92 Invitation

Magne's face is one of well hidden but completely understandable surprise as I take of the trooper helmet I'm 'borrowing'.

Then again, it's not like Martha is going to be needing it anymore, so maybe I'll just keep it as a souvenir, I mean, to remember her by. Oh how sad it is to see her go, she shall be missed.

Anyway, I'm glad that a lot of heroes wear masks that reveal their faces somewhat, like the classic domino mask, rather than the villains who typically have full face coverings.

It makes it easier to read their mood, being able to see micro expressions and stuff.

Not that I actually know what those micro expressions are. I know they exist and that they're the reason I can understand someone's feelings just by looking at their face, but I've never actually looked into what they are exactly, since it seemed like redundant information.

"Who're you supposed to be?" Magne's terse voice brings me out of my spiralling thoughts and back to the real world.

I would have thought he'd recognise me to be honest. I've been on the news a couple times by now.

Must be the new mask.

I lost the old one, since it's not like I could ask to go back to pick up my bike with all my stuff in it after I got locked in that damnable box.

God, what an awful month that was. I started playing chess in my head purely out of boredom, but I'm not good enough at memorising things to do that so it was really just weeks of me randomly thinking about chess moves.

Not fun.

But since my mask is still with my bike, and I wanted to see my candidate before things got hectic, I decided to just quickly scribble out a clown face and stick it to my face.

"Name's Tear, but you can call me Jesus Christ.~" I answer him with an exaggerated wink.

"Tear? Great. So you did end up joining them in the end. How troublesome." His despondent sigh is mildly confusing as I would have expected more weariness.

But to be honest he just seems kind of done with life, as if he's just given up caring, like a known serial killer cannibal standing in front of him is nothing more than a mild inconvenience.

I knew there was a reason I chose this guy.

"Uhuh, Jack makes a very convincing case.~ He's a persuasive guy.~" I nod wisely, as if imparting great knowledge and he nods along with me in his own tired way.

"Yeah? What'd he say to convince you? Powerful capes like you tend not to be so easy to recruit." I'm pretty sure he's trying to see if he can get any information out of me, not that I really care.

"He said it's be fun!~ Anyway, aren't you gonna attack me or something? You are a hero after all?" I ask in confusion before suddenly jumping slightly on the spot and holding my hands over my heart, "unless you're hoping for some kind of Romeo and Juliet romance!~"

In spite of me all but swooning at him, he doesn't so much as flinch, which is funny but also kind of boring.

However things are suddenly made interesting again as all of a sudden a halberd on my right and a sword on my left come flying for my neck point first and with impressive speed.

It's only then that I really pay attention to the room around me enough to notice that he has a lot of weapons hung up around the place.

Reaching one hand out, I catch the halberd just below the spear tip and hold it in place with ease while I let the sword pierce through my neck, just because it feels tingly and weird and I kind of like it a little bit.

"Yeghn, aahsht wuug." I try to speak but my words come out all jumbled thanks to the sword going through my neck.

He still doesn't move, his power not needing a gesture of any kind to take effect, and I summon forth my power to the tips of my fingers, forming a set of claws that quickly reach up and grab the blade of the sword in my neck.

𝘚𝘯𝘢𝘱!

The hilt clatters to the ground and I yank the halberd away from the other side of my body, causing the swords blade to be propelled all the way through my neck and out the other side with a lovely squelch.

Such an interesting power he has. The ability to cause two objects to be either attracted or repulsed from each other, like a magnet.

Shame the Manton limit is stopping him from affecting people otherwise it would be a whole new level of awesome.

Raising a fist to my mouth, I clear my throat in an over the top manner, not breaking eye contact all the while.

"Yeeeooouch, that hurt." My voice is completely bland as I repeat myself, my words actually understandable this time.

"So anyway!~ Aren't you curious why I'm here? Figured you'd have asked by now?~" My question still fails to garner any kind of reaction from him, as he just looks down at where my blood is staining his carpet as if he is more worried about having to clean it than about me being here.

"Figured you're here to kill, torture and eat me, so I didn't bother asking. Hey, I know it didn't work the first time, but if I keep stabbing you, will you ever stay down?"

Wow, this guy really just does not give a single shit. I like it.

Hope you win buddy! I'm rooting for you!~

"Nah,~" I dismissively wave his question away, "I'm too cool for that. Just treat me like Crawler 'sept I don't got the whole adaptive part, at least not like he does. Either way, are you gonna ask yet? It'd feel pretentious of me to just start explaining without an invitation.~"

He gives me a slightly bemused look, but does refrain from trying to kill me any further.

"What are you a vampire? Can you not enter someone's house without being invited in?" I don't know why he's mocking me, it doesn't seem like a very smart thing to do in his situation.

Lucky for him I'm not as prideful as Shatterbird, so I don't really care.

"I'm here aren't I? I don't recall being invited in." I counter, getting slightly annoyed at him avoiding the question.

"Well that begs the question of whether or not a vampire only has to be invited inside the building, thus allowing access to any subsequent rooms, or if they need to be invited into every room individually."

...Ok that's actually a kind of interesting question, but it's not what I'm here for damnit!

"Stop talking about vampires already!~ Oh wait, I just remembered you're a hero, so if you keep dodging the question then I'm gonna flatten this building.~" At my threat his eyes finally sharpen as he stops treating this so casually.

It helps that it's an honest threat too, not that I think he'd be able to tell if I was lying or not.

"PRT buildings are built to withstand Endbringers." He says, his voice testing.

But we both know how pointless a thing that was to say.

"And how many of those have lasted longer than ten seconds against an Endbringer?" I counter.

The simple fact about Endbringers is that whenever you face them, you lose. No 'ifs', 'ands' or 'buts' about it, you just lose.

Well, unless you're a retarded flying golden dildo named Scion, then I guess the same rules don't apply, but we can't apply the same thought processes to the First Parahuman, otherwise there wouldn't be so many people referring to him as God.

A tense silence follows as we both stare unflinchingly into each others eyes until he finally gives.

With a sigh, he asks the question I've been waiting for, with not a single fluctuation in his monotone voice as he does so.

"Oh my, Tear, what are you doing here?" His voice doesn't match his words at all but I ignore that in favour of joyfully going about the overdue introduction.

With a flourish of my arms, I put my magic trick training to good use as a thin banner seems to appear between my hands from nowhere as I spread them wide above my head, pulling the banner taut to show the word 'Congratulations!' painted across it in blood.

At the same time, a pair of small confetti canons hidden in the edges of the banner go off, launching colourful cuts of paper into the air around me with a quiet bang.

"Congratulations!" I shout, matching the banner, "you have been nominated by yours truly to be a candidate to join the illustrious Nine of Slaughter!!!"

Instead of the applause and joy that such an extravagant exclamation should generally inspire, the room instead descends back into silence as I stand there with my arms raised and confetti falling all around me.

Luckily, I prepared for this in advance.

I start flicking my leg to the side, soon dislodging a ball that quickly unfolds into an artificial tumbleweed that hits the wall and bounces back over to roll in front of me at the same time that I play the sound of crickets by pressing a button also hidden in my sleeve.

That, at least, manages to get a stifled chuckle out of Magne, which is really great because it would have been mildly embarrassing if I didn't get a single reaction.

Then again, I'd probably find that funny and end up laughing myself anyway, so it's not exactly a big deal.

After a minute, I decide to break the silence, since he seems happy to just stand there not saying anything for some reason.

"C'mooon~ aren't you excited?~ This is the chance of a lifetime!~" I exclaim, acting I just offered him a million dollars or something, instead of the opportunity to join a group of people so heinous that it is actually legal to murder us.

"Sorry, but it's not really my kind of scene. Besides, shouldn't you have a full roster right now? We only knew there were still eight of you, with you joining that should make nine, no?"

His question makes me pause slightly before accepting that yes, that is a perfectly reasonable assumption to come to.

Though, I do find myself mildly irritated at the reminder of that phony Clown wannabe.

"Nah, Fatso the circus freak saw a couple little boys naked and got so excited he had a heart attack and died on the spot." My answer is without humour, as if I'm just sharing a simple fact that I don't much care for.

"Really? With Bonesaw in your group? That seems unlikely." His doubtful tone shows just how little he believes my lie.

"Yeah, it came as a shock to us all. Guess he just really liked little boys. Alas, he is no longer among us, he shall be missed, yadda yadda, the world is a brighter place without him et cetera." Magne can clearly tell how little I care for this line of conversation as he quickly drops it to ask more prominent questions.

"..So, you're all recruiting then, and I'm your choice?" He asks, to which I nod my head rapidly, "uhuh, right. Mind telling me who the other 'lucky' candidates are?"

Waving my finger at him like he's a naughty child, I lightly scold him.

"Tut, tut, tut. That would be cheating.~ Though I will say that you weren't my first choice, but Shatter called dibs so now I'm stuck with you. I mean, thanks to that I was lucky enough to meet with you instead!~ Yaaay.~"

If possible, his face somehow turns even more deadpan at my words.

"Right. And what does being your candidate entail exactly?" His question brightens my smile.

"Well, I'll get the ground rules out of the way to start with. If you tell anyone that you're a candidate or otherwise hint to the fact, I'll know, and I'll start killing everyone I see for 24 hours for every person you tell."

Even behind his mask of casual indifference, I see the way his eyes widen slightly in understanding of exactly what is at play here.

I can tell that he doesn't want people to die, so I'm not really worried about him not playing along.

Truly, what a hero.

Despite acting like he doesn't care about anything, he sure seems the type to stick to his principles.

I'm almost glad that Shatter called dibs on the more obviously fun choice, because Magne seems like he'll give a good showing.

"Second rule. You have to do whatever I tell you to do until you either die or pass, failure to comply resulting in the same punishment as last time except I'll target heroes, PRT workers, police officers and other servicemen as much as possible.

"As for the test, well that's simple. I'm going to show up every now and then and all you have to do to pass is make me laugh, which really shouldn't be too hard with how much I live for amusement. I will give you one little bit of helpful information though. My test will overlap with the others', so expect their company at some point."

With my message given, I pick my helmet back up and give Magne a quick wink.

"Welp! See ya!~" I exclaim as I put the helmet back on, taking up the stiff posture that all these former military PRT agents seem to have

Without giving him a chance to respond or otherwise inform me that he understands the rules, I open the door and leave, making my way out of the building with just as much ease as I entered.

Honestly, it doesn't really matter if he accepts the rules or not, either way I'm going to be having fun.

I said constant slaughter is boring, but that's only after doing it a lot. It's still new so it's still fun.

Right as I'm exciting the building, I hear the alarms start blaring.

Either Magne pressed the figurative, or literal, emergency button, or they finally found whatever her name was' corpse.

Welp, time to go for real.

As everyone starts reacting to the alarm, I suddenly accelerate forward, running with all of my considerable speed and before anyone can even try and stop me, I am already far enough away to be safe.

I wonder which will be the first to die?

I hope it's not one of the fun ones.

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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Why did I think this would be fun? It's just like the fight thing, there is so much shit going on. I have to create OC's, then come up with tests that the nine members would do, then I have to come up with how the OC's would react to these incredibly stressful experiences all the while coming up with even more OC's to pad out the rest of the city. }:<

(5+)Advanced chapters with the links below!

pat/reon.com/user?u=41732867 (get rid of the first slash or check the description)

Also, join the discord with this invite code! Pj3Dttwses