yeah, halfway, almost. halfway through chapter two of act two, and there's probably gonna be three acts. woohoo! anyway, I'll combine Celine and lyrics commands. the part should be done tonight 

INTRODUCE SELVES ==>

Counsel with the mayor seems interesting, and it would be cool, on a more personal level, to know Aberdeen's dad. Sauntering up to him and introducing yourself seems like a good idea.

YOU: Let's go talk to him.

Sam: Hard pass. Veto, honestly. Let's go before he sees us, okay?

You look hard at him. He has that focused look of absolute blankness. 

Wren: Dude, your dad is great. What's the deal, man?

Sam: You don't live with the guy. No offense, but you don't know the.. depths of his... I don't even know.

YOU : You seem to be having some difficultly trying to express this. 

Sam: Exactly! The guy is an enigma! 

Wren: Sam, I've been thinking, and I've come up with five separate violent crimes I would commit in order for your father to be my legal guardian instead of my Grandpa. 

Diana: Is he.. the victim of these crimes?

Wren: Deen, you have such a good grasp on the inner machinations of my mind.

Sam sighs, tilting his head at Wren.

Sam: Okay, yes, he's definitely a better guardian than your Grandpa, but honestly, Diana, your parents are great, Alex, your mom seems nice, Tracy... I don't know your parents.

YOU: mmm :/

Sam: That's valid. But anyway, my dad is just... Weird. He keeps these stone tablets with these rules our family is meant to follow, he taught me to sword fight when I was, like, three, which... That cannot be safe, and you remember my thirteenth birthday.

Wren tries to stifle a smile.

Wren: Sam, here's the thing. That was really funny.

Diana doubles over laughing.

Sam: You guys suck so hard. I can't even look at either of you.

Wren: Sorry , sorry. But... It was so funny. The snakes were what clinched the deal.

Sam: Formative childhood trauma. 

Diana: F... For me it was the clown paint.

Sam: I really hope something bad happens to you.

They keep laughing at the terrible experience you have no former knowledge of, until Wren stops.

Wren: Look, dude. We'll just leave him alone. 

Alex: Too late. I think he's seen us. 

Sam turns paler than normal, somehow. His father is limping in your direction, waving the claw. 

Mr Aberdeen: Hey kids! Funny how we happen to be on the same beach.

YOU: Hello, Mayor Aberdeen.

Mr Aberdeen: Hey, kid. Don't think we've met? 

YOU: No. I am Tracy Peixoto. One of your son's friends.

Mr Aberdeen: Is that so? Hey kid, your social circle expanding?

He ruffles Sam's hair. Sam does not respond. He ruffles harder.

Mr Aberdeen: You kids hear there's a school dance soon? Should be fun. 

Alex: Is that right? 

The Mayor smiles as he turns to look at Alex, but you catch something calculating in his expression.

Mr Aberdeen: I've never seen you before either, but by gum, you look like a Hawthorne. 

Alex: I'm Wren's cousin.

Mr Aberdeen: Yeah? Alice's kid, huh? You know, I knew your Grandfather when I was younger. I guess he was younger too, not that you could tell. That man has been old for a long time. Your mom looked a whole lot like you. Still does, give or take an eye. 

CHANGE SUBJECT==>

You can kind of see what Sam meant now. It's not so much what he's saying, more the overly familiar way he says it. You look at his trash bag and claw. 

YOU: Picking up trash, sir? How very civic minded of you.

Mr Aberdeen: Oh, yes. For my garbage art. 

YOU: ... What?

Mr Aberdeen: Waste not want not!

Sam: Tenet number seventy-six. 

Mr Aberdeen: Seventy-eight. I guess Old Man Hawthorne was right this time around, yeah? You kids...

He doesn't stop smiling, or drop the genial tone.

Mr Aberdeen: You kids are in way over your heads.

Wren: ...

Wren : Excuse me? 

Mr Aberdeen: Wren, Diana, Sam. I've known you since you were small. Trust me. You cannot do this.

Huh.

What do you say? Or do?

ASK FOR CLARIFICATION==>

That sounds... Not great. But it could be unrelated to what you assume he means... Probably best to ask him and be sure that he has ill will. 

YOU: Sorry sir, but I am not certain we understand what you mean.

Mayor Aberdeen: You understand fine. But I'll play along. Let's see...

He sits down, right there, in the sand, and smiles winningly up at you.

Mayor Aberdeen: There once was an old man. He was, with no disrespect intended, a thoroughly unpleasant individual. But one day, he decided to have children, and, well, I assume he found a willing woman. Not sure. He had three daughters, and adopted a fourth for good measure. And then he became... Utterly convinced that some grand purpose awaited them, as well as two others, friends they had made. When they were all around seven he starts teaching them to fight, and preparing them for a grand confrontation. It's messy, and hard, and a terrible childhood for all six of them. See where this is going?

Wren: My mom... 

Mayor Aberdeen: And Alex's, and both of Diana's parents. Yes. And I happened to be a very lonely child in a big manor, just down the road. Of course I tagged along on a few... "Adventures."

He stops smiling, for the first time since he's spoken to you.

Mayor Aberdeen: Flash forward a decade or so. Three of the four daughters are dead. One of the daughters has lost an eye and skipped town. I, on the paltry number of adventures I managed to sneak my way into, have seen things that make me shudder to think of what lies beyond our collective reach. Your grandfather sent the kids to fight something, and it absolutely bodied them.

You grimace, turning to your friends. Wren and Diana both look fraught with emotion, hearing something you doubt they wanted to hear much about. Alex has the familiar look of a person who no longer cares much for the details. Sam has his trademark Worryingly Blank Expression. Thing you had heard about gave you this general idea of what had happened to their parents, but the details are still upsetting, especially to them, you wager.

Mayor Aberdeen: And this thing... It seeks me out. It makes me promise not to interfere with It's will. It... Offers me things in return. 

Sam: Dad. I'm honestly begging you not to tell me that you MADE A DEAL with APOPHIS.

Mayor Aberdeen: .... Tcccchhhhhhhh...

Sam: Dad. He is pure evil. In a literal sense, he is actually pure evil, physically. I... You literally just talked about how He killed three of your friends!

Mayor Aberdeen: Look. We all make hard decisions in life-

Sam: No. Dude. Why are you like this? This isn't a teachable moment. I can't take this seriously at all. You are equating making a deal with the liter God of Evil, with a hard life decision?

Mayor Aberdeen: The alternative is him killing you. 

YOU: What could possibly convince you that He would uphold his end of the deal?

Mayor Aberdeen: To be honest with you, I wasn't sure. But he's the house. The house always wins, kid. Every incarnation of the Six has died at his hand. Do you honestly think you'll be any different?

Alex: Better to die fighting than as a coward.

Diana: Alex, I recall a time when you thought that way of thinking was stupid.

Alex: Character development, yippee. It won't save me, but whatever. Trying to put some work into it.

Diana:  Do not sell yourself short, Alex! 

Mayor Aberdeen: Maybe I wasn't clear enough. Okay. YOU ARE ALL GOONG TO DIE UNLESS YOU STOP MESSING AROUND WITH LITERAL ELDRITCH GODS.

He's getting angry, and you can only really see a few ways out of this.

>FIGHT

>STAND YOUR GROUND 

>RUN AWAY 

Top

top.

FIGHT ==>

It's the look in his eyes.

You sometimes have trouble discerning a person's emotional state, but what they're thinking, the logical (or illogical) processes that run through their heads, in times of crisis, they reveal themselves to you.

Because he isn't thinking, not really. Mayor Aberdeen is stressed, and frightened, and his mind is racing in circles. He looks desperate. Like he has absolutely no idea how to defuse this situation. When people feel like that, they can get violent. You've seen it happen. 

You stand very still. Sam breathes heavily, his shirt with the icon of a broken record flapping in the wind, over his, frankly unhealthily skinny body. Diana fidgets with her leather jacket, Wren solemnly beside her like always. Alex glances at you. He nods slightly at you. You have no idea what that nod signified, so you nod back.

Mayor Aberdeen makes the first move. It isn't the movement that matters so much, but the sharpening of his expression. All he does is reach toward the grabber with the hand not already holding it, but he does so with such murderous intent, that you feel forced to react. You reach toward a long but relatively light looking piece of driftwood, and quickly grab it, swinging it madly into his head. It makes a hollow thudding sound, and he cries out.

Hitting him turns out to have been a good idea. He staggers back a bit, and pulls a thin sword out of the trash grabber.

Wait, really? It was a case for a sword? Ridiculous.

He jumps forward, and looks at you evenly, before cutting the piece of driftwood.

Sam scatters to grab a piece of driftwood, clashing it against the sword. The flat end of the sword knocks it out of his hand, and Sam looks at his father. What happens next takes a couple seconds, but it seems to last forever.

Almost instinctively, Mayor Aberdeen slashes the sword at Sam. Somehow, the cut aligns perfectly with the scratch on the record proned on his shirt. Maybe that means something. Probably not.

The fabric tears. Skin breaks too.

A wave crashes. You hear Wren gasp. 

Mayor Aberdeen pulls the sword back. There's the faintest traces of read on it. You turn to Sam. You see your angular face reflected in his glasses. 

And Sam's dad gets this look on his face. This desperate, hopeless look. Not sorrow, exactly, not guilt either, but a primal, vicious cousin of the two. A despairing realization that he has just done something that he can never, ever undo. That after the cut heals, and it won't be that long, it isn't deep, something else will remain cut. 

And Sam's dad stammers something out, raising a hand in a desperate attempt to look fatherly and caring. He throws the sword aside, and a wave breaks over it.

Sam's face doesn't change, except that he lets out this low, keening sound. A wail, maybe, but not quite. Not a sound someone who's hurt physically would make. Pure despair. 

You grab his hand and bolt. The others bolt too. You don't look back. Sam does, and he speaks in a low whisper.

Sam: He isn't... He's not following us. 

YOU: Okay.

You don't stop holding his hand, even when Alice shows up to drive you home, or when Wren and Diana explain quietly that Sam might be staying over for a bit longer than anticipated, or when the climax of the song Free Bird finally approaches. 

And you're still holding on to him when you reach the house, and the iron gates swing open, and Diana tries to distract people by claiming that Con Air is a good movie, and Wren forces everyone to watch it to prove that this is not the case. 

And when he leans over, muttering an apology for how sweaty his palm is, and tells you that you're allowed to let go if you want, you don't, because he doesn't, and you figure he needs someone to hold onto. And you can fill that role.

And eventually the sun goes down, like it did the day before, and the same way it will tomorrow. John Malkovitch says not to move, or the bunny will get it, and something feels very profound about the whole thing. What it means, you certainly couldn't say. 

Whatever. Pontificating won't save you. But it's something to do.

Initiate timeskip: select character 

~~

yo! i will be in Spokane for a funeral until next week, but then parts will resume. just want to thank all of you for helping me do this, because i don't know how i would function otherwise. hopefully i get some sort of closure. if i do, maybe i'll stop being so darn mean to my characters! 

seriously, it's been a tough time, and i can't overstate how grateful i am. sorry about that downer ending :| things will get better for these crazy kids. pick a character and fear my return 

yo, i'm back. funerals suck. but i guess i got some catharsis so... eh

~~

For once, things don't start in the morning. It's the afternoon, and a young man stands in a bedroom. The young man is you. You're him.

BE SAM ABERDEEN ==>

You're name is Sam Aberdeen. You have to keep reminding yourself of that. You're standing in a bedroom, not yours, just one of many guest rooms in Hawthorne Manor. Your safehouse, a whopping quarter of a mile from your actual house.

Okay, you're intentionally being petulant. Yes, you're here to hide from your dad, who metaphorically stabbed you in the back and literally stabbed you in the front. Yes, he's definitely aware of where you are. But there's an iron gate separating you. And Antimony is always around, usually a couple others as well. And you haven't left the house in a couple weeks. You're safe as houses. Probably.

You absentmindedly scratch the scar on your abdomen. That Doctor Enoch guy did a remarkable job stitching you up. Just like how he fixed your arm earlier. You don't feel a thing.

You don't feel a thing.

The first couple days after it happened you felt this weird, animalistic sadness. Clutching to Tracy like a child, staying around as many people as you could. Crying a lot, not sobbing, thankfully, just the tears. No sniffing either. Couldn't stop your eyes though. The implicit inability to go home, ever, was too much to bear. Tracy helped a lot. Didn't talk, just held on to you. Diana, Antimony and Wren were clingy and weird, but they meant well. Alex kept his distance. 

You had felt pretty bad, but now you don't.

You take your shades off . 

Then you put them back on. 

Off.

On.

Off.

On again. Where are the others? Shopping for clothes for whatever that dance is tonight. That's right. You're not going, obviously. You and Antimony are going to stick around at the house, like the prisoners you are. Probably watch Fargo again, since Wren has pulled her into her bizarre Coen Brothers worship.

That was mean, and you didn't mean for it to be. You suck so hard. You need to work on yourself. 

You scratch the scar again, and practice keeping your face completely still.

There's a knock on the door. You don't respond. You keep your face still. The door opens.

It's Wren's Grandpa. 

What do you do?