The mornings have been getting colder recently. Annoying, seeing as I've got to hang around in my costume again. I was able to keep most of Schism’s ‘peace offering’. The mask had to be dumped. I had plenty spares lying around, beyond them I could've bought one from a local corner shop nowadays.

It didn’t sit right on my face, I tugged and pulled at the corners of the cheap placeholder. Maybe it was the mask, maybe it was the open bruises and stitches that crossed my face, who’s to say. Gurl stands by the idea that she did a horrible job patching me up, I’ll die by the idea of her becoming a paramedic.

I licked a gap in my lip, looking past my dangling feet and down on the café below me. I felt horrible, but the wind felt good. I’ll always look forward to just sitting on the rooftops.

The coffee shop door beneath me swung open, and five people walked out. They were all the same age as me, same school, but they had cars, knew where they were going to university a year from now... I don’t even know if I'm going to get to next June.

One of them laughed, as they said their goodbyes. Izzy smacked Mullet on the back of the head, nagging him on something. Gurl stood on standby, quietly tagging along with the group. They walked down the street a bit. I followed, ashamedly.

I was waiting for them to be finished, I tried to not be a creep, tried to look away, but the rest of the street was like looking in a fun house mirror. There were little kids with masks on, though Halloween was done and over. My involvement in the recent bust somehow leaked to the public again, including body cam footage of me taking Tayanita down. On top of that, Mullet’s friends, one of which was down there now, hadn’t stayed quiet, they were loud.

One of them even got on a local radio show. A radio show, that now has a Shamrock section.

On one hand, I’m a myth. Part of me sees the humour in it, I killed the mothman, and know I replaced him as a sleepy town cryptid. On the other hand, I’m a wanted man. I mentioned that I had murdered someone.

I let too much of my face slip, they have artistic recreations stuck all around town. They don’t look like me above the nose, but they’ve got the scars on it. If Emmett walked down the street with purple rings around his eyes, a chop in his lip, and a scratch across the cheek, they’d know. They also got my bodily scars, so now I’ve got to wear sleeved shirts and hoodies. So much for being body confidant.

I looked back at their little group; it was beginning to splinter as they went their separate ways. At an intersection, Izzy and the other two went one way, Mullet another, and Gurl took a while to get going. I followed after Mullet.

Turning into a street with few people on it I trailed after him, and then ahead. I landed with a squat in front of him after stepping from the roof. My body was stiff, it took a couple seconds for me to straighten up.

When I met his eyes, he seemed unimpressed. I looked away from him and saw the eyes of everyone else on that street were on me. They saw that. Regular people just going about their lives, they watched with a shuffling anticipation.

Mullet trotted by me, “Come on. Let’s get this over with.” For a second, I caught a look at his face. This wasn’t going to be good.

He just kept on walking. All I could do was follow and dread what was happening with the ignorance effect.

…

Mullet bit into his burger, grease and sauce poured out of one side and down his sleeve. He didn’t seem to mind that.

His burger had everything, bacon, lettuce, cucumber, cheese, grated cheese, coleslaw... I just had a plain patty.

I haven’t been good since Halloween. Out of all the injuries I sustained after Belfast and in that forest, the hole in my stomach has to be the worst. My belly feels bloated, like it’s filling with water. It makes groaning noises when I twist or turn. Gurl won’t look at it. I’m not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure it’s infected, or something worse.

I eat with big bites, solids, because when I throw up, it’s liquid.

“You’re pale. Like, more than usual.”

I shrug.

He takes another bite out of his burger, and my eyes can’t help but look to the people. We sat ourselves down in the booth of a local takeaway. Every time I looked up, they’d look away.

“Mullet... I think you should leave town.”

He stopped licking his fingers, hitting me with the same dead look. “Yeah? Why?” the ‘why’ was less a question and more an interrogation.

I thought over it for a second, “The ‘men in black’ are coming. Things are changing. See how all these people are looking at me? They know I'm different, they understood the situation with Tayanita, if only slightly.”

“Uh huh,” he ate his meal.

“You... have bad luck for this sort of thing. I don’t know if people like you and me are destined to run into trouble because of our nature-”

He cut me off, “Don’t say stuff like ‘destiny’. What are you, a teenage girl with her first boyfriend? You’re tripping.”

“I can’t guarantee your safety Mullet. Not like this... I always lose the first round.”

“Okay,” he rubbed his sleeve, trying to wipe away the stream of grease finally. Only after he finished the burger, did he start on the chips. “Why do I have to leave? I’m not getting involved in any of that crap.”

I looked around, seeing a camera in one corner, “The last time we met up, you complained that your friends were calling you my ‘pal’. I think their agents will figure out our connection. The best we can do is get you to lie low. Don’t talk to me or Gurl. Izzy’s dad works in construction, right? You can find a job out of town.”

“You know, I really, really don’t like you.” He stopped eating.

I looked into his eyes, feeling the heat of this small space scratch at my face.

“At first, I just hated ‘Shamrock’. Shamrock was the guy whose antics got my friend killed, Shamrock was like a road sign that said, ‘no bridge ahead’. You were someone I really fucking hated, not because you smashed my friend's bong or stole all the weed in the world, but because you were a cop without a face.”

“You know, I think I was starting to like- the, uh, other you. The other you was a freak, sure, but I guess exposure made you a little less off-putting. I saw sides of you, started to think, ‘he’s just dude with two left feet. Is he a freak? Yeah. Does it matter? Nope’. I started to think, ‘this guy’s gonna get himself hurt’, but I paid a little more attention with how you handled things with Saoirse, and realised you’ve got more restraint than me at least, You're probably a nicer guy than me, deep down.”

His face tightened, “But there were moments, like when you lied to that guy at the hotel. You did that so easily. There’s also the fact that when I went back to the room, guess who I find! That green motherfucker I hate! I guess that wasn’t obvious enough. Then, you disappeared when me and everyone else were getting kidnapped. Sure, they said you were dead, and I believed them for a second, until the green asshole felt the need to reassure Clover that Em- that you were alive.”

Before all this, I had met up with Mullet before. He’d stayed quiet, as I explained everything to him. I told him never to tell anyone who I was, except Gurl. He was unresponsive. I told him that if he needed to get into contact with me, or I needed to get into contact with him, I'd do it through TGFMACJ.

Mullet had called Gurl up, Gurl called me, and here we were. I’d changed my mind since the last meeting, I needed Mullet gone.

“It’s not, like, ripping off the mask, okay? I was suspicious, and that only built up while you were taking days off school, dating crime bosses... I thought you were just going through some sort of crisis, maybe, and I tried to be nice... then I found that mask, and you talked for a bit, and somehow I knew that you were lying and telling the truth, just like at the hotel. I just didn’t know what part of that story about trying to play the hero wasn’t true.”

“Now I know.”

I took a mental break after listening to him. “Mullet, I lied to you, to everyone, but there are people who would’ve targeted people I cared about, really dangerous people, people like me, and that’s why you’ve got to go, because I can’t risk any leaks, not when they're going to be so close to home.”

I took a breath. Even talking hurt, if I did so breathlessly.

“See, I feel like that’s a lie. Like my gut tells me that’s bull.”

I sealed my lips, my heart squeezed.

“These ‘men in black’ are coming, these boogy men you’re so afraid of. The whole country is being swept up by you... I wonder how that fabric is keeping anyone safe.”

I’d realised it myself. There wasn’t much point to this super hero persona, other than it just feeling right... though, since Belfast it hadn’t felt right. It feels itchy.

Mullet stood, “You’re gonna tell me when the trouble starts and I'm gonna run home. Until then, I’ll stand by you.”

My jaw hung as I looked up to him, he had the same cold face as before. “What?”

He shrugged, “I hate you. Do you know how easily I hate people? I hated my P6 teacher, I hate the guy with a man bun who used to sell grass out the back of the dry cleaners. I hate you, man, but you’re not a bad person. It’s like I said before, you’re pretty much alone, and your tryna shut yourself off completely now, ‘cause it’s moral or something. Heh, like that’s a good idea, you’re going to end up coo-coo-ca-choo crazy dude.”

I was in actual disbelief. I have seen the faces of gods, stared into the abyssal jaws of death more times than I can count- but this was truly alien to my mind.

Then I remembered, rather, guilt reared it’s head, facing me..

“Mullet... Adonis-”

He blew me off, starting towards the exit, “What did I do? Nothing. You bring trouble, but sometimes that’s what we need.”

He picked up his chips and turned his back to me. It wasn’t pure happiness I felt, my head was bogged down with a ton of other things. It was a relief, this and the situation with Tayanita getting cleaned up. I’d gotten my footing back. I was ready for the world.

“Mullet, did you get the thing I asked for?”

He held up the red envelope, “I was kinda tempted to open this thing, you know, with the creepy note on the front and all.”

I took it off of him, “It’s a good thing you didn’t. If you did, he might’ve killed you.”

.

.

.

I’ve been living in the hills for half a week, going into town for food or news. I go to my mum's house to get money from my stash when she’s not there, get a shower if it’s been a while, and leave her some cash on the table. I’m planning on visiting my granny at the weekend, I've made her worry and dingle’s out of the way enough where I might get by showing my face.

Mullet’s probably right. Though it’s hard to go without some necessities, I just can’t help but push away from the warmth of home. Still, there’ll come a day when I can lie around on my ass with a blanket over me while reading comics, a day where I'll be able to see Clover, Feoli. It’s not a hope, I can feel it in my bones.

I just tell myself it’ll be another couple days, another fight, and then I'll be ready, I’ll be better.

This time, I might be right. The Int’s will bring rebirthing foam with them, whether they hand it over willingly or not, I'll still be able to heal myself with it. I can feel something bubbling up in me, I can feel it in SP2. The power’s fluctuating, I'm struggling to use it for long periods of times. I guess sometimes it’s worse, sometimes it’s better, you know? TMaybe because of my feelings? The world doesn’t seem so pointless anymore.

Then there’s this red envelope in my hand. I held off reading it, just in case Schism included some sort of profound realisation in it, whether to indebt me to him, or to push me in a dark direction, I couldn’t know unless I opened the thing. Either way, I couldn’t let anyone have that sort of power over me. I’m my own master. I’ve gotta be.

It’s a slow walk back to my cave, but I haven’t much else to do. Being out makes me feel better than sitting in my dingy hole.

Dingy might be a bit unfair to myself, I've made some effort to spruce the place up a bit- discounting the giant monster corpse propped up in the far back along with the small nuclear armament- I picked up some insulation and tarps from the hardware store.

I crawled up to the porch of my cave, I’d put in some wooden supports to hold up the cave extension and overhanging roof. First, I went inside to water my plant, then I went back out front to sit on a plastic chair.

I tried to get comfortable while my stomach growled at the memory of chili con carne. I wanted a hot meal, eaten in the comfort of home.

I could go home. I could hide out there, no one would know.

Except my mum.

I’ve never talked to her about all this, not even as just Emmett. I wonder how she’d react knowing her son has made a hobby out of the world she hates. That I've thrown myself into the pursuit of drugs and women.

I know... her actions, they contradict what I've said about her, but she really didn’t want me near any of this. It’s just, she wasn’t strong enough to get out of it, or to go through it alone. A part of me knows it’s not right, but a bigger, softer side says that she was only human.

Maybe that’s how I can stomach hanging around people like Clover and Feoli, despite what they’ve done. Maybe I'm just naturally inclined to forgiveness.

I twiddled the letter around in my fingers, not feeling the paper through my gloves.

I finally remembered to remove my mask, no one would be finding me up here.

I just stared at the letter blankly, the scarlet stood in stark contrast to the naturally green and brown of the earth and hands around it.

It was like getting ready for a beating, maybe the hardest part of a battle.

I ripped it open, taking the card out. I was prepared to fight.

Emmett O’Hara.

The fact that you are finally reading this means that you have overcome your guilt, for this I commend you. I understand what it means to you, even if you do not. I have sensed ever second of your life while simultaneously observing others, men and women who have overcome the struggles you’ve faced, people who have been helpless, and people who feel they have demonstrated too much power.

You know that you are not special. Many Units, the maker of machines Axel Right, the pollutant of pointlessness Clover, the doctor Charity Attrition, and many more, all see themselves as the protagonist of their story. They believe that they must live for the story to continue, as if they are the centre of this distorted universe, lynchpin. They are not. You are not. There have been Units before you, and there will be Units after you. You know this, hope for it.

How different would the world be if you didn’t exist? A part of you feels it would not be very different at all, despite your ‘work’. I’m writing this just a week after your battle with the man you knew only as Belfast, I have only my personal speculation to rely on concerning what you’ve been up to. Humour me. You threw yourself into your ‘work’, either to make amends or to take your mind off everything. You’re in the process of designing a new identity just as your others fail you, ceasing to provide you any comfort. Likewise, you will push and pull yourself socially, you’ll keep your little friends close, but just so you can see them, you don’t wish to repeat yourself.

I don’t exactly know what you experienced under the weight of that housing complex, but I know enough. You stared into the abyss. You received some confirmation that you are not the hero you so crave to be. You know now, more than ever that it is not you who will save this world.

You are nothing, no one. And yet... you think that is precisely why you are the only one with the will to fight, to stand up against ‘evil’. Yourself flagellation is the source of your ego; it is your martyrdom. It is your love. But it does not love you.

Samantha Burrows half believed in you at the time, when that thing was walking the earth with us. I watched the story you’ve been rerunning through your mind since your last meeting with the Negative god, I saw it in real time. I paid little attention to you for the longest while, you were one of a hundred thousand people I thought could become Unitary later on, there’s a sort of universal trend concerning your stock.

When the two of you fell into that pit, I discovered it with you. When you dragged yourself across that slimy floor, I wondered, just as you did, which of the two of you would die. When Samantha read the text in that cavern, only then did you have my full attention, only then were both my eyes upon you. I treated it with the same severity as one of Bastard’s schemes, as a clash of Beasts. Not because it was your origin, but because it was the negative god’s.

My first thought was whether I should kill her... You know I did not, but why? There are the reasons you know; to strengthen the powers surrounding Bastard’s homeland would divide his attention further, Ireland was Clover’s home after all. That was my first reason for sparing you, and it was not enough. I then thought of myself.

What do I want?

You know the goals of Adam’s International organisation and their cities, they wish to sustain the world and its systems, they want to keep it on track for growth, for the old powers to never wane. Bastard Windsor’s Mountain is full of opinionated individuals, with their own views on their collective goal, but for Bastard and his closest advisors, the goal is peace, whatever that might be. Bastard himself wishes to unify man, to destroy the old ways and create a new system of governance, led by him. Immutable and perfect in its order and form.

To simplify, they wish for peace or they are rather neutral. There is only one spot on the spectrum for me I am afraid.

Both of them are to limited, disjointed. Adam is old. He, like you and I knows that the world will keep changing forever. Bastard’s consciousness is too young, he’s been going for hundreds of years and yet his hope for a perfect world never wavers.

Both of them are to detached to understand the human condition. Neither of them are evolved enough to understand this world.

You’ve fought against the truth of this world and its people, boy. Maybe now you understand that the only true state of this world is war.

I see it everywhere, in the pettiness of children, in the stubbornness of the adult; situations and lives that the Bastard and Adam cannot comprehend because they have grown detached from them. If humanity was comprised of eight billion immortal superhumans then perhaps... but it is not, and if it was, it would not be humanity. I have seen such civilisations, and I destroyed them from my desk. Because I believe we are fine, regardless of what they’ll tell you about war and famine, about the ice caps melting and the doomsday prophecies, nothing will ever change.

I am here to maintain order. And that is why your god is alive.

The doctor might have told you, three is the number. Three archetypes, nine Beasts, twenty-seven outer gods around us, then nine again, then a triad.

Three triads make that nine. It is a quirk of how they ‘touch’ our reality, that three of them are so closely aligned to the point of over laying each other. They work in tandem, like the soul, body, and mind. And they clash with ideas adjacent to them.

Take the Opaque Gods for example, they clash with the Impersonal Gods and your Dark Gods. The outer powers and Units associated with these gods carry their values and natures, if only slightly. Bastard, despite his goals of uniting mankind, is perturbed by the inhuman aspects of aberrants common in those tainted by the Impersonal, and he outright bans the worship of the Dark gods.

There are stories I could tell you, concerning Bastard’s fear of the dark, but I will refrain.

My point is, that in a world where opposition is the key, in some little hole in Ireland a destructive creature was about to be unleashed on the world, and I allowed it, because it was meant to fight the light.

I knew you back then Emmett. If only in passing. I know who you are. I know what you’re capable of.

I do not love you for it.

You approach me, like a lesser version of myself peering ahead into its future you revile me. I say your nature, though you despise it, is violence, hate. Imperfect, messy, human...

Would you like to hear a story, Emmett O’Hara? About a little boy from Ireland?

There was once a boy from a dark corner of the world. The lights beyond his window were bright, brilliantly vibrant. He could see them, but he couldn't reach them. He lived with a parent who did the best they could to raise a little accident into a proper person. The parent was the cause of the darkness in that little corner, though it was painful to admit. It was that parent’s weakness and vileness that led the child and the parent onto the streets. Not as the the child had seen them, no, though the boy stood under the same lights every day, every night, he would never brighten. He was from the dark.

But it wasn’t his fault. There were moments of kindness, of charity from people passing him by. More often than not he was ignored, but the slivers of light and happiness they’d give him carried him for months and years.

Then the parent gave up. On the child, on everything. The boy found himself in an even darker corner. There were no windows to see out of, there were no glimpses of a better world, only the smell from beyond a locked door, and worse.

Cutting and blood and vomit, the smells mixed together until they were null.

Do you know what the boy had been thinking just before he had his kidney removed.

“Some’ow, me da will get me out of here. Me da will save me.”

Your country has improved remarkably over the years though you and so many others are so blind and ignorant of that fact. Armed men marched the street and told you what creed and crown to follow once. If you had lived during that time, I think you would have broken to.

On that last day in the dark Shamrock, when that boy was worse than asleep, a light crashed through the roof out of nowhere. It was like you and Samantha falling, something I didn’t expect. The surgeon performing the organ removal saw it land almost perfectly within the boy’s open stomach, black wisps helping it nestle deeper within. Whatever it was, it rocketed the boys blood flow and brain activity, bringing him back from the brink.

Do you think the boy wished for someone to save him?

He learned something that day, something I agreed with. In my own youth that biased me to him. He was a threat, whatever power he had received, there was a chance of him being an obstacle to me, as well as the Mountain...

What he learned from the troubles around him was that everyone was his enemy, either the world dies or it would kill him. It was a simple way of thinking; he was a limited mind after all.

You do not know the name of the man I speak of. You called him ‘Belfast’, as if he’s some vague evil antagonist for you to defeat. He was a man. He was a boy. You killed him, and if I'm right, you’ve grown to except that fact. Some people need to die.

You are still young, that, ‘Shamrock’, is your fault and your advantage. I selected you for a multitude of reasons. You are new, he was old. He’d lived out his usefulness to me, what with his ageing, his hunger for power growing inside himself, perhaps that hive power of his knew as much. The other reason is that you do not have to become like him. You can be better because you have a future. You can become more like me.

I’ve chosen my team, in a manner not to dissimilar to Belfast’s line of thinking. Whether you like it or not, you’re on it. Humanity is an organism that grows through competition, civilisations have collapsed due to inactivity. Did you know that the ancient Greeks and Turks invented multiple variations of a steam engine? They lacked the drive to take the concept to the next level.

The world will change, just not so much. There will come a day when my labours bear fruit, and humanity reaches its fullest potential, where our nascent race can achieve greater heights. Neither you or I will live to see that day I think. Unlike Bastard and Adam, I have no desire for eternity.

One thing I will say to you know, whatever circumstances you may be under, or what mentality you may be currently inclined to, if you had met that man when he was a boy, you would have saved him. He would have been thankful. He would have loved you; he might have been the only person you’ll find who could so closely understand.

You killed him. Tell me it was right and in the name of protection, and I will tell you it was all for your own growth and safety. A war for peace is still a war.

There will come a day very soon when you must choose a side, whether that is with the Mountain or against it, you will serve my purposes. Work with me, and you may still have a chance of carving out a piece of this world in your image, a well shined corner.

You will not need to contact me; I will know you’re answer.

And just so you know, boy, what you feel for her is an illusion.

Until next time.

I tore it. Monotonously. It was just something I knew I should do, that had been the instructions for the last letter.

I looked out over the landscape before me. Funnily, it was like it had been when I received the costume from Schism. Red and pink loomed over the hard green weeds. The sun was going down, It looked like it was going to rain later that night.

I thought about Schism’s letter, it was and still is fresh in my mind.

“What horse crock...” I mumbled aloud to myself, before yawning. A tear welled in my eye from the strain on my stomach. It wouldn’t be long now, the Int’s would be here soon. Hell, maybe I should call Bob and get it done with.

On Schism’s note... I know it’s sort of a one-sided conversation, but he seemed like he was only talking about himself, he even tried to work in that, ‘we’re not so different you and I bit’.

I’m down right now, sore all over and barely awake, but I'm not so brittle that I'd break from his goading. I’m going to fight, yeah, and I'm going to fight for myself, yeah, but I’m not going to rim a comically megalomaniacal jackass just because he tried to spook me.

I got back inside my cave. Going without dinner for the night, I clicked on a flashlight, and crawled into a sleeping bag. My sides hurt no matter what way I lay on them, propping my back up against a wall is best.

“What a joke,” I said to myself. I've been at odds with the Mountain and Ints before, and I've allied myself with him, kinda, when our interests aligned. I’m going to be realistic about my condition, things are looking bleak and their bound to get worse, but why would that stop me from trying?

He can claim to be doing everything for the peoples best interest, but he’s a tyrant, they give that sort of speech verbatim all the time.

To me, it seems like he’s the broken one. Could you imagine being aware of all the suffering in the world, the universe? That would drive anyone crazy. It’s blinded him, all of this ‘for the greater good’ crap, it twists everything up. That’s what my problem is, there’s a slippery slope between me and them, not a white line.

I don’t want to kill people, or send nineteen-year-olds to prison, but that’s something I've done, something I don’t want to make a habit of doing.

I hope Tayanita’s okay, and I hope she hasn’t given anything to the police. I really wish that Belfast hadn’t been the man he was when I met him, but he was. I’ll be harder, but I'm not going to lord over anyone with an iron fist.

I’ll be sturdy. Like a rock, I’ll stand.