50 Observations

When climbing around in the debris, and fighting the uncomfortable stench, Foo looked for anything of interest.

The academy had been negligent in the matter of preserving the third section for sure. But in the matter of looting it of its resources, their efforts were truly impeccable. The pure dedication in hunting down even the slightest benefit would awe anyone...

As such, Foo could not even find the shadow of any property deeds, documents regarding trade relationships and contracts. There was nothing, nada.

However, there were still some debt notes lying around. Apparently the managers had not stopped their luxury living after the incomes had subsided.

The results was that there were loads and loads of debt bills. As the current manager of the section, and an responsible adult, Foo knew what he had to do.

As such, the documents were quickly misplaced and chewed to shreds by Lucifer who loved this opportunity to bring down disaster on the world.

Making the best of the current situation, Lucifer put all his effort into massacring the papers. The thought that the papers were quite important and that it would be improper to destroy them let him once again get the feeling of defying the world!

``Muahahaha! Shiver before me! I am the feared oathbreaker! I break oaths for breakfast! Cover before me mortals!``

His evil plans to bring ruin to the world, one paper after another, was a welcome distraction from the unbearable stench.

Rotting corpses, blood and such were the most wonderful of stenches. But if it just came from neglect - and was that the odour of urine? - then it was truly unfit for someone of his grand and majestic status.

When Lucifer was busy with his slow progress towards the destruction of the world, Foo came to the conclusion that there was nothing of value.

Not even the house - if you could still call it that - was really usable. The spot might be of high status, but the rubbish on it anything but.

But while he was lamenting about the lack of anything to start his new project from, his highly attuned senses picked something up!

He was being watched!

Back in the old world, he was being watched all the time. Wherever he went, he could feel the hidden cameras and microphones that were hidden all around.

A careless mistake in the beginning of his... uhm... exploration of the internet made the government keep an eye on him.

He could often feel someone stalking him, and whatever he did was constantly monitored.

Some people would say that he was just paranoid, but they did not know of the capabilities of the government. And he had plenty of evidences of their monitoring!

For example... well.... he did once find a stray cat that was acting suspicious. As it was likely to be remote controlled by the new implantable chip that the military had developed, according to... trustworthy sources on the internet, he had taken it home to expose their unlawful actions.

However, no matter how much he stroked, patted and hugged the cat, he could not find any traces of the incision for the chip, nor any suspicious bumps.

Even the x-ray showed nothing suspicious. And he was sure that there were no nanobots either. The fact that he kept the cat afterwards was only to check if they had made progress with biological chips that were invisible on the x-ray.

He kept it just to study if its behaviour was normal. The fact that he hugged it and petted it was only to make the ones controlling it let their guards down and slip up.

It was definitely not because it was so cute and huggable.

Anyway~ That must have been one of the very rare mistakes regarding gaining proof of those that monitored him...

The fact that they were quite hard to catch on to just meant that they were good. Really good! It also seemed that they kept no notes about it in their servers, as an protection in case he gained access, which he of course did.

They must have had a secondary really secure network, only dedicated to information about him, or taking down all information on paper.

But there was one time that he caught them in the act! He had trained his senses for a long time, and could feel that there was a satellite zooming in on him.

And when he later accessed the satellite that was the likely suspect, he could indeed tell that it had been taking images of his immediate area at exactly the time he sensed it. And the records and logs were unusually clean. It basically screamed `We have been here!`.

The fact that he felt the satellite had nothing at all to do with the fact that he had memorized the orbits of every satellite, even the supposingly secret ones.

Anyway, the feeling he felt were like what he felt that time.

However, it was unlikely to be a satellite this time. And the feeling seemed to come from somewhere closer.

To find the source, he scanned the whole area for anything suspicious. However, even after some minutes, he could not find anything odd at all.

There was however this section of the wall where he was completely sure there was nothing suspicious at all. The location and everything made it totally obvious that it was impossible for anything to hide there.

However, this conviction that there was nothing suspicious was even more glaringly suspicious than what anything else could possibly be.

He was irrefutable sure that there was nothing wrong with that section of the wall. But the crux to the matter was that he was never completely sure about anything.

How could he be sure of what he sees? It could be an elaborate illusion, it could be an injected thought or it could be some other way to distort his perception of reality.

You could not even trust your own brain, as it fooled you in many ways during its normal operation. So how could he be absolutely sure of this, when he did not even trust his own brain?

It was certainly highly suspicious.

But as someone that worried about the new ways of the government to control the thoughts of people, Foo certainly were not easily to be fooled. At least with external impulses aiming to control his thoughts.

He had made an elaborate verification system with his mind, which allowed him to find out derivations in his usual thought pattern. It was not perfect, but now was one of the times that it came to good use...

In fact it was the only time, and anyone else would have said that it was a complete waste of time and a sign of extreme paranoia. But this single instance would show anyone with such thoughts wrong.

By following that feeling, hew could trace the source to an seemingly normal spot on the wall.

No matter how much he stared, that spot did not reveal anything.

As such, he had to use other tricks to expose this unknown entity.

"Is it not proper to introduce yourself when visiting someone else?" he directed towards the spot.

After a long silence, and a focused glare, he could feel the odd sensation move. As it moved along the wall, he followed it with his eyes.

But no matter what, he could not see anything. No shadow nor distortion. There was no noticeable disruption in the airflow or anything else indicating any sort of movement. Only that strange feeling.

At his words, Lucifer looked up from his last piece of paper, which he enjoyed showing the full extent of his dreadful powers, tormenting it to the point where... It was simply torn into pieces?

No matter how you put it, there was not even the slightest thing that would reveal that this was the feared existence from The Abyss. It looked more like a child playing with a paper...

"We have a guest?"

Putting an end to the misery of the paper, Lucifer turned to look in the direction that Foo was staring.

"Huh? There is nothing there?"

Although Lucifer might not currently have that much power, he still had some accurate senses. Although he might need to focus a bit more now to feel it, he still had great detection skills.

The fact that he could not sense anything, even after focusing at "it", told that this was either something extremely powerful, or nothing at all...

"It just seems that our guest is a bit shy." Foo responded.

After moving around some more, the spot suddenly distorted. It seemed as if a robed person suddenly emerged out of the shadows. The face was hidden in the darkness of a hood, and the clothing seemed to be made of shadows.

Flickering in and out of existence, seemingly a part of the shadows.

"This is impossible! You can see me?!!!!" the entity exclaimed in extreme surprise.

"Oh my! You can speak!" Foo retorted while rolling his eyes at the obvious statement.

"But that is impossible! There is no way anyone can see us in our normal state!"

Foo could only patiently wait for this mysterious entity to calm down, as it did not seem to be able to have any sort of conversation before it had stated this fact a couple of times more.

"Ever since we were banished from existence nothing have been able to observe us. The world itself have seemingly tried to cover up our existence with everything it got!"

"As such we have never been able to interact with the world, or been seen by its inhabitants. We have after endless time of testing managed to manifest our presence in the form you see now. But we are still incapable of interacting with anything else in the world."

Taking this opportunity to clean his unexpectedly waxless ear, Foo felt that he should win the actor award for most caring man in the world...

It seemed that this group of entities was seemingly non existent, able to observe the world, but in no way interact with it. Except from making some shadowy form and speaking with what Foo now realized was telepathy.

"In our endless—"

And he continued on with extreme passion. So passionate that the greatest actor of all time, Foo, decided that it was important enough to start nodding.

It seemed like they pursued knowledge, but then offended some powerful beings and became banished from existence. Ironically they could now gather information by observing, but could not interact with the world any longer.

Luckily they could finally circumvent the banishment and converse with the beings of the world, but that seemed to be the limit.

"It is as the prophecy has foretold! `The Observers will lose their path. They will vanish from the memory of the world, doomed fade away until they even lose sight of themselves. However, The Observant One will observe their plight and guide them to their true purpose. By following him, we will finally find our place in this world.`"

This ominous thing about a prophecy was truly disturbing, and made Foo pay attention for once.

He did not need some fanatic entities to suddenly come and demand him to help them resolve their existential crisis. Had they no shrink to go to?

Followers were just exploiting him to get what they want. Just look at the siblings and company. At the moment of need, they simply turned their back to him and run away.

Not everyone was as loyal as Lucifer.

As such, Foo decided to turn away this odd being. The entities - seemingly called Observers - was most likely going to be a pain if he were to allow them to follow him.

Just the fact that he might become guilty by association, were he to accept them, was highly concerning. Whatever they offended seemed quite powerful. Most likely endgame stuff. Were he to associate with them, he might end up getting hunted down.

Although he was quite confident of managing that, it would be quite bothersome. He just wanted to laze around and do whatever he found interesting at the moment.

"Ah, I can't help but to observe that your interpretation of the prophecy is quite lacking. Nothing does clearly state that the observation of your plight is actually being able to see you. In fact, I was not even aware of your plight before you told me, so it can't be said that I observed it."

But the statement did not seem to deter the entity at all. Foo concluded that it was desperate, and might thus be quite loyal.

However, he had to continue with his observation of this plight of theirs before he could even dare to think about accepting them.

From what he seen so far, they were truly unfortunate. Gaining the power to be able to observe anything they want, only to be banished into an existence where they almost could be said to not even exist.

They did even seem to give up on everything else, and was now just trying to look for this The Observant One. As their existence were seen as something shunned by the world itself, they seeked out evil people to serve, in hope that one of them would show to be the foretold one.

It was almost as if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. By being promised some sort of salvation from losing their identity, they lost their own identity by becoming mere servants of evil beings in search of the promised salvation from the situation they was in.

Truly ironic.

But Foo was still cautious.

"And this `The Observant One` seems like a title but - correct me if my observation is incorrect - I do not have such a title—"

########

Congratulations!

Your observation skills are astounding!

Title [The Observant One] gained!

...

[The Observant One]

One that can see through the deceptions in the world.

########

``The heck! That was the perfect excuse! Why the hell did you have to come and slap my face right after I used it?!``

By the almost perceivable glow from the presumed unobservable eyes of the entity, Foo could tell that it somehow could feel that he gained the title.

"Why does there exist a prophecy about me? Let's hope that I am lucky, and that there does not exist any other ones..." Foo lamented.

There were basically no point in arguing anymore. He just had to trust in his skills to make sure that they did more good than harm...

Regarding the matter of other prophecies, Lucifer opened his mouth to comment, but then hurriedly closed it. That matter was quite embarrassing after all. It was better to be forgotten!