he paused, looking past her. A smile touched his lips. “Also called,” he pushed through the pain, “the Xavier’s school for Gifted Youngstars. He raises mutants there. Trains them to defeat the great…” he shook his head very lightly. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember everything about the comic book. It’s a little blurry right now.”

Miori frowned. “Comic book? What is this?”

“You guys have marvel but no X-men.” He shook his head again. “Kind of incomplete if you ask me.”

He looked past her again, falling silent in confusion.

Miori scowled. “What the hell do you keep looking—”

She turned and her words died on her lips. Standing a few paces behind her was Madness. He was just staring forward. There was something that looked like a two headed leopard in his hand as large as a man was tall. His clothes were torn and tattered and he wore only one leg of his boots. He was covered in so much blood. One of his eyes was swollen shut. His hair was matted to his head in crimson. He had too many injuries on him, but the most obvious one was the fang the size of a man’s forearm that protruded from the right side of his chest. It had probably barely missed the heart.

Miori cocked her head. “You don’t look so good, runaway man.”

Naymond wondered what could’ve done such a thing to an Oath like Madness. He had never seen or heard of the man being half this wounded before.

What the hell had happened?

Madness walked forward. One of the heads of the leopard lolled to the side from a broken neck. The second head was quiet. He broke its neck with a flick of the wrist.

Miori chuckled. “You are in no position for a fight.”

Madness continued charging forward.

Miori’s demeanor changed. That casual confidence was gone. She took a combat stance. The air shimmered around her. A red hue leaked from the air. Her form looked horrendous, unnatural. It looked like something that was supposed to be dead, desiccated and without nourishment.

Naymond didn’t realize when he threw up.

Madness approached her. The weight of the red hue was too much, it was blinding Naymond’s one good eye. She increased in size. Her fingernails grew into claws, her skin seemed to harden.

“Die here,” she growled as Madness approached.

She charged forward and met Madness in combat.

Madness broke her next and she hit the ground. Naymond hadn’t even seen what happened. All he’d heard was the sound of a neck breaking.

In her demise, the red hue disappeared, leaving the air. Naymond just stared.

Madness looked down at Miori’s corpse and smiled. “The dead should not talk so much.”

Naymond blinked.

What the hell?

Madness cocked his head to the side, studied her. “Dissonant,” he muttered in something that sounded like intrigue.

Still, he didn’t move. Not to free Naymond, not away from the corpse.

He waited. A minute became ten. Ten became thirty.

Naymond remained hanging, surprised at how he was still alive. Was Madness waiting for him to die?

It didn’t look like it. He was just standing there, looking at Miori’s corpse, head cocked to the side in curiosity.

It was almost two hours in before anything happened.

Miori gasped, sucking in a sharp and deep breath. Her eyes opened wide in obvious pain. They widened further at what they saw.

Madness’ bare foot came down on her face, crushing her skull with his bare foot.

He cocked his head to the other side, then nodded to himself.

“Not dissonant,” he said.

With that done, he walked up to Naymond. He looked at him, studied him. Then he looked at the spike that ran him through the abdomen, then looked at the fang in his own chest.

He returned his attention to Naymond and spoke.

“How’s it hanging?”

Jokes, Naymond thought, unable to stop the laugh that slipped from his lips. He’s got jokes.

Madness left and came back with jokes.

Fuck my life.