Just a Little Note

I've been a bit busy to update-there's a lot to do getting a place this large set up, a lot of little things that need to be taken care of-and that take a lot longer with injured ribs like this.

Lis, Tia, and Blake arrived Wednesday. It's been good to have them, and the impromptu birthday celebrations the other night were fun. I have been very glad to have a chance to spend time with Lis in person, and it's been fun getting to know Tia and Blake.
They've settled in pretty well, and I'm really glad to have them all.

Nemo last night as well, bringing with him three rather special folks. Levi, Jennifer, and Emily Johnson. Now, these three don't have a blog, but they do keep tabs on them as much as they can. Mostly, they just focus on running.
They are probably the only family of runners that I've heard of (except perhaps for the ill fated Delmonts, but they weren't running all together). These guys are smart, all three of them. When Emily started seeing slendershit, they did the standard police thing, but when it wasn't working, they did some research. Found the blogs, started reading, figured out what was going on.
They weren't going to let their daughter go. So they packed her up, piled into their minivan, and started running. That was... mid August.
They've held it together pretty well, all things considered, but they were running low on funds to pay for food and such even before the van broke down. They hid out in an abandoned house and tried to set it up to be as safe as possible and sent me a distress call-they found the post about Hope, and how I promised to get people here if I needed to, and just went for it. They didn't really have many options left.
About an hour later Nemo emailed me asking if I needed anyone brought to Hope. Seemed perfect. Worked out pretty damn well. The kid's crazy about him from what I can tell, anyway.
I'm just glad I could help them. Em's such a sweet kid, I can already tell. And Jennifer and Levi? They're just... so devoted to her, it's beautiful.

Rescue

Some of you may remember a certain showdown I had with a certain proxy back when I was still in Austin. I told you all at the time that I taunted him about his brother, and that it was a berserk button reaction. That's true. What I failed to mention was that we got in contact afterward. 

I'm still not quite sure what inspired me to send that first email. But we got in touch. We started fighting via email, and then we started bantering, and then we just started talking. And somehow we became friends.

I learned the truth of  his story, and I told him the truth of mine.

When I was being held captive by the police, he came and rescued me. Yes, that's right. The big kidnapping plot? It was a farce. A necessary one, if he were to do it without being killed. He came to get me away from the cops, he made sure they didn't hurt me, he made sure Terminator found a stash of drugs so I could get away cleanly that morning. He's all but stopped trolling me-in fact only doing so when it actually helps me. We've gotten insanely good at pretending to hate each other while sounding encouraging.

The fact is, I've been begging him for the past month and change to defect. This is going to be hard to swallow, but he's a remarkably good person past all the rage and fear and slendy-control. He's risked life and limb to help me multiple times over our short friendship, perhaps most notably when he actually risked coming into my 'cell' when he had me 'kidnapped' because I needed a friend and a shoulder to cry on. It was so stupidly reckless and and selfless and utterly /good/.

I find it impossible to dislike someone who's willing to risk life and limb JUST TO HOLD ME WHILE I CRIED.

Do you remember around a month ago, when Valtiel showed up to torture him out of the blue? It was because he was considering defecting, though he obviously couldn't say that in public. The big problem was that he's at least partially hallowed. He's undergone the process repeatedly, and while it doesn't seem to stick forever, it means that he doesn't have complete control over himself or his actions. Yes, that's right, folks. The proxy everyone loved to hate was oftentimes more or less a puppet on a string. Which has led to some rather unfortunate and spectacular tragedies over the past few weeks as we've been preparing for him to do the actual defecting.

Again. Yes, that's right, folks, he /agreed/ to defect. In his words, specifically so he could do a better job of keeping an eye on me-the first real friend he's ever had in his life.

So. We went to New Jersey today. We meaning Spencer and I. We went to Jersey, and... I wish we could have interfered in what went down today. I really do. I don't know exactly how it happened,  though I know that when we found him Melly wasn't with them, and they seemed to be doing a lot of arguing. So I hope that perhaps it went badly for them and well for us. I really, really do. But we couldn't risk interfering and dragging his handler into it, or else we all would have ended up dead. I'm so sorry.

Nonetheless. We've just rescued Morningstar.

Not Exactly Civil...

But interesting. David came over today. He disguised himself as the grocery delivery guy and got into the house helping us carry the groceries. Ro wasn't kidding in his last post, he had like no food in the house. I'm guessing he mostly lives off of delivery food.
In any event. it's not until David slipped up and used Ro's real name that I could confirm that there was something strange-though I still can't shake the oddest feeling that I'd seen him before. Ro got up and saw David, David proceeded to be charming while threatening all of us. I get the feeling he's rather good at that.

I don't have the memory to recall the exact conversation, I was too busy watching the knife he had out and pressed against Shrody's cheek at that point. That was not something I was going to let stand. I pulled my knives and made it clear that he'd have to go through me to get to her-or at least tried. Ro slammed David away before I got the chance. Unfortunately, he didn't last long in the fight afterward-David had him pinned rather quickly.
The two of them have... interesting chemistry. I almost wonder what would've happened if I hadn't stepped in. I mean. Sorry, Ro, but fuck you two were going at it with your eyes. I mean, really.

Okay, shutting up now.

Right. So. I managed to say the right thing to get David interested in fighting me, thereby allowing Ro to get Shrody the fuck out of there. It was a good fight-David really knows what he's doing. I now have a nice stab wound in my left shoulder, again, and he has a lovely gash across his torso that will probably leave a serious scar.

After that, he seemed to respect me a little more. He said he'd go if I sat down and talked to him for a minute, so I did, being careful not to bleed on Ro's furniture. Strangely, he was perfectly pleasant, didn't seem to be bothered either by the rather energetic fight or by the fact that he was bleeding pretty heavily.

While we talked, I figured out just how much of a fucking bastard David really is. Two things were readily apparent. If David cares about anything in this world, it's Ro, and everyone else doesn't matter. People aren't people to him, they're objects. Things to be used and toyed with and disposed of when convenient. I was kind of surprised he spoke to me as respectfully as he did-though upon reflection, I'm expecting it's because I injured him. He seemed rather impressed by that. He even said he'd come to see me again-and NOT try and kill me-if it left a scar. Not quite sure how I feel about that...

David wanted me to defame Ro. He wanted me to blame my injury on him, to come on this blog and talk about how he was secretly a terrible person, to make people step away and stop encouraging him to be a hero. His rationale was that Ronan's search for redemption was making him miserable, and that if everyone stopped encouraging him to go for it, he'd come back to David and be happy.
Which is kind of sick.
I told him to fuck off, that I wouldn't let him hurt people I care about. He warned me that if I wouldn't help him separate Ro from all of you that he'd do it in a bit more violent way. So be warned, any of you that spend much time talking to TMV. David's coming, and I have no doubt that he will follow through with that threat. Be careful.

David phrased it as 'pitting my love against yours.' I found that rather amusing, but more or less accurate. I won't let David get away with hurting any of you.

Escape

I'm out, I'm out, I'm out, I'm free, I'm safe. Well, as safe as I can be, under the circumstances. By the time this goes up, I'll have been gone for two hours. I'm getting the fuck out of town, and that should be plenty of time for me to be off in a direction and be difficult to trace.
The alarm probably will have gone up by then, anyway.

It was surprisingly easy to get away. Terminator was on guard duty, and he was tired and distracted and forgot to lock the door... Something distracted him, he ran off, and it wasn't much work to sneak out. I almost feel bad for Star-two days he was in top form and some incompetent moron ruined it for him.
Yeah, if he hadn't been planning on killing me today, I would be sad about that. As it stands, FUCK YES FOR INCOMPETENT MINIONS!

Anyway, I'm at a McDonalds posting this and they're getting pissy that I haven't ordered anything, so I'm going to head out. I'll put a proper post tonight when I'm on the road.