Dinner

As you could tell from Fell’s post, Roy is indeed here. As Roy mentioned in his post, once we arrived she marched up to him and told him in no uncertain terms what his fate would be should any harm come to me then she stormed off into the cabin. I apologized to Roy for the rude introduction. "Welcome home dear" I said with a sigh and a laugh as we followed Fell inside. Hart was sitting on the couch but stood up to shake Roy's hand when he came in. 

Fell had apparently sealed herself in our room, so I told Roy to make himself at home and if he needed anything to ask Hart, while I went to have a talk with Fell. She was not happy with the arrangement to say the least, and she told me so when I joined her in our room. I reminded her that this was the best chance we had to come out of this alive and so she grudgingly agreed to do as I asked and to try to be civil for the rest of his stay.

Aside from her venting on the blog, she has kept her word, though she has been glaring at Roy and sharpening her weapons ever since. Hart, on the other hand, seems fairly happy with Roy’s presence. Despite the impending threat, I think he is finding relief in having a “normal” person to talk to for a while.  

Considering that we were faced with such a danger, myself and Roy did the only logical thing we could this evening. We went out for a friendly dinner together. It took a great deal of convincing and promises for Fell to let us go without a fuss. I could see that aside from concern for me, jealousy was starting to brew within her so I wrapped my arms around her; kissed her and promised her that it was simply a meal between friends, that we would be coming back right after and that if Roy did in fact try anything stupid, I would immediately bamf back home. Only then did she relent

We went to a cozy little pub that I like called The Guv’nor and settled into one of the soft comfortable booths. Since they had them in stock, I took the opportunity to order some cod tongues and fries, while Roy decided upon the Yorkshire pudding stuffed with beef, gravy and onions along with some mashed potatoes.

We sat in silence for a while, waiting for our food to arrive, unsure of what to say, until Roy started asking me about the cod tongues. I described how the tongues were fried and how the insides were mostly jelly that surrounded the actual meat of the tongue. Roy looked horrified at the thought. 

“Surely you’ve dealt with worse than that by now,” I laughed  

“Yeah, but I’m not going to be eating any of those things either” he said with a shudder. 

I smiled, but a thought crept into my mind that took it from me again.

“Speaking of nasty things…” I lowered my voice “Roy, you’ve said you can’t hurt one who is precious to you. You were willing to run into a trap just to save Sagari. This tells me that she was at least of some importance to you… Will you truly be able to hurt her? Kill her if it comes down to it?”  

He looked down at his hands, observing the bandages. "Maybe she was once someone precious to me and there was time when I would have rushed into an obvious trap just to save her. Not anymore.....she's not who I thought she was. After what she did to me I just....." He paused for a moment "The Sagari I knew never existed. When the time comes I'll be ready."

I nodded in understanding

“And let’s say that we fight Sagari and win… what will you do after?

Are you going to be okay if you return to being a runner with no extra protection?”

"I'll make do. I always did even before Sagari began to help me. I'm perfectly capable of surviving without her help."

“Good. That’s what I wanted to hear”

We fell silent as the waiter returned with our food.

“Anyway, enough of the hard stuff… I didn’t bring you out here to depress you. How about something to lighten the mood? How do you like life in my little pocket dimension?”

"You mean other than the threat of Fell killing me in my sleep or Slendy suddenly appearing and putting a tentacle through my skull?"

I laughed at this. “That’s understandable. I don’t think you have to worry about Fell though. Not while I’m alive and well anyway… My boss on the other hand…” 

I thought for a moment

“I figure that if he was going to kill you while you were staying with me, then he would have done so already. He must know that you’re here, yet his song carries no new commands or threats. I can only assume that his attention is being diverted elsewhere or that he sees the advantages of our plan.”

I felt like I was failing to keep the conversation light, so after a few moments I tried again.

“So I know you enjoy creepypasta, why don’t you tell me about your favorites… Or tell me something else… anything about you that I don’t know” I said playfully

"My favorite creepypasta? Well until recently it had been Jeff the Killer. But I read a truly chilling story a couple of weeks back. You wouldn't of happened to have heard Funnymouth have you?" He seemed to cringe at just the thought of it.

“I see your handsome face. Don’t be so sad about it!” I said, then gave him a bug eyed stare in my best impression of the O)_(O  emoticon used in the story.

I couldn’t contain my laughter when Roy shrank back at this. Regaining his composure he gave out a chuckle and continued.

"hmmmm....What else can I tell you about myself." He seemed to ponder it for a moment. "There's not much about me that I haven't already posted on the blog. Well, I guess I could tell you about my college days. I had been in my first year at Michigan State when all this began. But before that me and...." he paused, his smile faltering, if only slightly "Me and Nick were kicked out of various colleges because of my tendency to collect sharp and pointy things like my lovely daggers." His smile faltered even more. "Izzy and Nick always thought of my obsession with weapons as unhealthy." His face lit back up as he told me more about his college days. After he had finished his stories he seemed much happier than before. He looked up at me. "Okay Wolf your turn. What can you tell me about yourself?" 

I thought for a while. “There’s not much else to tell other than what’s on my blog too… Heh… I put so much of myself on that damn thing because I was afraid that Ritter would take my mind and I foolishly held out hope that little record of myself would help me to put the pieces back. I was so naïve back then… But… I suppose I could tell you about my old job. Haha yes, that’s it…. You’re going to laugh when you hear it. Do you know what I used to do before Ritter demanded my full attention? I had a contract for a fucking non-profit, doing my best to help people!”

I laughed

“I enjoyed that job. Despite the efforts of those who hurt me, despite the bad things I did up until my revenge, I still had that drive to help people. I actually went to university for a while myself in the hopes of becoming a teacher… but I broke down and then Ritter was there… You know, it’s so funny when I think about it; working for Ritter has put me in a teaching role, in the sense that I have had to train Fell and Hart, I have been able to help some people, and I have become something of a soldier- you’ll recall that I mentioned there was a time when I briefly thought about going into the military. He has given me everything I wanted, yet now I teach people to prepare their bodies, not their minds, I hurt many more than I help and my attempts to help usually end badly, and I have been given an addiction to the hunt.”

 I smiled, then continued

“You know what though? If I had my time back, I’d do it all again!” 

Our conversation continued in that lighter vein as we ate. We took the opportunity to get to know each other better. It was nice… Roy seemed to cheer up as the evening went on. I’m glad that I was able to give him a little break before the impending fight.