111 Read This Chap's A/N At Least, Please?

Columbus, outskirts of Georgia. April 15th, 08:30.

Leaning back on my parked bike, I look out over the ruins of a formerly proud city a small distance away and nod once to myself, a slight feeling of satisfaction filling me, only to be swiftly followed by minor annoyance, that is also soon smothered out into bare indifference.

I always thought the Nine were tacky, and honestly? The past two weeks or so have done nothing to change my mind.

I won't deny that slaughtering hundreds of people was fun, there's a reason zombie games are so popular after all. Sometimes a bit of gratuitous violence is exactly what you need to relax.

But.

It's only really fun as an occasional treat, and frankly speaking it got boring after the first week or so.

It's just repetitive really, not to mention incredibly wasteful.

Any five humans can provide entertainment for a whole day if you do it right, and that's without even needing to kill anyone.

Plus, with more people dead, there's less people to entertain me.

All round, it's just ineffective.

Still, gotta try everything at least once right?

Honestly, the only truly amusing thing left from this whole venture is the traps that we've left hidden around the entire city.

From surprisingly well disguised bear traps, to wires set up to capture or dismember, all the way to the fire extinguishers that were replaced by identical flamethrowers.

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 is funny. That is fun. The idea that people will have to abandon the city, or deal with watching their every step to avoid losing a limb, all because a few assholes were being assholes.

𝘛𝘩𝘢𝘵 is funny, but it's only funny because it hasn't happened anywhere else, which is why I'm not going to let us do it again.

Because I am not so tacky as Jack to just keep repeating the same damn shit, over and over again. He was probably that kid in school that would hear the funny kid say something that made everyone else laugh, and then would go around repeating the joke over and over hoping for the same response.

It's pathetic.

Still, I have a plan for him. Granted, it's not exactly a complex plan, but it doesn't really need to be. I'm also pretty sure that his not quite mind reading thing that he seems to be capable of has already told him at least some of my plan.

But he is arrogant enough to assume that he can't lose anyway, so he's probably not going to do anything to try and stop me, which is amusing to me, since that confidence will just make things easier for me.

So when I see the RV driving out and away from the city, Crawler's trailer securely attached to the back, I don't waste any time in mounting my bike.

I rev the engine a couple of times, enjoying the sound of it's modified exhaust, before I speed off to join them, dressed in concealing leathers and with a full, blacked out helmet to hide my identity as we travel.

I'm not sure what the bike guy I traded with did to modify this bike, seeing that I still don't know shit about engineering, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the deep rumble of the engine as I drive over the dirt road to get to the RV.

The suspension is good enough that even without my super human physiology I probably wouldn't really feel it, so kudos to that guy, whoever he is.

If I happen to meet him again, I'll give him a bunch of money as thanks. No idea how much, it'll depend on how much I have I guess, but everyone loves free money.

But that's all for future me to think about, right now all that I need to do is enjoy driving at speeds far beyond the speed limit, even if I have to stop every now and then to let the RV overtake me so I can do it all over again.

About a week later, I find myself chilling around a campfire at the edge of a town called Paduca, sitting on the boarder of Kentucky, with Crawler, Hatchet Face and the two newest members of our merry band joining me.

I'm still a little upset that my candidate isn't one of the people who passed, especially since Black Queen turned out so damn boring.

She was super fun too, but someone, probably Jack, decided that she should lean into her new bear-likeness more, and used their test to fuck with her vocal cords, making it so that she can only make bear noises, incapable of human speech.

It sucks.

She was funny and now she can't even tell any jokes.

Hell, she even still manages to be funny with all the odds stacked against her, which just makes it more annoying, but whatever.

She'll get her voice back, probably. Maybe. All things in good time.

At least the other new member, Lucy, makes up for it somewhat, since she's still fun, and wholly unbothered by just about everything, even the slaughter of this town that we finished doing just a couple of hours ago.

Granted, this time we weren't quite so... 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩.

According to the news, Columbus' population has dropped from around 190k all the way down to 23k, with a large percentage of that number being injured.

...That 'murder salt' was waaay more effective than I was expecting it to be, most of the deaths were from people going mad and killing each other.

They've also 'discovered' the traps, but they're undecided on whether or not to abandon the city as of now.

Anyway, Lucy and Queeny have been given new names as part of their 'induction' to the group.

Naturally, Jack was the one to pick the names, not even bothering to ask if anyone has any fun ideas.

However, I won't complain for once, because the names he came up with were pretty funny.

I think he has a thing about members of the Nine having ridiculous or absurd names and then making everyone fear them anyway.

I mean, Jack Slash? What an incredibly uncreative, stupid name. And yet, it is quite possibly the second most feared name in all of America, just behind the Simurgh, because nothing will ever inspire terror as much as the Simurgh.

Even I would really rather be on the opposite side of the planet as the freakin' Simurgh at all times... she's a scary motherfucker.

Then there's Bonesaw, and Shatterbird. Fucking, Hatchet Face?

Everyone in the Nine has stupid names, even me. It's probably the only reason he didn't force me to take a new name, because 'Tear' isn't exactly an awe inspiring name.

Yet, each of those names is deeply feared from coast to coast.

Which brings me to our newest members, Murder Bear and Crusher.

Two absurdly stupid names, and yet soon enough people will be pissing themselves every time they hear it.

It's honestly one of the few things I appreciate about Jack, because I can't deny that I share his amusement at the joke, and I can completely understand why he would want to do it.

It is hilarious, after all, to think about heroes being all serious as they shout at someone called 'Murder Bear'.

The media already knows that they've joined us of course, it probably wasn't too hard to figure out, but they won't know the names, at least not until news of today's escapades get out, or I get bored and spread their names on PHO.

Naturally, I've also had my share of news coverage now that it's clear that I'm a member of the Slaughterhouse now, which included a whole backstory too.

It was honestly mildly impressive, not to mention amusing, to listen to the news talk about me.

So now the whole world, well, just America really, but what's the difference? The whole world knows 'everything' about me.

They know my name, where I grew up. They know my school grades, even making comments about how my grades started to fall after I turned fifteen, speculating that that was when I started to change from the 'excitable, caring girl' that I used to be, to, well, whatever I am now.

Naturally, they're all very wrong. The only thing that changed back then was that I stopped bothering with the act. Stopped bothering with anything that wasn't fun, such as studying, and started using my time to do amusing things instead.

The report even went into minor details about my parents. Talking about my psycho daddy dearest as if he was abusive and the 'cause' of my 'mental issues'.

My father isn't someone I like to think about, but the cowardly pissant of a man couldn't have been abusive even if he wanted to. I'm pretty sure the only reason he managed to land mom was because she was a dom and wanted a man who was nice and submissive.

I honestly don't know, and I don't really care. He ran off to do whatever psycho shit looneys do when they're off their meds when I was thirteen.

I got a little laugh, with mixed feelings behind it, at what they said about my mom too. According to the totally unbiased and well informed opinions of the strangers in the media that I've never spoken to, the most likely case is that my powers apparently 'forced' me to kill my mom, and that is what set me off, 'breaking' me mentally and causing me to go insane.

I mean, I guess they're half right, but I was probably insane well before then.

But it then went on to talk about how I started in Columbus, Ohio, and how much chaos I caused there, shaking up the entire cities underworld, as well as their roster of heroes, followed by mentioning my brief stint in New York, and the subsequent battles with Billy.

All in all, my name and face have been plastered all over every screen in every household in every state.

In other words... I'm a motherfucking celebrity now!

Wooo!

Naturally, now that I'm famous I must start touching kids, it's basically a tradition, so I made sure to send a message to James informing him that he is now my child sex slave.

Obviously I'm not actually going to touch kids, they really don't have much of an appeal to me, no flesh to them, no muscles or curves.

Really, what's the point?

But James probably found the message funny, not that I can be sure since his response was to just tell me to eat a dick. Not a very effective insult to a cannibal.

Now I'm simply left wondering how long I'm going to stick around as a part of the Nine. Probably a month at least, because there's no point in doing things by halves and I want to see if there's something I'm missing for Jack to find this fun enough to have kept at it for as long as I've been alive.

Eh, who knows.

For now, the others probably won't be back for a short while, Bonesaw is making some 'artwork' to leave behind before we go, sort of like a 'we were here' kind of thing, so I have to find something to entertain myself until then.

"So!" I exclaim with a clap of my hands, getting the attention of everyone present, even if Crawler closes his eyes right away after, going back to his nap, with the others similarly going back to what they were doing, be it sharpening their hatchet or cooking some food over the fire in the case of Lucy, Crusher.

Murder Bear, my god that name is stupid, I almost laugh every time I try and think about it with any level of seriousness.

Bear is chilling next to Lucy, waiting for the meat to be cooked, so she at least has nothing to go back to and actually looks at me as I bring out a deck of cards with a wave and some slight of hand.

"Who wants to play a game?~"

=================

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

A/N: So! Assuming y'all persistent A/N ignorers are even here, I just want to clear something up. For anyone who has been getting bored with this second Columbus arc, know that I feel the same way, I just didn't want to fuck with my pacing by skipping ahead. That being said, most of the things to do were done and I was genuinely close to burning out again by writing it, so we're skipping basically nothing and getting out of there.

It's not like we can't all figure out what I skipped over, only Black Queen still needed to be tested by Crawler and Hatcher after Sibby was done, then there was just Jacks tests, and I think we can all just acknowledge that his test would have been something horrific and traumatising and move on, right?

Also, the next few chapters will basically be like a cooldown period before things kick off again

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