Message

It took a few days before anyone managed to catch sight of Silent Bob again. Part of the problem was that he got a shave and haircut almost immediately after the events of… that night, so our pictures of him weren’t as effective as we would have liked. But some smart proxy with too much time on his hands managed to pick him up on a convenience store’s security camera, and from there we were able to narrow down his location to an empty apartment room.

With the original kill team reduced to half its members, a new team was sent in to deal with them. Like before, they had a radio with them so we could follow their progress. I’m not going to post everything we heard, since most of it was screaming. A lot of screaming.

When those sounds died down, we heard someone pick up the radio, and a new voice spoke into it. The speaker had a posh sounding accent, but that accent kept coming and going throughout his talk, as if he was intentionally trying to sound that way.

“Helloooooo there! Based on the blogs I’ve been catching up on, I’m assuming that the Picking at Ruins girl is listening? Good. I want her to record this and post it. I’ve got a little message to send out to the world.

Almost two years, people! Two whole years! That’s how long I’ve been gone! You can imagine my surprise when I realized that. One minute I’m having quite the lovely time in 2011, the next I’m learning that the world completely failed to end on 12/21/12. It’s a bit of a jarring experience, I’ll have you know, especially given my assumption I was going to die back then. What with the knife and the exploding and all. But that’s not what I want to talk about. No, I want to discuss the significant amount of reading I’ve done these past few days in order to catch up on what’s occurred in my absence. Well, skimming, really. Most of you aren’t exactly top quality authors, and I certainly don’t intend to force myself to read more of your drivel than is absolutely necessary. But even amongst the shoddy grammar, there was one theme I noticed present throughout the two years of posts:

Incompetence.

Complete, utter, gross, incompetence.

Honestly, people? In two years, you have accomplished so little? Slender Man STILL isn’t dead? Our sacrifices were supposed to inspire a new age of resistance, but instead they seemed to have been the high point of a golden age which has long passed. Whatever happened to the grand struggle, the unending fight, the spirit and drive to stop the monster who hunted us in the dark? The fighters that I remember seem to all be dead or missing, leaving behind only scared children. I don’t even think you lot have any Sages, do you? Pathetic. Simply pathetic.

But don’t worry. Because I have returned, to save you pitiful humans from your failures.

These dogs sent after me were certainly talkative after I applied some persuasion. A proxy bureaucracy. What a novel idea. I remember Morningstar whining about his superiors, but I never imagined you people would get organized to this extreme. I like it. It provides a much larger target for me to hit.

Consider this my warning to you bureaucratic types: I’m going to kill you all. I’m going to rip apart all you little slaves, and the ruins of your organization shall burn in a glorious conflagration that illuminates the whole world. And once I’ve dealt with you, why, I think I’ll go and accomplish my original goal of ripping off the Slender Man’s tentacles and beating him to death with them.

And you Runners? You can just sit back and relax. Let me take care of the hard work, since the current generation is clearly unfit to handle it themselves. Go find a compound called Optimism or something and throw a party there. It makes no difference to me. I alone will be sufficient to deal with this trivial threat.

But perhaps I should finally introduce myself. After all, I can scarcely expect these whippersnappers to remember the events of two whole years ago. Practically ancient history, really. So to all you young ‘uns who can’t be bothered to learn your past, permit me to introduce myself.



My name is Arkady Ivanovich Svidrigailov.”