There's been a bit of trouble.  I'm okay and Raggedy's okay but I'm getting ready to leave now.  I've had to leave to protect both of us.

The other day we were out training.  Some running and some sparring.  I've really improved in my time here.  It was another hot day but it was cool enough that we managed to brave the heat.  Raggedy tossed me my water bottle during a break.  "You did pretty good today, Kenny."

I thanked him for the compliment.  I have gotten stronger, faster, and better at using Lily in combat situations.  I'm not near an expert yet or even near Raggedy's level (after all, I've never taken any sort of self-defense course), but I should be able to hold my own in a fight a bit better now.

Raggedy started going on about training plans for tomorrow but I sort of zoned him out.  I was tired and it was hot out and I just wanted a drink.  I sort of tuned it out to the point that it was background noise but when he stopped talking I looked up and saw that he was looking at me funny.  "What did you say?" I asked.

"I said, does it suddenly seem colder out to you?"  He was shaking slightly.  I noticed the temperature for the first time.  It was kind of cold out.  I stopped and looked down at the bottle in my hands.  The contents had gone from lukewarm water to ice.  I held the bottle up to show him and his eyes grew wide.  We exchanged a glance that said everything in one unspoken word:

"Run."

We took off, leaving everything other than my staff and Raggedy's training swords and headed for his car.  We got maybe a hundred yards before a wall of ice shot up in front of us.  We turned around to run and saw a young boy on the path behind us and stopped dead.  The kid looked about seven years old.  He was dressed in tattered clothes, but what really stood out was that he was almost unnaturally pale, with hair so light it was almost white.

"Cold Boy, right?" I asked quietly.

"Never seen him before, but that'd be my guess," he said.  He gripped his sword, a wooden foil, tighter and gave it an experimental swing.  "You know, Kenny, I've never wanted to hurt a kid, but I think I might make an exception for this fucker."

He charged at the Cold Boy and swung his sword.  The sword was about a foot away when the boy raised his hand.  Raggedy let out a yell as his body twisted and he toppled to the ground.  As the Cold Boy started giggling like someone had told a silly joke, I glanced over at Raggedy.  An icicle, already melting in the heat, was sticking out of his right shoulder.

He turned and looked right at me and gave me a giddy smile, speaking in a soft, high-pitched voice.  "One for sorrow.  Two for joy.  Three for a girl.  Four for a boy.  Five for silver.  Six for gold.  Seven for a secret, never to be told."  Then he turned back to Raggedy and held out a hand again.  Ice started appearing around his feet, slowly creeping up his legs.  I reacted more on instinct than anything else, rushing forward and swinging Lily as hard as I could.  There was a crack as the wood collided with the boy's face, and his feet left the ground.  The ice on Raggedy's legs and the wall in front of us instantly melted and as I helped Raggedy to his feet, I gave the Cold Boy a quick glance.  His face had shattered, like it was made of glass, but it was already starting to repair itself, water pouring out of the wound like blood and freezing to reform the face.

We ran.  We ran as hard as we could, made it to Raggedy's car, and drove as fast as we could.  But once we were driving, we saw the boy standing on the side of the road, smiling and waving goodbye.

"He's playing with us," Raggedy said.  "They love doing that."

"So did we escape or did he let us go?"

"I don't know.  It could be either one.  He could probably catch us again if he wanted to."

There was an awkward silence for a while.  "The Cold Boy, huh?" I finally said quietly.

"Yeah."

"That rhyme he said...do you know anything about it?"

He shook his head.  "We'll have to look it up.  Do some research on it."

I was quiet for a bit more, trying to figure out how to tell him what I wanted to.  "Chris, I think I'll have to do the research alone.  I think I should leave tonight."

His head turned at breakneck speed to look at me.  "What?  You can't!  You're not done with training yet and you still haven't managed to do anything with the patches!"

I shook my head.  "He looked right at me when he said that rhyme.  I think I'm the reason he's here, and now your shoulder's hurt because of me.  It's not safe for either of us to stay here anymore."  I grinned.  "Besides, if I'm going to be a wanderer, I need to keep moving.  You're a great guy and everything Chris, but I'm not about to let you become my Kaoru."

So now I'm packing.  It was nice to have some company for a while, and I'm really going to miss that when I take off, but it's time for me to go.

I just wish there was some way I could pay him back for all that.

It's Time to Duel?

I've been training with Raggedyman some more.  It's going better.  I still don't have enough aggression to do well offensively, but my self-defense skills have improved.  Like he said over on his blog, I'm staying longer than we had planned because the heat's been terrible.  I'm used to heat as much as I am to cold by this point, but he refuses to let me leave.  I guess it makes sense as you can always bundle up a little more when it's cold, but heatstroke will kill you.

But what I'm here to talk about is this weird thing he can do.  He had mentioned something about experiments with Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and I decided to ask him about it.

He has a better explanation up on his blog but here are the basics the best I understood them: there are these things he calls dimensional patches that spring up whenever Fears like the Slender Man try to brute-force their way here from their original dimensions.  I think it might also result in dimensional bleeding or something along those lines but I'm not quite sure what the connection is.  But there's a lot of energy from the Fears' dimensions that leaks through in these patches, and apparently that energy can be channeled.  Raggedy told me that he could manifest the powers of the Yu-Gi-Oh! card there.  Make them come to life somehow.

I was skeptical of course.  Who wouldn't be?  But he showed me a few days later.  We went to an old cemetery surrounded by a bunch of trees where one of these patches was.  He pulled out a Yu-Gi-Oh! duel disk and I stayed skeptical right up to the point that he actually started summoning monsters with it.  He had me try after he went but it didn't work for me.  I guess I'm just not special like that but that's okay.  I'm doing fine just how I am.

Right after that we had to leave.  We could only stay about six minutes because the effects of the place started taking their toll on me.  I started feeling really shaky and my vision started swimming a bit and my nose started to bleed.  Raggedy says that it's normal for that to happen.  Apparently he can last for about nine now, even though he only used to be able to last about seven.  From what I've gathered it wasn't giving me memory problems though.  Raggedy apparently had memory problems.  I still feel like I let him down, though.

There was one thing I didn't tell Raggedy about though.  I probably should have mentioned it to him so that he didn't have to find out from the blog, but I wasn't sure if it was real or a hallucination.  I could have sworn that as we left, I saw someone in the branches of one of trees surrounding the cemetery.  They disappeared behind the trunk as soon as I saw them, but I was sure I saw someone up in the trees.

Training and Learning

Sorry for the radio silence everyone.

I'm still staying with Raggedyman for the moment.  If you haven't already seen, let me explain what I've been up to.  Raggedy's convinced that I need to learn how to fight, and he's been training me.  A lot of this stuff is pretty important I guess.  Stuff like pushups and situps and daily runs.  I've spent a lot of time walking but I'm not really in running shape. 

He's also trying to get me to learn some self-defense and basic fighting techniques, though.  That's something I'm not as enthusiastic about.  We sort of had a bit of an argument during one of the training sessions the other day.  He hit me harder than I had expected and then told me I was weak and I ended up losing my temper and attacking him.  I don't know, I guess I just really got frustrated over the whole thing.  I'm not a fighter.  I never have been.  I've just never needed to be, and I'm not really comfortable with violence.  I'm not entirely a pacifist but Lily was.  She was convinced that almost anything that could lead to violent conflict could be talked through.  I guess her thoughts have rubbed off on me some.  Even if I don't feel the same way, I'm still not comfortable with violence.

I talked to Raggedy about that and after some convincing he agreed to back off of that training some.  We shook hands and made up after that.  It's not like either of us can afford to hold a grudge.  Neither of us have many friends left in the world.

The training is part of the reason I've been so quiet.  The other is that I'm doing a lot of learning.  I missed a lot of things when I first stopped reading the blogs, and some recent events when my internet card died.  There's Dimensional Bleeding, the Path of Black Leaves, a lot of proxies to watch out for, and quite possibly the biggest of all, the Fears.  Apparently there are more things like the Slender Man, and until recently, I knew absolutely nothing about them.  I have a lot of research to do.  Raggedy's helping out with that some, too.

Most importantly, while I'm catching up on the past I need to know about the present.  Specifically who all is still around.  Anyone who's still running, anyone who's not a proxy, anyone who might be an ally of some sort...if you're out there, let me know.

A Temporary Shelter

I've been e-mailing back and forth with Chris, AKA Raggedyman for a while now.  He's offered me shelter in the past but hasn't been able to until now because of issues on his end.  Now though he has some free time and I'm able to visit him.

I've been hitching a ride towards Houston, which is his general location.  For both of our sakes I'm not going to get more specific.

Raggedy (or Chris, I'm still not sure what I should be calling him) is a pretty cool guy.  He's kind of tall and he has a bit more muscle than me (though not much) and he definitely has more combat skills but I still feel pretty comfortable around him.  He's not menacing.  Just another guy like me.  And he's really into anime and manga so we have a lot to talk about.  In fact, the first thing he did was grab my attention by calling me "Battosai."  It really made me smile after I realized that it was him but I really wish he had chosen a less dramatic way of introducing himself.  I was really close to starting to whack him with Lily.

"Not Battosai," I told him once I confirmed it was him and my heartbeat slowed back down a bit.  "Just Rurouni."

He grinned.  "Sorry for the scare but I couldn't resist."  He's got a really distinct and powerful voice, and between that and his flair for the dramatic, I think he was probably showing off some.  "It's good to see you made it here in one piece. I was worried that these sudden storms we got were gonna knock you for a loop."  He put his arm around my shoulders to guide me to his car, which was really weird and kind of uncomfortable for me.  It's been a long time since I've had any sort of physical contact with anyone who isn't trying to kill me, and I'm not really use to people touching me anyway.  "Welcome to Texas, the bipolar state. Where you can get heat, rain, and snow all in one week, and I am not exaggerating there. And you might get shot too.  So...how have you been holding up?"

We chatted about our lives and situations and shared some of our stories on the drive back to his apartment.  Nothing really important or anything, but it was nice being able to just casually talk with a normal person again.  And he is a normal person, or at least as normal as any of us can be.  Average height, average build, brown hair...the only real unusual thing about him visually is his eyes.  I've never seen someone with gray eyes before.  They look kind of different depending on the lighting too, which is really cool.  But he's got normal, geeky interests.

Raggedy's apartment is pretty empty, and all he has beyond the essentials are a computer and old TV with a PS3.  The few things he does have sitting around are all anime and JRPG figurines, but there aren't many of those, either..  He does have a lot of collectable card game things though--mostly Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.  "Oh, those?" he asked when he saw me looking at them.  "Yeah, I use them for some dimensional bleeding experiments."  I wasn't sure what he meant, since I never really picked up on what dimensional bleeding is, but he told me he'd show me if I stuck around for a few days. 

Whatever he's talking about, I'm hoping I can help him out to repay him some.  I feel really guilty staying with him.  He's letting me use his shower, his bed, his computer, and he's feeding me on top of that.  I think I was probably showering for an hour or more.  It's been so long since I've been able to wash up like that and feel so clean.  That's the biggest highlight of this so far.  Hotel showers are okay and everything, but the shampoo and soap just aren't of any good quality.  But with all he's done for me, I can't help but feel bad.  He's telling me that just the company is payment enough, but I'm getting his company too, and it's been so long since I've had company that I feel like I'm getting more out of that, too.

Of course, it'd be rude not to take advantage of Chris's hospitality.  So I think I'm going to take a nice long nap and see if I can help him out with that dimensional bleeding thing later on.

On the Move

I've gotten an invitation for some temporary shelter.  Won't say where yet in case They're following this blog but I'm headed in that direction.  ETA is about a week, but it depends on how many rides I can catch.

I haven't been this excited for months.

My internet card ran out.  Haven't been able to get online.  I don't know what's going on with anyone anymore.  So many proxies, so few runners.  I've got no friends left.

Don't worry about me.  My funds are running low and it's a lot harder to access the internet, but I've been okay.  Basically, I'm just back to how things used to be.  Sorry if I've worried anyone with my absence.

Today would have been her birthday

First of May.

For the past few years she'd give me a card for a little kid.  Someone exactly a decade younger than me.  And then she'd write a "1" in front of every number or a "teen" after it depending on whether it was written or a numeral.

I got a card for an 8-year-old the other day.  Did what she always did for me.  Had to buy it before coming here so that no one would see me.  I'm back home just for the day.  Just so I could visit her.  I left the card and some flowers by her grave.  Cried.  Sat there for an hour before I could tear myself away.  I have to keep moving.  This is the one place where I can't let anyone see me.  I have to lay low.

Happy 18th birthday, Lily.  I miss you.