Sir Thighpiece

I didn't mind the distraction when Rocinante came by, scratching at my door in lieu of knocking. I've been up most of the night, staring at E-Bear's teddy bear and trying to think how I could use it to track her down. But there's just no way... I even dug out Executor's tie... Even if I use it though, there's no telling how many of his alts would show up on a map and who knows which one might be keeping her

"Hey. Can you help us? We need our memories back," Rocinante said when I opened the door. Hard to get used to a talking dog, especially when she doesn't feel like any dog I ever met. She feels like Thighpiece, like she's not even there, just an extension of him.

"Well, I guess I can try."

I followed her out to the remains of the garden where Thighpiece was staring up at the birds through the branches of Trina's oak from his perch on the wall. There's not much left of the garden, thanks to Thuggee and MASC. Most of the wall is gone from the construction vehicles going in and out and only the corners where the wards were buried are still noticeable. Even the electric fence is gone. MASC is building a more extensive fence around the entirety of the property they purchased. Brood has only mentioned in passing that they'd like me to add "spooky" defenses when they're done. I get the feeling magic isn't really a thing MASC has much use for... not that I haven't dealt with the same bias my entire life. I made sure they didn't touch the tree though.

"How did you lose your memories?" I asked.

He shrugged and Rocinante said, "We don't remember."

"Well, what's the first thing you do remember?"

"Waking up... in a field," Rocinante replied.

I sat on a pile of fallen stone. "Have you ever been hypnotized?" He shrugged. "OK, well, we can try that, I guess."

I know the principles of hypnotism though I've never actually... uh done it to anyone. So I hope what happened afterwards isn't my fault.

I told him to lie down and stare up at the tree, to focus on the sunlight playing through the branches and listen to the sound of my voice. As Rocinante's voice changed, becoming soft and thoughtful in response to my questions, I led Sir Thighpiece back through his memories until we hit a blank wall. Nothing I said could get him to go beyond it until I told him to imagine it actually WAS a wall and visualize a door in it.

"What's on the other side of the door?" I asked, worried he might claim it was locked and not sure I could get him to trust me enough to believe there was a key in his pocket.

Rocinante's words came like a tidal wave. "Sailing, sailing. Africa. Weird dimensions. The Other Side, but only a week. A junkyard... A girl's face with rainbow hair... A fat cop with a mustache..."

"Stop, stop... okay... do you see a path? Follow it and tell me what you see along it."

"Utah, DC, Africa, Maine... back to D.C... five people in business suits. They come and go."

"Who are they? What do they look like?"

"Three men and two women..."

"Can you talk to them? Are they your friends?"

Sir Thighpiece shuddered, and Rocinante gave a howl that sounded like "Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

"Wake up," I said, jumping up from my seat. "It's alright. It's just a memory."

He continued to convulse while Rocinante whined. Suddenly he woke and her crying cut off like a switch had been thrown. Sir Thighpiece looked at me and then around at the tree and the woods nearby before jumping and running to the house.

His stuff is gone. I climbed up to the third floor where he'd been sleeping and he's taken his duffel bag and gone. I wish I'd at least had time to send Trina up there to stuff it full of food, but I hardly thought he'd run off like that.

Nightmares and Teddybears

News of my death has been largely exaggerated. Sorry Doc that I gave you, and everyone, a scare.

Nothing happened but a bad dream... Thanks to Executor. The bastard finally got into my head and left his little message. He has my niece- a little insurance against my "good behavior," whatever that means.

I went out into the woods and opened my mind, calling to Shadowchild. Usually if I go into the woods, I open my mind to the trees and become like one of them. Plants are really the only reason I can sleep at night. They buffer me from the minds of everyone else. Being an empath sucks that way and having our home full of invaders who aren't particularly happy to be there doesn't help matters. Just saying.

I waited through the morning and afternoon and fell asleep probably sometime around when I set my post to go up, though I could "hear" the worry at the house before then. I don't normally just disappear. I tell people where I'm going and when I expect to be back. It's just courtesy and caution, considering, well, everything. Sorry I couldn't let anyone know what I was doing this time, but no one would have let me go.

At least I know where E-Bear is, even if I'm no closer to getting her back. I want you to know Executor, if you do anything to hurt or put her in danger, you'll wish Victor "ate" you. You give other people nightmares; well I will BE your nightmare. You don't mess with people I love to "keep me in line" and expect everything is just peachy.

The dream was short, and when I woke up, Ebear's teddy was in my lap. That's the only indication I have that Shadowchild came near. I'm sure she did all she could to protect my niece... I don't know why (considering she bit me), but I don't think she would ever let anyone hurt a child.

So I'm back now at Haven, questioned and begrudgingly accepted back into the security of the mansion by MASC.

I have to think... how I can get E-Bear back. I can't just leave her with that monster.

Into the Woods

I took Trina for her kitten this morning... There were only two left, a brother and sister, and she insisted we take both. "It's not right to separate them," she insisted, one in the box and the other climbing her leg. "See, he doesn't want me to take his sister!"

She put the box down and picked up the second kitten, setting him in the box beside his sleepy sister. Two cats were fine, as fine as one, and if it made her happy, there's little enough to be happy about in this world lately. Besides cats and other animals can sense when Slenderman is near, or so I've read in other blogs. If two kittens are enough to keep Trina safe and momentarily content if I'm not around, I'll get two kittens.




By the time anyone reads this, I'll be in the woods.

No, I'm not suicidal.

But it came to me last night that Shadowchild came to the house the same day E-Bear disappeared. I don't think that was a coincidence. Maybe if the MASC agents hadn't been so trigger happy, I would have known what happened, but so much was going on. It slipped my mind to even mention what I'd overheard to Brood, and now they'd probably stop me from going into the woods.

So... I'm going into the woods and maybe Shadowchild is still there. Maybe she can tell me where my niece is.

Talk to you later, if there is a later.

Gone

I thought about it a lot before I asked Brood to assign a MASC agent or two to escort me home. Do I trust them? I don't know yet. Maybe Brood's not so bad as I thought, but still MASC pays him and the other agents. Who's to say they won't pay them to kill us all in our sleep some night.

But that's unkind, and I'm basing it on what they tried to do to DeMii. Some people find it more... palatable to kill an unborn baby than to murder full grown people. Don't ask me why. People are all insane, all of them... it's just a matter of perspective I guess. What the majority holds as true and acceptable. Normalcy is more a matter of averaging everything together than any real state of mind.

And who am I to judge? Apparently MASC pays me now too. I have a prepaid credit card with a $1500 monthly credit limit which will reset the first day of every month. Brood suggested that I get it as close to zero at the end of the month as I can since the balance won't transfer. (Smart man.) $1500? I'm sure this month I can spend that on baby stuff for DeMii alone. She's going to need it sooner rather than later. All estimates point to the beginning of next week.

And yes, I'm just distracting myself here. Did you notice? Just like yesterday. I could have mentioned my niece was missing straight off, but I left it for last.  I didn't/don't want to talk about it, not that there's much of "it" to talk about. She's gone and that's pretty much the end of the story. I don't know any more than that. The police don't know any more than that. (Brood got me the reports.) My sister, I could beat her senseless, but it would resolve nothing.

So Brood sent two agents with me... After what my sister pulled the last time I visited, I wasn't taking any chances. And of course she flipped out as soon as I came knocking on the door. I waited while she spewed her venom at me and made snide remarks. China took it in stride, and Brian always looks a bit annoyed anyway, though he's been quiet and polite the few times I've talked to him. I asked a few questions once my sister had settled down and we left.

My sister is a self-serving, shallow idiot. She threw out the bear I doctored. E-Bear had been sneaking it into her backpack whenever she left the house. My sister saw it and decided the neighbors would talk about how ratty it was and tossed it. The next day, E-Bear was gone. End of story. Nothing to say who took her or even where...

Of course *we* know what happened... Fat lot of good it does anyone.

I'm not giving up finding her... I'm just at a loss as to how to proceed. I could have asked to see E-Bear's room, but I imagine my sister would have laughed herself silly if I'd tried. Maybe I can get Brood to go in "officially" get something belonging to my niece so I can try a tracking spell.........

And then... the Bombshell

Brood asked me to come by at ten this morning. I expected a wait because he always makes me wait, but not this time.

His room/office has just metamorphosed into the nicest place in the house. At the very least, all his furniture, what I could see of it, matches. The same can't be said of the rest of the house, filled as it is with thrift store castoffs. They drywalled everything and painted and partitioned his office off from the rest of his room, probably to give him a bit of privacy if he feels like being a slob once in a while.

It's like walking into a room in another house altogether.

He offered me a comfy chair and closed the door behind me. It was like being interviewed for a job in some anonymous office (not that I've had a job interview in forever). I expected some kind of file... he's always opening files and showing people disagreeable things, it seemed. But there was no file for me... though now that he had a desk, with actual drawers, I assumed he could be hiding it somewhere.

That assumption flew out the window when he said, "I want to apologize."

Say what? "Okay?"

"This is my job, you see. Shocking a suspect with things that might upset them is an interrogation tactic... either they become cool or they say something without thinking." He spread his hands. "Either way, we have them."

"That's really not any kind of excuse," I said. "You know what these people have been through." I would have gone on, but he cut me off.

"I know. I'm sorry. I don't like it any better than you, but... even you must admit that it would be very easy for a proxy to get in here and pretend to be reformed or not a proxy at all."

I don't have to admit anything, I thought to myself. But he had a point.

"When MASC first sent us to watch you, everyone assumed your group was a joke. I mean, come on? Defenders Against Slenders?" He smiled.

"It was a joke," I growled, feeling a little picked on. "We wanted people to laugh. Laughing makes a person feel better. And it makes people underestimate us too, if you want to know the truth."

"Well that worked out better than you expected. You were right about us watching you before Thuggee's attack, but we weren't really paying much attention that day. We only had one guy on active duty and he was... distracted."

"Zarambo," I said, and Brood did a double take.

"How did you know?"

"Lucky guess. Some people tell me I'm psychic, but it's always a lucky guess. So what happened then? He had to get permission to fire when he finally noticed Thuggee doing his best Wizard of Oz impression?"

Brood shook his head with a slight smile. "Eh, no... his backup had gone to get them dinner. He saw the trees flying around and phoned it in. By the time we got close enough, there wasn't much left we could do."

"I don't want Zarambo back here. I don't like him. The others are tolerable, but he was an ass. If you bring him back, he's sleeping outside... in the woods." I wasn't feeling generous. If the bastard had been paying attention, maybe Trina would still have her eye. Maybe Shady's orderly wouldn't have died. Maybe the rest of us wouldn't have been beat up so badly.

"Don't worry. He's transferred out," Brood didn't look too upset about it.

"So this meeting... you just wanted to clear the air? That's fine. Just talk to me before you talk to anyone else about their 'secrets,' and no more nasty pictures. We'll get along fine." I think I put my hands on the desk to get up at this point.

"Er, no... not entirely. Couple things, actually. You said you wanted to privy to reports?" he asked.

"Yeah, something like that."

"OK, I can do that, within reason, as it pertains to you and your people... or if my boss wants your input." And then he proceeded to ask some very specific questions about the "Ark" and what I meant by the "Flood" in my posts, which I won't repeat here for obvious reasons. I did confirm a few possible sites for his people to examine, and hopefully if they do make the effort to visit them, I get to see the report. But most of them are out of the country and apparently they're an organization that believes in getting permission? Or that was just a line. I wouldn't really know if such a report was kept from me, so it's all moot.

We talked about DeMii's baby for a bit (almost called her Lulls... it's a habit I'll try to break). They don't know why the baby is growing so fast, which is why they over reacted. Considering the kinds of creatures we've had to deal with- Victor, Prosper, Executor, Thuggee, random proxies- they just decided it couldn't be good and overreacted. They didn't even bother to tell him what they were planning, just authorized a line of credit for me to use... which will apparently be replenished monthly. Nice, that. He promised that they wouldn't try anything like that again, which remains to be seen.

And then... he told me that my niece is missing.

DeMii

I think that I realized there was something different about "Lullaby" as soon as she and Doc got away from Advocate. She was more.... meek, more polite, and a lot more apologetic, often about things that weren't even her fault. I overlooked it because, well, she'd been through such a trauma and then MASC was acting like every stereotypical, government-funded bastard organization in the history of the world, and then the baby...

I believe her, DeMii as she'd like to be called now, and I'm sorry I put her in that doll body. I wish it had been Lullaby instead. Not that I ever saw Lullaby do anything bad, but some of her habits... well, it explains a lot. The only explanation I can come up with for why DeMii and not the invader, Lullaby, was transferred to the bean and then the doll was that Lullaby was in ascendency and probably would have erased DeMii someday, probably sooner rather than later.

Of course, Brood wasn't having it. I beat them to the punch in reading her blog, which is why I got in there before MASC could take action. Apparently they know about some of Lullaby's extracurricular activities. They found some bodies in the woods...... They showed DeMii pictures of three men, but it was the last one that made her cry, "Daddy!" and curl up in a little ball. I swear she's all belly now, nothing else.

I dragged Brood out of there and told him that his people were to leave her alone. They could watch her from a distance, but otherwise they were not to speak to her or approach her for any reason. If they wanted to talk to her, they have to come to me first. I am sick to death of his "shock" tactics when talking to my little family. I know he's doing it on purpose, just to see if the surprise will jar something loose. It's inhumane.

Gonna go talk to Doc now... I'll leave the Lullaby story to DeMii to tell. I'm just going to warn him to keep an eye on her so MASC doesn't try any more funny business. Not that he isn't all ready after the hole attempted abortion.

They're home

Trina and Tim and their new friends are at the mansion. I'd be plying them with icecream if Sir... Thighpiece hadn't already treated them. It's a translation of Don Quixote's name from Cervantes. I don't know what his real name is, and I don't think he does either.

I practically ordered him and his... companion to stay, and before Brood could even look at the talking dog cross-eyed I told him in no uncertain terms what would happen to him if something happened to her. They'll be staying with us until I can add at least twenty pounds to Sir Thighpiece's frame (and I;m not sure how thin his friend is under all that fur). The poor man is skin and bones. I haven't forgotten the kindness he did for poor Emma either. I fed him and Rocinante (not Betty) and the kids and Lullaby and Doc and even Drake and Ecko wandered in to see what was going on. Sunshine and the dog are getting along better than I expected. It was an impromptu party and for once it was us keeping the MASC people up and not the other way around.

Sir Thighpiece left to find someplace high to sleep, assuring me that he'd stay as long as I wished. I put the kids to bed... good thing Brood cleared out of their room on Sunday. Not a moment too soon, apparently. I'm just glad everyone's okay...

Now there's just Shady and Lucas to worry about, and well, everyone else whose blogs I read. Getting a little worried about Lucas. He hasn't posted in a couple days. At least I know Shady's doing okay, so far.

Too good to be true

I should have known... well I'd had misgivings all along -whenever they tried to get me to stay home, rest... you're working too hard, yada yada.

Please. Taking care of Lullaby is actually a stress reliever, not a stress inducer. It's all you MASC idiots who have been pushing my buttons from day one.

Newsflash, I was already on my way back from shopping and dropping the food off at the mansion. Every time you've taken us to your super secret base, I've managed to suss out a little bit more of where it was. It pays to have a woman in need of frequent pit stops due to a baby sitting on her bladder. What bits of the journey I missed, I expected luck to smooth out.

I didn't start out thinking Lully was in danger. Mostly I just wanted to show you MASC people up. You're not as smart as you think. But when I got Doc's call en route, well, I'd say about 45 minutes of my trip spontaneously vaporized somehow. I don't even remember most of the drive. All I remember is driving through the checkpoint, ignoring the guard in his little hut, and storming through the halls of the facility. If anyone considered stopping me, they thought better of it as soon as they saw my face.

I am not someone anyone wants to mess with when I am angry, and you do NOT mess with someone in my care. When I saw the doctors leaning over Lullaby, ready to take her baby, I think I was angrier than I've ever been. Whatever the deal is with its accelerated growth, it is ultimately her body, and her choice.

And yeah, I blew up some lights... never did that before. Usually I just made them overheat and die, not actually explode. I guess it's just lucky no one got any glass in their eyes, eh boys?

I told one of the men to bring Doc while I struggled to slide an unconscious Lully into a wheelchair. One of the doctors or nurses moved to help, but I stared them down without really seeing them. Everyone kept their distance after that, and no one offered to escort us back to the mansion. Figures they'd try to pull this crap as soon as Shady was out of the picture. Well, jokes on them. Shady and I have more in common than they thought. You don't fuck with people under my protection. Capiche?

Doc was pretty out of it when they brought him out in a wheelchair of his own. I think they sedated him after they took Lulls. They both slept the entire way home. Hard to keep a good fury going when you're surrounded by snoring and muttering.

Yes Doc, you snore, and you were mumbling too, though I couldn't make out much of what you said. Some about Advocate, some about Thuggee. Just don't take any chances if you ever run into either of them.

Lully... I know sleep-talking is usually pretty confused, but some of what you said... well, it's got me worried about that damn bean.

Brood was all apologetic when we got home. Said he had no idea what they'd had planned. He'd been back at the house, supervising the set up of his office, the gun locker, and the monitor room, duty roster with one man down, etc (which was true... he'd been there when I dropped off the food, and I guess he didn't call to tell his friends I was back on the road. So maybe the first part was true too. He told me he'd get all of Lull's medical records by tomorrow and see to it that we were able to go to a doctor of our choice. MASC will pick up the bill and pay the doctor enough to be discreet about the whole thing. He says he wants to make this partnership work, and his bosses want to make it work, and the thing with Lullaby was just an unfortunately misunderstanding.

Like hell it was. They intentionally offered me money for food to get me out of the way so they could pressure Lullaby into an abortion. The ONLY reason I came back to the mansion is because we don't have anywhere else to go. But if they try anything this shifty again, I'm calling local and national newspapers to the mansion and staging a press conference about it all, MASC, Slenderman, the works. I'll find a way to get them all out here even if I have to lie through my teeth. I will find a way to make them believe, and you MASC people will be S.O.L.

You're making me old

Yeah, so you got me MASC. Shady was gone all along. I'd take her threats seriously and stop bothering us. Shady's a volatile girl. And the fact that you went and tried to question Sunshine about her absence shows you really haven't made any attempt to do your research. He knows basically three words, aside from our names, which makes you all idiots for the attempt. Even Sunshine thought so from his smirking.

And oh yeah, found a white hair today. Thanks ever so much for the stress.

Tired/hungry/tired/hungry

All day long, I've had the MASC agents asking after Shady. Look, she's my friend, but I am not her keeper. I have enough to do to take care of Lullaby. Go look for her under Sunshine's tree. You know the tree that your agents are always trying to harass him out of?

We're running low on everything, and Lullaby is starting to resemble one of those kids you see in those commercials. Do they give those kids extra food for a year to star in their little extortion scheme? I sure hope so. Or maybe I'm just feeling pessimistic.

No matter how much I feed Lullaby, she gets thinner and her belly gets bigger. It's all still mostly amniotic fluid from what the doctor told us, but that doesn't make it less huge. They've figured out that the baby is growing an average of nineteen days to every one of ours, making the baby a little less than 100 days old (or about 13 weeks). At this rate, Lully will either starve to death, baby and all, or she'll give birth some time next week. Hard to say which, when MASC is being grudging about the food and about giving me money to buy food. At least they brought in a bunch of protein shakes for when I absolutely have to sleep and food runs low.

Every day we make the trip to the MASC medical wing for an examination. Every day they try to talk Lullaby into staying. Today they tried to use Doc being laid up in a bed with his injuries as leverage to get her to stay. "Don't you want to be near the father of your baby?" Every day they try to talk me out of coming, so I can stay home and cook for her (since it's a three hour round trip).

FML, we need a maid service and a cook. I can't keep up. These MASC agents are slobs and need to get out of my living room. I don't know how Lullaby can sleep through the construction, but considering she has to wake up every few hours just to eat, I guess she's adapted. At least we have a full bathroom again, expanded and with more toilets and shower stalls, but in much the same place as before... I keep expecting a ghost whenever I go in there. Thankfully the orderly seems to have moved on.

Brood's set to move into the front bedroom. All his furniture was delivered yesterday AND IS SITTING IN BOXES IN THE LIVING ROOM ALONG WITH ALL HIS LACKEYS while outlets and lights are installed in his room and other places we neglected when Crowley was here. Today many long, wooden crates arrived and were taken into the storage room across from our eventual monitoring room. This means we are officially armed. I don't know with what. The door is padlocked. That seems counter intuitive. The CCTV is set to be installed tomorrow. The first floor is now structurally sound again... all new windows, many new outlets, and overhead fluorescent lighting (yuck). They're tearing apart the second floor starting Monday, I think. I'm almost looking forward to it if it will get all these people out from in front of my room.

So.. very... tired.... and hungry. When did I last eat... 1:30 I think, when we got back from MASC, and I made Lulls soup...

My Life... is a soap opera...

Yeah... sorry no post yesterday. I'm sure you have a lot of questions. The answer to your questions is what gave me a migraine, making my previous post title prophetic. Not the first time I've been accused of being psychic, but...

I am in a house full of children.

Not that I really blame them for anything, but I don't like feeling so helpless to help the people I love.

Lullaby is pregnant, and this is not your normal over in nine months kind of pregnancy. At this rate, she'll starve to death before she's full term... Because since Tuesday, Lullaby's little "bump" has doubled in size. She is constantly hungry because her body is sending everything to the baby. They're scheduling all kinds of tests, but so far the baby seems completely normal despite its accelerated growth. So yay? I have theories but...

So who's the daddy, you might wonder? Some supernatural nightmare? An alien? A god?

No... apparently it's Doc. Doc did it. Doc's the only one she's ever slept with (in Advocate's basement?! I'm sure my face made all kinds of interesting contortions when Lulls told me that), and apparently they love each other very much. Enough that when Agent Z decided it was a good idea to call Lully fat, Doc beat the ever-loving snot out of him. He's just lucky I wasn't in the kitchen at the time because I would have made Lullaby a meal and told him he was no longer welcome in the house. Brood be damned, I'd have sent him into the woods to spend the night.

Of course, I didn't know He was haunting the woods.

For some reason, Doc felt it was a good idea to go for a walk, alone, outside the wards. And this... is a first for us. We've had issues with proxies, but this is the first time Slenderman has ever attacked anyone staying here. I can't fathom why he would pick on Doc. He's one of the most inoffensive people I've ever met, hospitalizing Agent Z not withstanding.

Gods, he was in bad shape, and Lullaby was in near hysterics when she found him. Brood was out of the house with Z because Doc REALLY did a number on him. Apparently Z has been trying to transfer out for a while. At the very least, he won't be back for a couple weeks. So that left Agent Joshua in charge, and he was not inclined to go looking for Doc. Of course, Lullaby climbed out of her window to find him, and there he was on the edge of our former garden. Least our wards are still working... I hope... I mean Slenderman could have thrown him through a window or strung him up from some of the construction vehicles currently parked inside them, if He really wanted to make the effort.

So... Doc is at MASC headquarters for his injuries. Agent Z is in some undisclosed hospital (apparently he as a wife who wouldn't be able to visit him otherwise... a likely story), and Lullaby... I'm feeding her as much and as often as I can and making sure there are plenty of leftovers, but I'm afraid if this pregnancy doesn't stabilize, she's going to end up hospitalized before long too. I... want to suggest an abortion because the only thing I can think of is that this has something to do with the bean, but she's so happy...

Headaches

Sorry for the second post of the day.

I had another "meeting" with Brood. Actually, I told him I'd seen Victor's blog, and I knew what happened to make his people paranoid. He scrambled to open his computer, and I had to wait while he read Samuel's most recent post. Maybe I was only operating on the assumption that they read everyone's blogs? Or maybe there's a bit of lag between posts and someone reading them and condensing them into a report to be distributed to everyone who "needs to know." Who knows how their bureaucracy works.

(Note: I despise bureaucracy as much as I do authority. I do not like being told what to do, and I especially don't like to be told what to do by a piece of paper. I don't know how these military types do it.)

Brood still hasn't got word about what he's supposed to do about our little chat. I don't know if I should pity him or beat him. At least he seemed honestly apologetic. Then I told him about Lullaby's little issue and asked about her seeing a doctor. Well, he seemed honestly concerned and promised he'd let me know by tomorrow when she could be taken for an ultrasound and whatever else the doctor decided once he'd examined her.

So he's not entirely made of ice. That's good to know.

Guess I'll update you folks as soon as I know more.

Military Intelligence

So... I finally found out what happened at the mansion while MASC was interrogating us. If they had just told us that Victor came and Slenderman was here, I'm sure we would have been a lot more understanding about our trigger happy armed escort. But no, I had to find out from Victor's blog, or I guess Samuel's now.

I don't even know how many MASC agents died in the fight, but it sounds like a lot. Yeesh, no wonder they've been so paranoid. This is where communication would be VERY helpful, Brood! All I can do is shake my head here. This is idiocy... military intelligence at its finest.

In other news... the thing those guards were shooting at, I overheard some of them talking, though they clammed up as soon as they noticed me. Hard to keep secrets when there are thirteen (oh... lucky us, just realized :/ ) people in a space that used to seem bigger. I guess they figured the construction would mask their talking, but I heard enough to come to the conclusion that what they saw... was Shadowchild.

And if she's here, what's going on with my niece?

Well, I'm going to confront Brood with both items and see what he says. Wish me luck.

I'm calling your bluff...

So..... the meeting with Brood. I don't know how he is outside of work, but he's a "cool customer" when he's on the job. He was conveniently busy when I tried to see him after I got Doc to his room. Avoiding me much? So like I said in my previous post, I spent the day trying to comfort Doc. That's a hell of a way to find out you're all alone in the world. Least he has all of us, though I'm sure it's small consolation.

I tried to get in to see Brood again Saturday morning, and he'd slipped out to go to some meeting with his boss, leaving Agent Z in charge. Ugh. I'd rather deal with Brood. Z's got this whole, "I've got a gun, so I can be as snide as I like" thing going on. At least Brood's just cold and evasive, not condescending. I've always believed that if you can't laugh at yourself, you don't deserve to laugh at anyone else.

Then around 9:30 a couple of the agents cornered "something" in the woods behind the garden oak (which miraculously survived the destruction of the garden) and started shooting. Whatever it was "got away." Probably lucky for them because I don't think Prosper or Roadrunner would have been impressed with bullets, and Brood would have been down two agents. I was not privy to the description, though the two of them had been bent over clipboards up until around noon, writing out their encounter. The bigger concern is that it could have been Trina or Tim or who knows... some unknown runner, looking for sanctuary. They can't just go shooting up the woods without knowing what they're shooting at!

Brood finally came back around one and complained of not even having had time for lunch when I tried to talk to him. So much for being on the same page in regards to setting each other straight.

So I made him lunch. Ha! Don't avoid the cook by complaining you haven't eaten.

When I appeared at his door, with food, I guess he figured he had to take the bad with the good. "Don't worry," I said when he looked from the soup and sandwich to my empty hands, "You eat; I'll talk." He scowled, but what could he do?

I won't bother to recreate the discussion here because frankly, that's a pain in the butt. Trying to remember everything said, exactly as it was said, adds another hour or so onto typing this out. So I deleted all the Me/Brood stuff, and I'm just going to tell you what happened.

So while Brood ate and looked unhappy (man probably has ulcers), I told him I understand his position, but we're not military and we're not government. He can't expect us to obey orders without question. Shady will stalk the perimeter, and if his people continue to be as trigger happy as they have been, they'll probably end up shooting Sunshine before long. We're people, and we've been bullied enough by outside forces that we don't need it from our own government. If instead of trying to herd cats, he'd talk to us, things would probably go a lot more smoothly than they have so far. I could see him relaxing as he ate. I'm pretty sure he expected a tongue-lashing.

Too bad for him, I wasn't done. He and his boss want something from us, and I told him they're not going to get it if they don't start treating us like people instead of a job. To that end, he's going to have to start treating me like an equal, especially in front of his men. He needs to start sharing information instead of demanding it or using it like a weapon. Before he confronts anyone else in the house with anything, he has to run it by me first. I don't want to see someone "escorted" to his room like that again. I want to be privy to any reports his people make about anything that goes on here or that concerns us; I want to know that our armed escorts are there for our protection, not to enforce some kind of martial law.

His response boiled down to- What do we get out of it?

I wonder what kind of poker player he is....

Anyway, I told him it should be obvious what's in it for them. They play nice, we play nice. They keep acting like assholes, and we clam up and don't give them anything. You know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist or even a student of psychology to realize that if you give respect, you get respect. Or maybe it does... the whole military intelligence meme. haha

(I kid... lighten up, Brood. Would it kill you to laugh?)

So it was kind of left at "I'll let you know what I think once I talk to my superiors." Which is... wow... just... way to make command decisions there, Brood. So they pay you to let them do your thinking for you? I mean, you could have at least agreed to the mutual respect thing if not the information sharing.

Bleh... hate dealing with "authority figures."