User blog:Joeaikman/Ten Hated Wikians - Chapter 2

“Do not worry, weak peasant, for the true king of Westeros is your ally, and he will not let you down. I will use my sword to portect you from the oncoming darknes, because, as Melisandre says, the night is dark and full of terrors.” As per usual the camera picked up Assy’s voice long before he came into view. He was dressed in brown mostly, but bore the fiery heart and stag of Stannis Baratheon on his chest. He carried a plastic sword by his side, moving from shadow to shadow. Next to him was Wach, who looked like he would have rather Flats had given him anyone else as a companion than Assy. He wore a flashy purple blazer, sparkling with sequins on the collar, and a yellow shirt underneath it.

“If you mention one more fucking thing about Lord of the Wizards, or whatever the fuck you watch or read or fucking whatever, I swear I will gut you with your own sword and feed them to Jon Snow’s dragons.” Wach carried on walking as he spoke, not changing his face or the tone of his voice, but Assy stopped, as if affronted by what his companion had said to him. He raised his sword to strike Wach down, but realised that the older Wikian had already started moving away, and so had to scamper after him to keep up.

“I will have you know that the true king is from A Song of Ice and Fire, not Lord of the Rings, and Jon Snow doesn’t have dragons. Only Daenerys has dragons.” Assy spoke as if Wach actually cared, and for the first time his companion actually stopped walking and turned to face the oddly garbed warrior. His eyes gave away a menacing look as he stared down the nerd in front of him.

“I am not the murderer, but if I was I would cut you down where you stand right now and feed you your own flesh out of a rusty bucket, you mentally malfunctioning cockweasel. Now stop quoting discount fucking Tolkien and help me find a way out of this place before one of us gets offed next.” Wach turned away from Assy again and began walking off and around a corner. Assy didn’t follow him, instead taking a turn off into a dark room and grumbling to himself about how Wach was no Davos Seaworth.

-

“I swear to god. Imma find this murderer and shank him so hard he gonna suffer like a motherfucker. You know what I’m saying, GIR?” Sega was walking down a different corridor, this one decorated with pictures of notable Wikians and wiki events. There was Shoop’s leaving party, and Steeler’s adoption of the wiki, as well as one of, for no valid reason really, Legion fucking a kangaroo. The lights were spluttering, and the electrical buzz they gave off made the entire scene a whole lot creepier. Sega was dressed in jogging bottoms and a baggy hoodie that hung around his knees. He had shades on his face, and his baseball cap was tilted to the side, instead of being straight on his head. His companion was GIR, who was smaller than Sega, and dressed in a white shirt, but with no tie. He was pale and sweaty, looking around at every shadow suspiciously, possibly thinking that it was the murderer.

“Sega, I think I heard someone coming. Quick, in here.” GIR darted through a door on the left, into an empty, white room. There was a stack of plastic chairs in the corner, and a desk with an ancient PC sat upon it alongside the left hand side of the space, but other than that the room was unfurnished. The lights here didn’t flicker as they did in the corridor, but emitted a bright white light over the room. GIR instantly chose to head to the corner, trying to hide from whatever the sound he had heard outside had been. Sega stood in the middle of the room, trying to act like he wasn’t also scared of whatever was coming for the two of them.

Sega watched the door for a good ten minutes before deciding that whatever had been heard had passed them by, and eventually he turned back to GIR, who was now cowering under the computer desk. Nothing about the room had changed, but now the light wasn’t a comforting presence and instead was starting to hurt Sega’s head.

“Get the fuck out from under there, you fucking crybaby. I was never scared of noffing going on in this fucking mental asylum. Lets go and try and find this batshit killer so we can be the heroes, bruv.” Sega pulled GIR out from under the table and dragged him out of the room, with GIR whimpering the whole time. The corridor’s lights were working fine now, with no more flickering and spluttering going on. It seemed a lot less scary when there was constant lighting, to keep the shadows at bay and in one single place.

“S-Sega… maybe we should go check the power for this place…to see who has been tampering with the lights.” GIR spoke up, his voice quavering and all over the place. It was a sensible suggestion though, as someone had to have fiddled with the fuse box to make the creepy affect of the lights earlier. The two set out to find the power room for the facility, and as they did a camera zoomed in on them, focusing on the back of GIR’s head.

-

Coupe was dealing with traumatic and stressful situations as well as ever. The suave Korean was sitting at the facility’s bar, drinking a clear liquid that looked like a gin and tonic, and playing with the mini umbrella that his glass had come with. His brown pinstriped suit and black bowtie matched perfectly with his messy hair, and he was staring off into the distance, as if trying to work out who the killer was all by himself. Matoro was another story. He had bitten his nails until they were short and stubby, and was now pacing behind Coupe, frantically looking around the room, as if a clue would suddenly appear, or some way out would just materialise for him and his Korean friend.

“You need to relax, mate. There’s nothing gained from making yourself into a mess. Just have a drink and chill. We can kiss and shit if it would make you feel more comfortable.” He turned to his compatriot in imprisonment and flashed him a smirk, that suited his perfect face annoyingly well. Matoro and Coupe had been friends for years, ever since Coupe had introduced Matoro to his first wife. Even after the divorce that followed they had remained close friends.

“After all these years you surprise me. How can you be calm in a time like this. We both have things we should feel guilty about. What happens if those things are coming back to haunt us?” It was true that they both ad dark things in their pasts that thy would rather remained hidden and out of the public knowledge, but there was surely no way for anyone to know either of their secrets. “You cant act so calm, Coupe. There’s a murderer on the loose, and we both have sins we need to atone for.”

“I have learned of ways to bury my darkest evils in the past, Mat. You need to do something similar. You were not wrong in what you did, in the same way that I wasn’t. Just relax and live life for the moment, and stop getting beaten up over the past. A few years ago Wach got me to fuck a man, and since then my mind has been open. Maybe you need to find a way to a similar state.” He stood up at that point, a thin smile on his face as he walked over to Matoro. “If it will make you feel better we can go someplace else. I know this bar brings back some bad memories for you.”

-

“Damnit. I thought all the exits would be locked. I guess it was worth trying, just in case this killer wasn’t as smart as I gave him credit for.” Flats moved away from the window that he had jut been wrestling with, and turned back to Nail, who was stood a few feet behind him, yawning and preening herself. Flats was garbed all in black, whilst Nail wore pale light blues and, in places, shiny metallic colours. Her hair was silvery blonde and was cut square down to her shoulders, with a prominent fringe, whilst Flats had a shock of black, messy hair. Whilst Nail’s eyes were pale blue and haunting Flats’ were dark, brooding and foreboding. Basically they looked like a more serious life or death version of the Odd Couple.

“Guess we just have to find somewhere to sleep and hope that we survive the night. According to that poem the first person dies by finding something. As long as we don’t look then that rhyme can never be completed, and Grav will be the only person who died. Lets be honest, who is going to cry over that?” There had been a well known animosity between Nail and Grav for some time now. Ever since he had accused her of using seduction and her looks to achieve her end goals she had despised him. No doubt this thought had occurred to Flats, who held his hand at his belt the whole time, no doubt grasping for one of his famous concealed knives.

“I don’t think the killer would give in so easily. No doubt he would just abandon the poem over not achieving his end goals. Besides, we don’t know that we are the first targets, and we can’t control whether any of our fellows find a lost toy. No, I am afraid that waiting out this killer wont work. We have to get to the bottom of this before we find ourselves dead. We should move on. Maybe if we find the others we can work together. They cant be too far away.”

-

They had been climbing for ages. Going up flight after flight of stairs and through countless doors to try and reach their end goal. Joe and Brandon were closer than any of the other contestants, and they had formed a sort of bond in the absence of Kung, who was at the popular Wikians party. Joe was easily the tallest Wikian in attendance, standing well over six feet, and very capable of wrestling someone to the ground and cracking their neck. Like Sega he wore jogging bottoms and a hoody, but unlike Sega his actually fit him. He preferred darker colours, such as black, or deep shades of blue, whilst his smaller companion was dressed all in orange. He wore an orange T-shirt and orange trousers over orange pants and orange socks. Brandon liked the colour orange perhaps a little too much.

Eventually they reached the top of the stairs, with Joe panting from the sudden rush of exercise. There was a large double door at the top, with a sign that said that you needed to push to open. Joe tried, but unfortunately it appeared to be locked. They both tried to throw all their weight against it, but it stayed strong against the onslaught. They were both panting when they finished, and Joe glared at the locked door, kicking it aggressively before he began the long traipse back down the stairs.

“It was always a long shot. Guess we will just have to think of a new strategy.” Bran moaned as they began the journey. It took them longer to get down than it had to get up. “Whoever the killer is they must have been here before we arrived. No-one could have got up to that door without us realising after Grav died.” Joe nodded as Bran said this, agreeing with what he said. The killer had locked all but one of the exits before they came in, and had no doubt locked the front door after the last of them arrived.

“Flats and Assy arrived last.” He muttered to himself, and Brandon picked up his thoughts. “Maybe thy are working together. They could easily have locked the last door themselves when they arrived, waiting for the last guest to get here before them. What reason would they have for killing Grav though? I don’t remember either particularly disliking him.”

“Grav’s death may have been a means to an end. It might not have been him that they were targeting. We should investigate this some more. It could be an important lead. Don’t tell any of the others, if there are two murderers there could easily be three or more.” Then they heard a noise, a scream, not of someone dying, but still of someone in pain. They ran to see what it was, hoping they could catch this murderer red handed.

-

It was Coupe. They found him knelt in the corridor, holding a picture in his hands, sobbing into his suit and moaning under his breath. Matoro stood behind him, and Flats ran around the opposite corner at the same time to them. GIR, Sega, Wach, Assy and Nail were all absent, and who knows where they had got to. Flats was supposed to be with Nail though, yet clearly he had ditched her at some point.

“I don’t know what happened. I told him to come with me into this room, but he didn’t follow. He was perfectly sane when I went in, but then I heard him scream and he was all like this.” Matoro himself was babbling now, though not as badly as Coupe. Bran pulled him away whilst Joe and Flats knelt next to Coupe, trying to calm him down.

The picture was of a man celebrating. There was nothing particularly special about him, beyond his multi-coloured shirt that stood out, especially considering he was wearing plain brown trousers. He was with three other men, and they all held some form of alcoholic drink. The one on the furthest left looked like a young Coupe, but the others were indistinguishable, as their faces had been blurred out for no given reason. Neither Joe nor Flats understood why this picture had made Coupe, who was usually so relaxed and calm, react like this. Maybe it reminded him of something bad from the past, or it could just be that the stresses of their current situation had finally got to him.

“Flats, I’ll make sure this room is safe, then we will have to transport him in there. We aren’t safe with us all gathered out her exposed on a corridor, and Coupe is in no position to defend himself.” Joe said, getting up and quickly heading into the room behind them. He came out after a few seconds, and helped Flats haul Coupe up and carry him through to the room. He also eased thee picture out of his hands, and, to his surprise, Coupe offered very little resistance to this.

The room was a mess. Chairs were strewn across the floor, creating a haphazard mountain in one place, and the room’s computer’s screen had been smashed in. The keyboard had been yanked out and was hanging from the light that hung over the room. This was probably a cruel joke, since the last thing they had all seen hang was their friend.

Coupe’s eyes widened as he entered the room, and he pushed Flats to the floor, wrestling free of Joe’s hands in the process. He rushed forward to the keyboard and pulled it down from its place, almost bringing the light fixture down with it. He cradled the keyboard for a few seconds, before using his fingers and nails to dig into the keys and pull one of them out.

“I have found you. After so long I have found you. Phineas forgive me for I have found it.” He turned back to the group, as they all looked on in shock. He had cracked. He was kissing a key from an old computer’s keyboard. Matoro and Brandon walked in at that point, with Brandon giving Joe a questioning glance. It was only Matoro who understood what was going on, as he called out in shock and terror.

“That’s…that’s Coupe’s enteryr key. The one that Steeler gave him when he took over the wiki. He lost it years ago, said he' d probably given it to some girl whilst drunk. Don’t you get it? Remember the poem. One found his lost toy!” As he shouted this out Coupe started to claw at his throat, panting and struggling for breath. He fell to his knees, blood coming from his nose as he died. Soon he could no longer breath, and the others dared not go near him. He fell onto his side, and before he died said a name.

“Phineas…”  Ten Hated Wikians, all known for pushing at the lines Coupe would find his lost toy, and then there was nine