Halloween Event (Pt. 5): Investigating The Origin of The Flame

--- Joshua ---

Unable to help himself, he found his eyes drifting towards the broken window the burning man had first appeared from. (Really where did this guy come from?)

Stepping forward he found the world around him once more fading to black before he found himself in the air just in front of the window.

“Oh, shit!” He cursed, his hands shooting out and grabbing onto the broken window. And immediately regretting it as the glass started biting into his hands. “Fuck. Might’ve been better off with the fall…”

(Well… when in doubt double down.)

With that thought in mind he proceeded to pull himself through the broken window and into what looked like a VIP area of some sort. Or rather it looked like an old office with significantly better furnishings than the rest of the party, as well as several bottles of alcohol lying about. (Interesting…)

A quick glance around confirmed that the broken window was the only damaged entrance to the room, even if the actual entrances were looking a little scuffed up from the party goers quick exit. Of course this quick glance also revealed a half charred and still burning corpse thrown against a wall. (Very interesting…)

He couldn’t help but grimace at the sight as well as the smell drifting from the corpse. “Right… just… going to avoid looking at that.” He told himself, as he looked at anything other than the dead body that was making him a little light in the head.

(Going to have to get used to it at some point, kid.)

Taking a deep breath to steel himself, he shook his head clear and double checked the flames spreading from the bodies, noting that while they had burned a bit of the wall they didn’t seem to be spreading all that far from the body itself.

Frowning at the oddity, he took a peek out of the window where the girl was still fighting the burning man rather than taking the smarter route of escaping while she could. (Then again who am I to talk?)

What was important about the picture outside of the window though, was that despite the fact that the burning man was throwing out flames left and right the train station itself wasn’t in a state one would call ‘on fire’. (Crispy, maybe spicy, but definitely not on fire.)

“So what makes you so special?” He asked the less aggressive burning man in the building.

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He closed his eyes and sighed. “I’m going to have to investigate the dead body aren’t I?”

(Probably a safe bet.)

Hating the sarcastic little voice in his head, he forced himself to get as close as he was willing to a dead body. (Which admittedly wouldn’t be close enough to touch it even if he reached out and stretched a bit.)

Something rolled under his foot.

Glancing down and spotting something very familiar, he couldn’t help but blink. “No way…”

With a gentle kick he watched the glass vial at his feet roll over to the open hand of the body, where a patch of flame was burning some unknown substance on the ground. (Come on, you know exactly what that substance is.)

He gave the burning body a frown and another once over before spotting an odd bulge in the man’s pocket, where some of the flames seem to have gathered. “Well, after this long in the flames whatever’s in that pocket is probably fried… And before anyone says anything I am not stupid enough to stick my very flammable hands into a fire like that.”

(I wasn’t going to suggest that.)

Taking a step away from the body, he looked around for anything that could pass as more concrete evidence for his current theory before spotting a briefcase with several burn marks lying just beneath a visible hole in the wall. And if one ignored the damage done to it, it was probably the most professional looking thing in the room, far more so than any of the designer bags that had been abandoned during their owner’s panicked escape.

After picking it up he found that the case was fairly sturdy -as well as familiar for some reason- and had somehow managed to remain locked in spite of what he figured was the burning man’s best attempt at opening the thing.

With a flex of his wrist he took what little Ink he had in the tank and forged it into a Ink Knife that he slid into the edge of the case, before using it and his enhanced strength to cut through the locks and open it. A feat that sad knife, sadly did not survive as it burst in a small explosion of ink.

“Fuck… I think that was the last of my tank too…” He couldn’t help but grimace.

(Yeah, need to be more careful about preserving our resources.)

Shaking his head with a sigh, he opened the case and found it to contain a foam material of some kind with a large number of little slots in it, of which only *four* still held their contents.

With a deft hand he reached in and plucked out the handful of Malice vials before holding them up to the light. “Guess you explain that weird feeling the Burning Man was giving me.”

Three of the vials were exactly what he’d been expecting, looking the same as the red and black vials the Malice Doctor had been giving him for the past month or so. The fourth however was different in the fact that it could be mistaken for a glowing blue, if not for the faint traces of green that seemed to slither through it.

He slid the other three vials into a pocket, but held this one up curiously. “Now you I’m interested in.” (Is this even Malice or is it a different drug altogether? Was this guy a dealer for the Doc or was he just selling Deviant drugs to-)

A crashing sound interrupted him from slotting the last few puzzle pieces together and he found himself turning around to find the Deviant girl had been thrown through the window and was now laying limp against the wall, her body covered in a number of burns, cuts, and bruises.

“It occurs to me that leaving you to fight the monster after your Ult failed, probably wasn’t a good idea…” He admitted to the unconscious teen before turning to the window as a massive burning hand latched onto its edge. (Right, need to think quick.)