Chapter 31 His Name is Johnny Snakehands

“From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the- wait? What do you mean this is copyrighted? Since when did we give a shit about-” - By someone who was taken by them.

Aiden sat down on the karaoke coach, a plastic bag beside him. A song blaring as Jun sang. He was wearing his Daycore mask, and the extra deep voice made him perfect for the song.

Aiden opened the plastic bag, revealing a new phone underneath. It was cheap, less than fifty dollars. Plugging the charger into an outlet, he started charging it, as well as inserting his phone card.

The screen soon lit up, it usually transferred all the contacts and data from his previous phone, but his was empty. No friends or family on the contact list, no photos taken or kept. Only a few business calls, nothing of the phone spoke of the owner having a personal life.

Movement around him, Darius saw his phone and suggested exchanging numbers.

By the end of the night, Aiden’s phone was filled with phone numbers and pictures.

Aiden breathed the cool night air, waving goodbye to the last of the others. Walking under the moon, he found his path easily. Ranpo, not having night vision, kept to his shoulder as Aiden stepped into the light of a street lamp, right beside an old and graffitied bus stop.

“Let’s hurry home,” Ranpo shivered, snuggling closer into his neck.

Aiden nodded, “Lemme check the timetable.”

‘Do buses still run this late?’

He glanced at the timetable, placed on the street lamp pole. It was graffitied heavily, scratches obscured the original writing. Pushing up his glasses, he took a step closer, trying to make out any sign of the timetable underneath, but something kept catching his eyes. The scratches, they formed symbols, simple lines, squares, circles and stick figures. But there was a pattern, the same six symbols along with a time.

Two lines, parallel to each other with an X in the middle.

A stick figure whose arm was an arrow, an X over its head.

A rectangle with one opened side, a squiggly wave in the middle.

A stick figure with its head crossed out.

An X over a line, with an O underneath.

A stick figure holding a cross and gun.

And a time.

‘3:23.’

He took a step back, looking around to read the graffiti.

‘DON’T ENTER THE BUS THAT COMES AT 3:23.’

‘DON’T ENTER THE BUS THAT COMES AT 3:23.’

‘DON’T ENTER THE BUS THAT COMES AT 3:23.’

‘DON’T ENTER THE BUS THAT COMES AT 3:23.’

‘DON’T ENTER THE BUS THAT COMES AT 3:23.’

‘DON’T ENTER THE BUS THAT COMES AT 3:23.’

‘DON’T ENTER THE BUS THAT COMES AT 3:23.’

‘DON’T ENTER THE BUS THAT COMES AT 3:23.’

All repeated the same phrase.

“Finally,” Ranpo spoke, poking his head out of Aiden’s jacket. “It’s here.”

Aiden snapped to attention, somehow he didn’t hear it coming. An utterly normal-looking bus, its display showing it was one that stopped right by his home, slowed until it stopped right next to him. Right beside the bus stop.

“Are we getting on?” Ranpo asked, irritated.

“Ranpo,” Aiden quietly began, “what is the time?”

“Huh? Check your phone, how would I know that?”

The bus door opened, revealing a balding, portly driver.

“Read the graffiti around us,” Aiden whispered, taking his phone out and opening it.

‘3:23 am.’

He glanced at the timetable again, seeing the symbols scratched onto the material.

“Are you getting on?” the driver asked in a gruff voice.

Aiden looked at him, not moving from his spot. Behind, there appeared to be passengers, but their features were indistinct, foggy.

“Hey! I’m talking to you asshole!” the driver yelled. “Are you getting on or not?”

Ranpo finished reading the graffiti and Aiden took a step back.

“Hurry up!” the driver yelled, “Hurry up and g̷e̷t̸ ̸i̴n̷.”

Ranpo shrank back, paper flesh folding as he hid in Aiden’s collar.

“Listen to me damn it!” The driver stomped off his seat, “YOU PIECE OF SHIT MILLENIAL WITH NO CONCEPT OF GRATEFULNESS FOR THE PEOPLE THAT WORK FOR A FUCKING LIVING! I SAID G̶̨̼̑͐E̸̹͍̍̑T̵̬̓ ̸̗̜̈̓I̴͔͓̓̎Ņ̷̨̀̈́!”

The driver’s form seemed to warp, his flesh twisting like a cleaning rag being wrung dry as he took another step forward,

“DON’T BE RUDE! G̷̛̗͒͊͒̚Ë̴̱͍̦̾̕T̴͕̮̤͉̰̱̃͗͊ ̴̧̜̺͎͙̿͒̉̊Í̵̬͕̑̃ͅN̸̜̣̟̽͑͋̾͝ͅ ̶̨̧̞͐̇̓̽͒T̸̡͚͔͚̦͐̓͗̈́H̶̬̲̖̩̜͑̐̈͐͒E̸̜̬̰̿͑̚͘͜͝ ̷̯͔͑̌B̷̤̍͗̊U̷̳̹̙̦̩͙̅͑̓́̀Ș̴̘̈̏̀̐̅͝!”

Aiden’s skin turned reptilian, cold, hawk-like eyes considered the man before him, Oros hissed on his arm, yet Aiden’s attention kept moving to those symbols scratched onto the timetable.

“I SAID Ĝ̸̳͔̉͝E̴̗̹̿̂̈́̑̂̕͝ͅT̶̢̨͇̣̪̝̣͚̏ ̸̨̻̮͙̗͚̝̋͂͛I̵̧͓̫̻̋͋̏ͅN̷̪̜̄!!”

The driver leapt, his form writhing like as if it were sown from living worms, and Aiden-

Paused completely in his tracks.

It was 3:24 am.

There was no bus.

Aiden kept looking around, eyes darting around like a hunted animal, every one of his senses enhanced to look for the bus that was just here.

But there was no bus, there was no driver.

“What the fuck was that?” Ranpo asked, his own head darting around, glancing at the shadows just as Aiden’s did.

Aiden’s eyes landed on the six symbols once again. Crudely scratched onto the timetable.

“This is a clue,” Aiden muttered before he walked right up to it. Memories flashed in his mind, a primary school, symbols taught, perhaps the most urgent subject he was ever taught, yet it was not his own memories that stole his mind.

“Bu learnt this,” he muttered, “this is the Wanderer’s Code.”

“What?”

“Like the hobo’s code, they warn of things. He learnt it in primary school,” Aiden answered. “The lines and X mean ‘Unsafe place’, the pointing stick figure with the X over it means ‘Do not follow’, the next ones mean ‘Do not trust’, ‘Not human’, ‘Danger on the other side’.”

“What does the last one mean?” Ranpo asked, gesturing at the stick figure with the gun and cross.

Aiden shook his head, “I don’t know, Bu was never taught that one.”

“But there is something more,” he whispered, “I can’t seem to take my eyes off them.”

“These did potentially save our lives,” Ranpo drily replied.

Aiden kept shaking his head, “No no, you don’t understand, it’s like my attention keeps needing to jump to them, as if… as if…”

“They are more real,” he realised, tracing the crude grooves with his fingers. “There’s Hume in these symbols, that’s why I kept noticing them. I can sense the increased density of reality here. Just like when we saw that fly Gate open, the Hume here is increased.”

Ranpo scrunched up his eyes, looking at the symbols extra hard, “I’ll trust you on that, they just look like normal symbols to me.”

“You can’t sense Hume or Bleed,” Aiden muttered, “of course they look normal to you.”

“Still,” Ranpo asked, looking out into the dark street, “what was that bus?”

Aiden paused, following his gaze. “It wasn’t something from another dimension,” he muttered, “I would’ve sensed the Bleed.”

“Then what was it?”

“I think…” Aiden began, looking at the moonlit street.

“I think that was a reason to walk home.”

Aiden closed the door, mentally wondering if he should pay the money to buy a proper lock.

Time and time again, he was reminded this world was not safe. There was stability, in the same sense a house of cards had stability, but he had just encountered a reason why many never made it back home.

But between spending a minor expense and future home invasion, he decided the latter. A dedicated invader wouldn’t be stopped by a mere lock.

Ranpo flew off his shoulder, shivering in the cold night air as he landed. “You should buy a lock.”

“Probably,” Aiden thought, before once again mentally comparing the cost of a lock to something he could jury rig himself.

“And don’t think it’s too expensive, I know you’re thinking that damn it,” Ranpo cursed, “I ain’t living here if some urban horror shit can just bust down the door.”

Aiden raised an eyebrow but did not comment as he took off his shoes and slipped on slippers.

He entered the living room, glancing at his room before shaking his head, he was still caffeinated, and the earlier scare… well, let’s just say he hasn’t yet reabsorbed the lizard tattoos on his skin.

“You can’t sleep either?” Ranpo asked, jumping onto a counter. “I don’t think I can either, at least not without nightmares.”

“Then what should we do?”

“Something productive,” Ranpo said, “we thought we had the specifics of your power down, but we clearly missed some things.”

Aiden nodded, “Many things actually, Oros?”

The serpent slithered on his skin, poking its head out of his right sleeve.

“Gimme a moment,” Aiden muttered, before searching the apartment for a spare scarf. He found a relatively old one, navy blue and well worn. It was Bu’s adoptive mother’s.

He put it away, instead, finding a forgotten and unused scarf behind Bu’s closet, it was bought in the summer, and forgotten then. It would serve.

“Oros?”

The serpent slithered off his skin, like paint dripping, the tattoo fell off his arm and onto the scarf. The soft cloth warped as it became shaped like a white serpent.

“That confirms it,” Aiden muttered, “you are definitely larger than when you were a tattoo.”

As a tattoo, Oros was barely the size of a wristwatch, but as it animated different objects, it became larger to match their size.

Glancing at Ranpo, he could see they both had the same idea.

Could he, or any other of Aiden’s tattoos do the same thing?

The answer it turned out, was no, as Aiden failed to get a ladybug tattoo onto a significantly larger origami version of itself.

“Bummer,” Ranpo murmured, “all the crazy abilities are on insects.”

“As fun as it would be to blast someone with a car-sized bombardier beetle, the main problem with that would be that insect respiratory systems don’t scale up that well,” Aiden murmured, “the last time insects grew abnormally large was because oxygen density also did.”

“You can spontaneously create venom from nothing yet you can’t make a tinsy insect be bigger?”

Aiden shook his head, “Not nothing, when one of the snakes I make inject their venom, I find it harder to remember what the composition of the venom actually was. I suspect if one spends their venom completely I won’t be able to get the knowledge back from the tattoo.”

Ranpo tilted his head, “How’d this never come up?”

“There’s just too many venomous creatures for it to really matter,” Aiden admitted. Aiden Lu grew up in Australia, and Aiden Bu grew up in post-apocalypse Ozzstraya, between the two of them, there was plenty of venomous experience. “My ability creates stuff when the tattoos animate something, but that cost is taken out of memory.”

Just like when he tested the rabbit against Oros, the rabbit memory was still wounded in his mind. When the flesh was punctured, the memory was punctured, when the venom was spent, the memory had no venom.

“But for the size thing, the opposite seems to be true,” he murmured, on his right arm, he manifested a disjointed grey appendage, almost like a tentacle, but with a nose like opening at the end. Reabsorbing it, he remembered what it was. “I can make my tattoos smaller, just like this elephant trunk.”

“So there’s a chance that Oros isn’t growing bigger but…”

Both of them turned to look at the white snake.

“Oros?” the serpent perked up at Aiden’s voice, “How big are you?”

It seemed to grow uncomfortable, coiling tighter and biting its own tail again, before it sighed and fell off the scarf.

Oros was a two-dimensional tattoo again, but instead of Aiden’s skin, it was putting itself on the floor and walls around it.

“Jesus Christ,” Ranpo muttered, before fluffing his wings, “is it right to swear in a god I don’t believe in?”

“Absolutely,” Aiden agreed, “because Jesus Christ.”

Oros was big.

At least eight metres in length and thicker than his arm, just by comparing it with real-life anacondas, Aiden suspected if Oros was a real snake he might easily weigh 200 kilograms.

The white snake swam around the room, slithering on the walls like a painting, before shrinking itself and animating the scarf again.

“Could I do that?” Ranpo asked.

Aiden was about to ask ‘What?’ before he saw what the crow was doing.

Ranpo’s leg left his body, becoming 2D and painting the wall beside him, “Ooooh. I can, but this feels…”

“Feels what?”

“Uncomfortable,” the crow answered with a pause. “Like my leg doesn’t belong to me anymore, can still feel it, but it’s like… wading in mud? I can’t describe it, but I dislike the feeling.”

He immediately completely left his crow body and became a painting on the wall.

“Oh yeah, this feels horrible,” he muttered as a two-dimensional painting. His voice took on an odd echo. “Like moving in vomit but the vomit is the entire world.”

His beak poked the inert crow body, his form once again flowing onto it and animating it. “Like even your existence is vomit, and you realise it’s vomit, and you start contemplating suicide because you realise how vomit it is. God, it just feels horrible.”

He touched the wall with his wing, which turned 2D again before he quickly took it back. And he repeated that again, and again, and again.

“God this feels absolutely horrible no matter how many times I try it.”

“Then why do you keep doing it?” Aiden asked.

“It’s like when a child touches a hot stove for the first time,” Ranpo explained, “it hurts and they snap their hand back because you know, classic knee-jerk reaction, but then…”

The crow paused before the body fell inert and Ranpo turned completely 2D again. He glided on the wall, disappearing behind the kitchen counter. Aiden looked around for him, before…

“Boo,” Ranpo said from the floor right behind him.

Aiden simply turned and stared at him.

“Ah, no fun,” the crow murmured before he glided back to his body. His painting like form completely covering the inert body in mere moments.

He did a few test movements, “As I was saying, it’s like touching a stove, but you realise something. If you touch the stove enough times you might just gain fire powers.”

“That’s a stupid analogy,” Aiden said.

“You’re stupid for not seeing the genius in it,” Ranpo answered. “Though I don’t think you can get a less intelligent creation to willingly do this.”

“Why not?”

Ranpo turned to him, “You didn’t experience it, you don’t understand how unbelievably wrong it felt. It was the closest thing I’ve ever felt that compares to you describing sensing Bleed.”

The crow shivered, “I don’t see any creature based entirely on instinct willingly subjecting themselves to this.”

Scarf Oros nodded in agreement.

“But you still did it…”

“Because it might come in handy,” Ranpo answered. “Existing in two dimensions while still retaining senses and speech? The possibilities are endless.”

“That’s why my stove analogy was genius,” he continued, “because an instinctual creature wouldn’t understand long term benefit, they would only feel the pain and discomfort and immediately pull their hand away, but a smarter creature?”

“A smarter creature can understand the potential benefits,” Aiden said. “Still, it is a stupid analogy.”

“It is not!” Ranpo defended.

“You’re teaching kids they can gain superpowers by burning themselves!”

“But isn’t that true? Aren’t manifestations formed from trauma and emotional stress?”

Aiden opened his mouth to rebut, but his jaw was left hanging there as he realised, Ranpo was technically right.

He slowly clamped his mouth, holding his head with his one hand as he realised, “Jesus this world is fucked up.”

“You’re just realising this?” Ranpo exclaimed, “You’ve run away from eldritch monstrosities, seen every single zombie movie get disproven, fought a hobgoblin to the death! And almost got murked if you had stepped into the wrong bus, all pretty much in the same week! And superpowers are when you realise the world is fucked?”

Aiden shook his head, “No no, I always sorta knew, but I keep on getting reminders that make me realise reality is even worse than my image of it. Like hearing about medical stories in the US, every single time you check it’s even worse than you realised before.”

“This world US or your previous world US?”

“Previous,” Aiden clarified. “I think this world US has its act together.”

“This world US is a feudalist union ruled by power-mad metahuman families that divides all citizens across artificial tiers and predetermines their value from birth,” Ranpo pointed out, not believing the words coming out of Aiden’s mouth.

“But I heard they have free healthcare?”

“That is true in the same way as saying cake in a burning house is still delicious,” Ranpo said. “Technically true, but really doesn’t change the fact the house is still on fire.”

“Ok! I admit I didn’t know about the feudalism part!” he explained. “I don’t get any of Bu’s memories unless I actively look at them or if they’re really pressing, but how the heck did you know?”

“The public library lets in crows for free, what do you think I do in my free time?”

“Bankrupting me by forming a crow mafia?”

“I saved your ass one time!”

“How the fuck am I going to find enough grapes to feed almost a hundred crows!?”

“Would you have rather gotten your ass beat by teenage dickheads!?”

“The Principal General would’ve broken it up!”

“Neither of us knew that at the time!”

“Doesn’t change the fact it was unnecessary and I now have to buy at least a few crates of-” Aiden paused as Oros slithered up his chest, wrapping itself around his neck, its scales frigid to the touch.

“Few crates of grapes,” Ranpo murmured. “Hey, that sorta rhymes!”

Oros slid back onto his skin, leaving only a snake-shaped scarf wrapped around his neck. “It got too cold huh,” Aiden muttered, feeling the scarf still very cool to the touch.

“Actually, that brings up something important,” Ranpo perked up, before glancing to the side.

In a transparent plastic box, was the body of a golden poison dart frog Aiden had made and retrieved. It had long since frozen to death since its native climate was a tropical forest, and Aiden had left it on the corpse of a goblin in the middle of nowhere during a cold night.

It was too dangerous for him to actually reabsorb due to residual poison on the skin, but he didn’t want to leave a potential biohazard out in the middle of nowhere.

So he had transferred it, all without ever touching it with his bare skin.

“I saw you using octopus suction pads to move across the wall during the fight earlier,” Ranpo said.

Aiden looked back, indeed, he did use those, even if he forgot about what they actually did, the intent of the action he wanted to take still remained, and the shape of the octopus pads made them pretty self-explanatory.

“How are you using marine life for tattoos on land?”

Aiden paused, looked at his skin, then a few octopuses appeared. All different species which he no longer recognised, but he still knew them as octopuses due to the broad knowledge of them.

“They seem perfectly fine when on your skin,” Ranpo noted, “but it seems when they are put into actual animates, they start needing the stuff their real counterparts need to survive.”

He glanced once again at the dead poison dart frog.

“Do you know that for sure?”

“Just a theory, you can test it out pretty easily though,” Ranpo said.

On Aiden’s skin appeared a fish, a fish that swam around on his skin pretty easily, and he went to fold an appropriate body from spare paper.

When it was done, he let the fish tattoo flow off his skin and animate the body.

It immediately began gasping for air.

He reabsorbed, regaining the memory of the fish. “You’re right.”

“Is it just your skin or does remaining 2D do it?” Ranpo asked.

Aiden frowned, “It would be difficult to check.”

Ranpo nodded, “Yeah, when I first appeared on your skin, it didn’t feel uncomfortable at all, but turning 2D outside of your skin was.”

The crow tapped the table, “I could turn 2D and wait to see if I go hungry… but that is just really unpleasant to test.”

“We’ll file that under a maybe for now,” Aiden said.

Ranpo nodded.

“I have something I want to try out though,” Aiden continued, he went around, finding a spare belt, which he wrapped and tightened around the stump of his right arm.

He manifested the tattoo of a single giant pacific octopus tentacle on his right arm, and slowly moved it, until it had partially animated the belt wrapped around his stump, whilst still being on his arm.

The belt warped and partially turned to match the shape of the tentacle. He experimentally willed it to move, and it responded, just as any other tattoo on his skin did.

Flexing out his now elongated appendage, he wrapped it around a cup on the kitchen counter and brought it to him.

“That is cool,” Ranpo said, genuine interest in his beady eyes.

“I have no sensation of it,” Aiden said, “I can’t feel anything the tentacle is feeling.”

“So you’ll have to visually keep track of it, still, your arm problem is solved.”

Aiden flexed the tentacle attached to his stump, “I still need time to get used to it, and I think my left is still better at doing fine work like eating or writing, even if it isn’t my dominant hand.”

“It’s your only hand now, I think it gets upgraded to dominant status.”

Aiden shrugged, “Semantics.” Before getting onto the point, “If tattoos on my skin don’t suffer environmental detriments, and this applies to things only partially on my skin, then this could be really useful. Octopus tentacles are extremely useful.”

“And if not…”

Aiden finished Ranpo’s sentence by changing the tentacle into a snake.

“...You become Johnny Snakehands.”

“That is a terrible name,” Aiden and his snake arm remarked.

“I stand by the fact it is still better than Aiden.”

“My name is perfectly fine!”

Ranpo shrugged as Aiden denied the truth of the universe, “You going to use that for now?”

Aiden glanced at his new ‘hand’.

“Actually, no.”

“Well, why not?”

Aiden told him his idea.

And the crow would’ve grinned evilly if it could’ve.

He searched the house, finding the first aid kit they kept. Taking out some of the bandages and splints, he wrapped them around his right arm, until it appeared his arm was in a cast that covered his ‘hand’ and forearm, almost like a very long white cup of bandages had been put over his arm.

But when he grabbed it, he easily pulled it off, revealing that the tip, or bottom of the ‘cup’, had a bandage running through it that wrapped directly around his stump, so when unfurled, the cast was still attached to his arm at the end in an almost Y-shape.

He animated the appendage with a snake and grabbed a knife from the kitchen, bringing it swiftly to him, dropping it in his real hand.

“There was a metahuman I met before I made you, Freddy, he told me his power was to control liquids in confined spaces.”

Ranpo silently listened along.

“I thought he was pretty weak since he demonstrated with nothing but a bottle,” Aiden admitted, “but when I saw him face a real threat, he exploded like a beehive. Hundreds of small blades came out of every fold of his clothing. Every single blade must’ve had liquid in it so he could’ve used it like telekinesis, but most importantly, he hid them. I didn’t know you could hide so many knives on a person until I met him.”

He withdrew the serpent, letting the bandage cast contraption fall inertly onto the ground.

But he easily set it back up by simply turning the cup cast around and putting it back on his arm, so that he once again appeared like nothing more than a person with an injured right arm in a cast.

He had delivered lethal venom to Johnjohnjohnjohn not because he had overwhelming power, but because he forced him into unfavourable situations. Surprising him by shutting off the lights, or making the light switch the primary objective to get to.

And his fight against Luther earlier revealed some people would relentlessly punish a weakened half.

“A fight can be decided with a single surprise.”

“Now you have two,” Ranpo said, glancing at the false cast and the Oros shaped scarf wrapped around his neck.

“This isn’t enough,” Aiden said. “I still need to completely rethink my defence. Being able to stop a bullet from penetrating my skin doesn’t mean jack shit when the force is still bruising my flesh. Especially facing things that can punch holes in concrete. The internal damage I had regenerated nearly killed me.”

“But you already have something for that,” Ranpo noted.

Aiden nodded, pulling out from his school bag a deformed cleaver. Its handle was like a dozen small arms weaved together into some horrific hilt wrap. While the actual blade had eyes on its flat, that seemed to follow his movements, and its sharp was composed entirely of teeth, except for the half-circle deformity in the middle from bashing a zombie’s head to pulp.

“I don’t remember the specifics of how this power works because of my own power,” Aiden noted, “And I can’t ask Jun because…”

“She was traumatised by whatever thing gave you the memory for that,” Ranpo said simply. “You were too, but you’re significantly better at faking being normal.”

He flourished the cleaver with his remaining hand, “Then let us test it out.”

Instead of an answer, Ranpo flew and grabbed a pen, letting it drop and roll towards Aiden.

Until it stopped moving, despite still rolling towards Aiden.