As the real Arthur plopped to the ground, blood seeping from underneath him, I smiled with satisfaction.
"Alright." I said to myself, "I wonder what i'm gonna do with Sophie. For now, I need to get rid of Bart's body."
I thought for a moment.
There was already a known serial killer on the islands. I could just teleport to a spot on the island, and throw Bart's body there. But Arthur... I had to do something else entirely.
I grabbed Bart's body & warped to Halloween Town. More specifically, I threw it into Kyle's shop. I thought about how funny it would be for him to find it the next day.
Quickly leaping back, I grabbed the real Arthur Leo, and eventually formed a decision on what to do with him.
I grabbed his body, and blinked all the way to New America, wanting to dump him in a random forest.
As I did so, I struggled trying to let him go.
Is this real? This guy...
Was I actually regretting killing him a little?
I dropped him at that instance, and realized why.
It wasn't a son or daughter that I was sad for, it was Arthur Leo. I learned a lot about the kid from pretending to be him, but even then, it was a shocker that I regretted it a small amount.
Whatever.
As I thought of the kid, rain began to pour down.
Weird, it was perfectly sunny a second ago.
I quite liked the sound of rain. It was peaceful, and beautiful. Watching the animals play, the birds singing in the distance.
It was... truly peaceful.
I enjoyed the nature. From below, I saw a bird crying for its mother.
Unfortunately, mama bird couldn't help. It had died on the way to the nest.
A single pang of guilt hit me. The poor thing was going to die, wasn't there anything I could do?
I had to figure out my next course of action. The real problem was this stupid orb.
I momentarily paused, hearing a sound from far away. It sounded like a forest fire.
How? It's pouring out here.
All of a sudden, a massive surge of dark black flames rushed out to greet me. I could barely dodge, and only then got nicked.
At that instant, my mind flashed back. I was told that the black flames would brand anyone, and that person was destined to die a horrible death.
Before me, was a giant demon, bright red with horns and a tail. He was smiling sadistically, enjoying his torment of the flames.
The fire spread from my fingers to my right hand. It continued to charge faster, towards my whole arm.
Yet, the rain wasn't getting rid of it. Why?
It wasn't like the flame couldn't be extinguished. I had to do something. I was going to die!
A thought came to mind. I teleported back to the city, arriving at a restuarant, and quickly grabbed a fire extinguisher.
As the people eating stared, they all started running away when they noticed the flame.
"GET BACK, YOU FUCKING PRICKS!!" I screamed as harshly as I could!
If even a single one of these fucking losers tried to stop me, I'd have killed them all!
Maybe it was similar to some sort of electrical fire, rather than a natural fire. In that case, water would do very little to stop the spread.
I quickly broke a fire extinguisher off the wall, and sprayed myself full blast.
Finally, the fire stopped, and a weird feeling came over me. The stuff that came out of the fire extinguisher started suffocating me.
Static electricity jolted up my arm, and I noticed that the white foam from the extinguisher was freezing cold.
My eyes lost all moisture, and I began to cough up my own air, breathless.
I couldn't even speak, but the fire extinguisher that I used on my arm spread around my whole body, and I was suffocating.
I'm going to...!
I decided on something in that instance. I was going to teleport away. I could teleport away, leaving everything im touching here. That not only includes the fire, but my clothes, any small part of my body that isn't mine. If there was even a small particle of food on my teeth, I'd leave it.
I did just that, teleporting into the dorms.
Looking at my arm, I sighed. New scarring riddled all of my arm, and I realized that it would never be healed again. It was permanent. My arm was still able to move, but the skin started flaking off slowly.
My arm was covered in second degree burns, dark red blisters were covering my arm in odd welts and bumps, and parts of my arm were swelling up. I probably needed medical attention, but I didn't care. Ignoring the wound was always my go-to decision, and I would continue to do so until my death.
I had bigger problems. I went to the bed, and sat down.
Trying to rip the orb off, I cried out. "What the fuck was that!? Why was he there! I just teleported there, and some demon shows up?"
It was too weird. The situation aligned so perfectly, there was certainly some kind of foul play, and I suspected the orb had something to do with it.
"Yes, I teleported him there. It made the plot more interesting. Things were getting boring." The orb said.
What the fuck! This thing is a liability!
I didn't even bother to take it off. This thing controlled me. I lost the one thing I cared most about, my freedom! This stupid thing was actively harming me!!
With demons hunting me, and just randomly showing up and nearly killing me, I couldn't properly concentrate.
"What was that power? Those flames… they were nothing like before. That demon almost killed me!" I yelled at the orb, my voice still shaking.
The orb pulsed with a deep, ancient light.
"That entity was no ordinary demon," it intoned. "He is Beelzebub, one of the great Seven Princes of Hell. An eldritch God from the dawn of creation. In the old war of the 9 circles, he slaughtered twenty demon kings and walked away unscathed."
Great! I thought, sarcastically.
Out of the frying pan, and into the fire! I'm already getting hunted by powerful demons!
I decided to ignore my swelled arm, and focus on the thing that really matters. Cleaning up the crime scene.
I got bleach & cleaner, and washed away all the blood. Doing all of this, while trying not to use my injured arm. What would my excuse be this time?
"Hey, can you heal me?" I asked the orb.
For a few seconds, the orb paused. "Sure."
At that very time, a faint blue light shown throughout my body, and my arm had magically restored itself to its original state.
To be honest, I didn't expect the orb to help me. Considering it was capable of anything, it was possible, but it seemed to be against me.
From the fact that it actually healed me, I learned a crucial piece of information - The orb's agenda wasn't to make me suffer, it was something else. I just couldn't be sure...
Regardless, I started cleaning up.
For my first time covering up a murder, I was surprisingly good at it. I grabbed bleach, and warm water, slowly wiping off the blood, and eventually made the entire room look spotless. If nobody knew what happened, nobody would notice.
Then, I searched for Arthur Leo's techbook. It took me 30 minutes, and I began to give up, until the orb told me something.
"Jesse. Look underneath the bed. One of his floorboards might hold the answers."
Skeptical, I did what it said anyway. To my surprise, one of the floorboards from underneath Arthur's bed was... loose.
Not just loose...
It was completely detatchable.
"What the...?" I came to a startling conclusion—Arthur Leo had secrets to hide as well!
But what was he keeping from others that he didn't want them to find out about?
Underneath the detatchable floorboard, I found his techbook, and a journal of some sort.
As I flipped through the pages, I realized that it was completely blank.
Who the hell keeps a blank notebook?
Someone who has something seriously fucked up to hide. I also found a small, dainty looking key underneath the floorboards, as well as...
No. This couldn't be real.
It was undeniable. Underneath the floorboard was a... human skull!?
It was indescribable. Just who in the hell was this kid? Why'd he have so much to hide? What was with the human skull that he had.
I guessed that he might have been the serial killer, but dismissed the thought. If he were the serial killer, that Bart kid would have been killed by him. But I was the one who killed Bart. Arthur Leo just didn't seem like the kinda guy to do that.
At last, I looked at Sophie. What was I gonna do with her?
I could kill her, or I could throw her somewhere into the ocean.
Just as I decided to kill her, and bury the body as well, the orb stopped me in my path. I was unable to move!
"You are not allowed to kill her. I will remove her memories of this day." It beamed the thought into my head.
"What the fuck," I shouted. "You have to make everything more complicated. I need to kill her so that I can make this work! I need this dorm room to myself, she can't be left alive!"
To that, the orb shone. "Wouldn't it be more obvious that she died, being right in your dorm, and the guy who wanted to kill you also turned up dead. You should be thanking me."
I gritted my teeth. As much as I hated it, the logic was actually good.
Regardless, the situation's been remedied temporarily, and I couldn't afford to complain about a good situation.
I thought of what to do next. I was going to relax. I needed this after the shit I went through.
I pulled out a small blunt from my pocket, giving myself a toothy grin.
Being able to teleport anywhere has it's advantages.