Tomoe was running, and he didn't know why. He was flying just earlier, he could swear, fleeing for his life from a psychotic clown. Now, more than that, he had seen a masked man earlier wielding a machete. Tomoe looked back now and again, seeing if he could guess vaguely where the man might be. But with how dark things and with how foggy it was... how could he hope to? He swore that it was easy for him to see in the dark, with Darkvision being blessed upon him. More than that, he wasn't usually so fearful. And yet... why? Something about this place compelled him to forget all of that and run like a helpless damsel. "W-Where is he...?!", he would mutter to himself, taking a stop to turn around and look behind him.

~Ch ch ch ah ah ah~

Tomoe saw nothing behind him, so he relaxed his tense shoulders. He would turn around to be back on his way to move forward, only to see a hockey mask, with murderous and killer eyes behind the mask glaring at him. The masked man was tall, and wielded a machete that already had blood on it.

"N-No... did you do something to Kratos? Gunter?!", Tomoe shouted out in surprise, stepping back to avoid the swing of a machete that was attempted to be swung at his head.

The masked man was slow, and didn't move with any kind of grace or competence. He had a name tag that read "Jay's Son" and Tomoe had to scratch his head in confusion. "Who the hell is Jay?!", Tomoe shouted out before turning to run away, not wanting to let himself get distracted; the masked man would follow at a slow pace.

As Tomoe ran for a while, he tripped and fell over a very obvious and very minor branch on the ground, snapping twigs as he fell in a panic to the ground. Like a bat without echolocation, he was rendered completely helpless, looking around for any sign of Jay's Son.

Gunter finds himself walking around in the woods, looking at his magical 'lacrima device' as he plays some game called 'Monster Pets GO' trying to catch the newest Snormoo. As he wanders through the woods, looking for the Snormoo on his device, something red drips on his phone from up above. He wipes it off while saying "What the fuck? Trying to catch my Snormoo here." as he looks up, he sees his friend Kratos, skinned alive, hanging upside down with a clown, his head buried in between Kratos' legs. Sucking the life energy out of Kratos, dripping crimson. Gunter looks at the clown as he raises his head, and Gunter says "He's eating Kratos... and then he's gonna eat me! Oh my goooooood!"

The clown interrupts Gunter after by saying "I'm not gonna eat you, just suck you dry" as he licks his lips. Gunter drops his lacrima device and takes off into the woods, screaming "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!" as the clown hops down from the tree, running after Gunter on all fours while saying "Oooooooooh~!"

Gunter runs faster. As he does, he sees a small rock in his path. Being that he's moving too fast, even though he could easily run around it, he trips and rolls down a hill, taking a huge tumble uncharacteristic of him, clumsily falling as if in fear. The clown stands from the top of the hill, looking down at Gunter as he falls and does not follow, even though he easily could. As Gunter reaches the bottom and could easily stand up, he crawls, being that he's so injured. As he eventually stands up after wetting himself, he looks around for dear life, trying to find out where this clown went, and then he sees it. Not the clown, but some masked figure with a machete and a name tag that says "Jay's Son".

Gunter stands there, fear in his heart as this masked man slowly walks towards him with a machete raised high, going ch ch ch ah ah ah, like some idiot. Maybe it's his mating call. Either way, Gunter's scared. He takes off into the woods. Eventually he comes across a familiar face. An also scared Tomoe. The masked man is still behind him, keeping his slow pace.

Tomoe saw Gunter, and stood up. As he stood up, his vision got funny. Not "ha ha" funny, but more like the world was draining of color slowly. Granted, in the dead of night, it was already troublesome to see - it wasn't as if he had Darkvision or anything like that. That would be too convenient. He was sweating in fear, looking at Gunter with worry, panicking. "You ran into Jay's Son, too?! We're so fucked! We gotta find a way to get out 'n stay out, y'know?! Look at ya, covered in dirt 'n piss! And Kratos is god knows where!", Tomoe shouted in distress, seeing Jay's Son behind Gunter, approaching from behind very slowly with his machete raised.

~Ch ch ch ah ah ah~

"Let's go! Go, go, go! We can't beat him, so we gotta run!", Tomoe exclaimed, knowing in his heart that he definitely wasn't an S-rank mage, and didn't even have a weapon to rely on.

Tomoe would continue running, not caring if Gunter could keep up, until he eventually found a small shack in a nearby graveyard. Maybe he could hide in there? If he could get inside, he could hide and be safe! A light of hope in a dark forest! One that he definitely couldn't see through normally. He moved to open the door handle, but found it not cooperating. The handle wouldn't budge, presumably locked, and he didn't have the strength to break it down. "Open, goddammit, open...!", he'd scream while shaking the door handle.

He had to find a key. Well, him or Gunter. Hopefully they could find a way inside before Jay's Son caught up to them. Even now, he could hear that machete-wielding man approaching from behind. He didn't need to look. Death was upon him...

~Ch ch ch ah ah ah~

As Gunter hears Tomoe say that he doesn't know where Kratos is, Gunter says "Man, I saw him strung up in a tree, getting sucked dry by some clown vampire" as he says this, ch ch ch ah ah ah and Gunter shouts "OH GOD WE GOTTA GO HE'S GONNA KILL US RUUUN!"

As they run and Tomoe tries the handle and jiggles it a bit, Gunter goes to look for another entrance. Gunter sees windows and many possible entrances as he runs around the entire house and shouts "There's no way in! I can't find the key!"

Gunter looks back and sees the figure slowly walking towards them. He's maybe 10 meters out, which sounds like not a lot, which is actually 32 feet out. Gunter shouts "There's no time! He's close, he's on our asses! We gotta get the fuck out of here!"

As Gunter takes one step off the porch, he falls, howling in pain and fear, struggles to get up. "Oh my god, I fell! Tomoe, help me up, buddy!" Because the man is so close behind them, a mere 30 feet out, Gunter begins crawling under the house, leaving Tomoe to his fate of machetes and clowns. As Gunter is under the house, he finds two dead bodies of random travelers, and like a little girl, Gunter screams "AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Eventually Gunter starts bashing at the floorboards from underneath with his fists, prying open the boards. He sees it, it's coming, he sees it! The clown is slowly crawling towards him from underneath the house. He scrapes up the floorboards from underneath and just manages to get into the house from the floor. However, the clown grabs his ankle at the last moment, and holds on tight. Gunter lays there, nails dug into the wood, and screams "HELP MEEEEE!"

As Gunter begins crawling under the house, Tomoe refuses to give up on the door. Surely, with enough persistence and effort, it will open. Even without a key, if he just fought hard, surely he would emerge the winner! With pure willpower alone, determination, and a brilliant, strategic mind, Tomoe sees a crack in the door. It was budging! Yes, just a little more, and...

"Oh shit, it's a push door.", Tomoe blurts out casually, "breaking character" for a moment, as the door easily opens with a slight push and a light breeze.

~Ch ch ch ah ah ah~

Tomoe looks behind to see Jay's Son about 5 meters away now, arriving at such a fast pace as he walks at a brisk pace with his machete raised, having literally no way to go faster! That was what was so terrifying. Why did he move so slowly, yet feel so fast? What kind of supernatural energy made everybody so stupid as to want to run and trip in fear or have premarital sex by the lakeside? It was a terrifying mystery with no answer. Whoever Jay was, his son was one in a million.

The Joyan flooded into the house, slamming the door behind and locking it and the deadbolt near the top of it. He turned around to see Gunter being dragged down, nails digging into wood. "Don't worry, man, I'll save ya! You won't drown in fluids like Kratos!", the panicking Tomoe would shout, pulling at Gunter, trying to free him of the clown's grasp.

At that moment, as that was happening, a machete would pierce through the door, ripping a hole out of the feeble wooden frame. Pulling out the rusty, bloody blade, a hockey mask would peer itself inside, staring down Tomoe and Gunter with a glare that could give weaker men heart attacks. He didn't speak, for Jay's Son was a silent and slow killer. The hockey mask would then duck back out of the door, and the crazed psychopath would start slashing at the door outside, breaking away more of the frame with each impact.

"Got any bright ideas, Gunter? We're gonna get skewered from two sides at this rate!"

With Tomoe's assistance, Gunter manages to kick the clown right in the face. The clown, like a snake, slinks back into the darkness while saying "I will get youuuu~!" Gunter looks around the room frantically as Jay's Son is hacking away at the push door. He looks at Tomoe and says "Either we deal with machete guy, or we deal with the clown. Those are our options of escape... or, wait, wait, why didn't we think of this one? I have another idea!" With that, Gunter ran over to the window, which was unlocked. Instead of opening it, he bashed it open with his sword. "Alright, we're gonna have to climb out of this window with the broken glass shards!"

With that, Gunter climbs through the glass, cutting his hand, shouting "Quick, Tomoe, come on!" just as the machete killer breaks down the door and starts making his way in. Gunter would extend a hand to help Tomoe out as fast as possible. If Tomoe was too slow though, Gunter would get the fuck out of dodge, running deeper into the woods.

Eventually, Gunter finds a path and decides to run down it; it must lead to civilization! As he does so, he doesn't see the sign that says "cliff edge ahead" even though it was bright yellow and had lights on it. Eventually as Gunter's running, he comes across a man. A lone wanderer. "Howdy, friends!", he says. Gunter's like "Run, man! We got some crazy clowns and fucking machete wielding dumbasses!"

The man says "Don't worry, I'm an officer of the law. I'll protect you!". Gunter and (maybe) Tomoe would run past this dude. The gunner would aim directly at Jay's Son and pull the trigger, realizing that there was no ammo in his gun. "Oh shit, I'm out of ammo!" the guy would shout as Jay's Son would just swing his machete and decapitate him immediately. "So much for an officer of the law!" said Gunter. And then, they'd arrive at the cliff.

They were at the edge of a cliff, Tomoe accepting Gunter's hand of help to get him through the window and being stabbed by a few broken shards of glass - minor flesh wounds, all. Some guy went on about being an officer of the law, but that wasn't important. This shit was serious - nothing that a guy with a gun could solve so easily. They were mere humans being chased by demons from hell. Demons...?, Tomoe thought briefly, a split second surge of adrenaline coursing through him before vanishing, making it to the edge of the cliff next to Gunter.

Hope was dying, and so were people. It was just him and Gunter now. They'd been through a lot tonight, but this was truly the most terrifying of all. The scenery was full black and white now, with occasional dots in Tomoe's vision as if rolling film was over his eyes. On the left, a clown was approaching towards Gunter. And from the center, Jay's Son was on a warpath towards both Tomoe and Gunter. They were almost at the end of their rope, when Tomoe thought again to a few moments prior.

Demons... demons...? DEMONS...!, Tomoe thought, a vein popping on his forehead, ready to burst as he looked towards Jay's Son.

He'd compared the machete wielder to a demon, and realizing that, what if he really was a demon? Jay's Son... Satan... it sounded close enough. And with this demonic presence? This masked man had to be a demon. And the thought of that temporarily roused Tomoe from his cowardly state. He looked at his fist, then back at the machete man.

His fist, and the machete man.

His fist...

~Ch ch ch ah ah ah~

~Ch ch ch ah a-~

The strange noise was cut off when Tomoe dashed forward with renewed vigor and the look of a fearless cultist, ready to put the fear of the Dark Goddess into a nonbeliever. "I'M GOING TO SHOVE THAT MACHETE UP YOUR ASS!", Tomoe shouted with ignited rage, his hatred of demons flowing, and decked the masked man across the face after dodging his last machete swing.

Jay's Son crumpled to the ground, not shouting out in pain but clearly affected, as his mask started to break but didn't show his face; all Tomoe could see before running past the wounded machete psycho was the right side of his deformed face, a single eye staring back.

Tomoe didn't know what Gunter was up to or care in the moment - after a brief return to form, the Joyan was back to his Samhain-affected brain with the black and white and the cowardly demeanor. He'd run like hell, with no more demonic presences to attack him. Yet even as he ran, ran and ran, escaping the cliffside and clearing the Garden of Rest entirely and leaving the entire area to return to a more comfortable place in Samhain... he could still hear the sound in his mind. The evil wasn't finished, and he knew it would return some day. And when it did, he'd need to be ready for it. Somewhere in the dark, a collapsed Jay's Son would put his mask back on, somewhat cracked, and begin his pursuit once again, seeking out the next clueless travelers to scare and slaughter.

~Ch ch ch ah ah ah~

---

- EXIT -

As Tomoe takes off into the woods after decking that machete wielding guy, Gunter has been left at the end of the cliff, the machete knocked out. But the clown - the clown can be seen, making direct eye contact, looking Gunter dead in the eyes while playing with his pants. Or at least, what was inside. Gunter knew what he must do to escape this clown. He couldn't possibly run after Tomoe and escape the same way. He wouldn't make it. Gunter did the only sane thing a man could do - he sprints for the cliff, and jumps at the last minute in dramatic slow-mo, making a belly-out position to hit the water flat, for who would die like that? That would be stupid.

The clown runs after him, but doesn't jump at the cliff edge, while saying "I'm gonna fondle you!" Gunter hits the water as if it was cement. But he's quite durable. The clown, on the other hand, hits the rocks at the bottom and turns into a liquid. A mangled meat sausage on the rocks for the gulls to eat and pick at. However, Gunter now faces a new threat. The vast open waters. Gunter now must swim his way to shore, across the water, for it would be stupid to just swim close to the rocks and find a way up. No, he must go on a new journey across the waters, battling sharks and probably drowning in the process! But who knows?

Eventually, he comes across a boat with a man sitting there. The man helps Gunter up and says "Quick son, get on board! You'll drown out there!" Gunter gets on and says "Thank you sir, it's been a long night. You wouldn't believe what I've dealt with." and that's when he notices it. The name tag on the man. It says "Jay". Before Gunter can escape, a chloroform rag is put over his mouth, and the last thing that Gunter sees is a man smiling as he puts a sack over his head and pulls out a hammer.

---

Exit