The plan was simple. From his first fight against Mary, she had shown that instead of dodging, she chose to extend her hand out to take the impact instead of her head.
Thus, she would likely repeat the same mistake, even if the scissors were thrown. She'd remain still, and upon using his Stealth ability, he would be practically removed from the battlefield. Once he snuck up on her, all it took was one swing from his hatchet to kill the ghost of his childhood.
He got in his car, leaving the mall and going home.
…
During lunch at McDonalds, Aubrey sat with his friends, listening to them talk.
"You guys hear the news?" Davis asked, to which Aubrey perked up, still chewing on his dissatisfactory cheeseburger.
"What?" Aubrey spoke up.
"Apparently—no, not even that. There's an urban legend around here which is actually true."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. This dude posted on Reddit about how this monster snuck into his room, and it has legitimate proof. No joke, the thing was caught on security cameras and the weather change was recorded as well."
Aubrey stopped chewing, looking quite silly as his cheeks were still bloated like a chipmunk.
"Ha?" He muttered, having butchered even a simple "huh?"
"Yeah dude, it's crazy. Thing is, it's near our area. The Reddit story reads like it came from r/nosleep too."
His friends laughed. "What even happened?"
"Dude woke up, found a monster was watching him sleep for who-knows-how-long, he eventually turned on the light and it disappeared silently, leaving behind a cold wind. It dropped 40 degrees in one minute."
Aubrey was left shocked. He slowly chewed his food, swallowed, and thought for a moment.
"Oh really? That's cool… wow. You said it's an urban legend?"
"Yeah. Well, it was, until it was literally proven. Actually, I dunno if it counts as an urban legend since, well, it was hardly a legend to begin with. But it's a literal true creepypasta."
"A creepypasta, huh…? Then, what're they calling it?" Aubrey asked, trying to sound as innocent as he could.
Davis looked at him with an amused expression. Although their other friends didn't seem as interested, he was at least glad someone found it as interesting as he did.
"They're calling it The Black Wraith."
…
"Yo."
Stepping upon the dirt of the forest, a tall man with long black hair and piercings smiled as he waved his hand.
"...Fate sure is good at its job."
The words of another man, a much shorter one with a face obscured by his straight black bangs, ran through the cold air. He continued. "Even though we didn't know where the other was, as long as we entered the same forest, we'd always find each other."
The tall man—Sam, smiled at that, and the short man—Aubrey, looked around at the forest.
"Egh… this place brings back bad memories."
Perhaps it could have been legitimately described as a full-on traumatic event. Perhaps it could not have.
To have undergone sudden and immense fear by the hands of monsters inside a forest, even just entering another one filled his heart with the same kind of tension, as he replayed the event in his head repeatedly.
It wasn't by choice either. He wasn't choosing to keep walking in the fear of death; it was something which his mind forced him to replay, causing him a great deal of annoyance.
Even now, the exaggerated sensation of his organs dragging through dirt, and the sound of the wind's whistle as the hidebehind gave up its stealth and made an attempt on his life, those and suchlike things kept appearing in his head.
Monsters are scary.
But, sensing his friend's discomfort, Sam placed a hand on Aubrey's shoulder. "Chill out, it's fine. And it's also partly your fault; what's wrong with you!? It's cold as a motherfucker—turn your ability off!"
Aubrey looked at Sam, who was well dressed in an expensive black overcoat and anointed with many other costly accessories.
"No way. You get to look cool as fuck with your expensive ass clothes; let me get a piece of the 'coolness' pie. Everywhere I go, it snows. I'm a walking distortion of the world."
"Pfft," Sam spat out, "you let that get to your head, huh? Mr Black Wraith."
Aubrey's eyes widened for a second before he quickly went back to normal. "What're you talking about? Whaaat?"
"Dude, that was obviously you. You ate a hidebehind, whose whole thing is stealth, plus you dropped the temperature when you lost. It's the whole talk of the town, you think I wouldn't figure that out?"
"Nk," Aubrey forced from his tongue, clicking it. "That's fair. But when you say 'Mr Black Wraith,' it sounds lame. You will address me as The Black Wraith and The Black Wraith only!"
"Shut up."
Aubrey had let the cool nickname get to his head. Shortly after, Sam unexplainably started laughing.
"Huh? What?" Aubrey asked.
"Dude, imagine if instead of Mr Black Wraith it was Mr Blackface, and you get cancelled for being racist."
After all, The Black Wraith was created through social media. The idea ran through Aubrey's mind, of an urban legend needing to make an apology video where they apologized for racist behavior, and that got a chuckle out of him.
"Yeah, that'd be pretty funny. Anyways, let's get going."
Aubrey and Sam walked through the woods, Aubrey wearing a backpack which had a variety of tools at his disposal.
"So you think you're Batman or something?" Sam asked. "I heard about how you killed Bloody Mary. Who knows, maybe with prep time you might be able to eventually beat me? Nah, that's not possible."
Aubrey scoffed at Sam's pride.
"Oooh, what if I sneak into your house at night and kill you in your sleep?" Aubrey asked.
"Well, then you're gay. What're you trying to sneak into my room for?"
"I've got a girlfriend now, I wouldn't dare think of cheating on her with you."
The two kept walking, eventually stumbling across a man huddled up against a tree, holding his knees. His clothes were torn up, and his long flowing hair obscured his face.
Aubrey sniffed the air, and nodded his head.
"Yep. Sam, that's a werewolf. He smells like me."
The two shared a similar scent. Aubrey was able to transform into a wolf, due to inheriting one of the second WendigoWalker's stored Skinsuits. He sometimes played with it for fun, and the scent of a wolf ran through the air.
"What do we do?" Sam asked, looking at the man. In the cold air, the werewolf, now a man, didn't seem to move around. As though sleeping, yet his eyes remained open.
"Hm. Well, right now he's a human, so I'd assume he's actually quite like myself."
The man turned his head upwards upon hearing those words.
"H-huh?" The man stammered. "You're… like… me?"
"Yep."
Aubrey walked over to him, crouching down and looking at him directly.
"So. You're conscious as a human, right? How about as a wolf?"
"Agh… no. Please, you have to help me. If you know what it's like to be turned into a monster, then please… help me."
Aubrey sniffed once more.
"..."
His lips bent into a soft frown.
"Y'know, you really are scary."
It was a race.
Aubrey managed to draw his hatchet, raising it to the air before the skinwalker could transform, as he brought it down. With a hard thump, the axe was buried into the skull of a half-transformed wolf-man hybrid, looking disgusting.
"Woah," Sam let out in soft surprise. He wasn't the type to shriek, so this was about the best one could get without mutilating him. "What did you do that for?"
Aubrey placed his boot on the forehead of the wolf-man, grabbing his hatchet and pulling it out. His face was covered in blood, and so he grabbed the skinwalker's arm, lifting it up and taking a bite from it. He hurried to devour, until the corpse disappeared.
He licked his lips, a soft, relieved smile on his mouth.
"When I got closer, I sniffed and saw that he smelled like me. Meaning he was a skinwalker."
He put his hatchet away, sighing.
"My guess is that he's a skinwalker that killed werewolves, took the flesh of a human and was mimicking his last words."
Because Aubrey sucked at explaining things, it shall be actually put to words.
To start, there was a struggling werewolf; a man who had lost his humanity and was deeply burdened by it. He isolated himself in the forest. The skinwalker, mimicking a human, pretended to struggle with similar problems. But, eventually, he killed the werewolf, and due to Fate aligning the supernatural together, they met and the skinwalker pretended to be the werewolf, aiming to catch the two off guard.
Aubrey tested his newfound Trait, stripping off his clothes and turning into a wolf.
"Yep, my wolf form feels stronger, even stronger than my bear form."
He turned back, unbothered by the cold before putting his clothes back on.
"The members of the HPC are always watching us, right?" Aubrey asked, and Sam nodded his head.
"Yep. So even if we don't report our victory, they'll know we scored. But don't expect them to send in reinforcements. Fate gets in the way of the natural seeking out the supernatural; they'll never make it in time."
Aubrey thought a bit about it.
"Wait, how many supernatural, like, monster-hunters do they actually have?"
"My best guess is that since there's monsters all over the world, and since even one as famous as Bloody Mary wasn't already killed, it can't be that many. We might be the only ones in America."
Aubrey instantly laughed, bending over to hold his stomach. Sam was confused, looking at him with a raised brow.
"Ah, haha! That's just, pfft, wow. Poor HPC, I honestly feel bad for them. They only have two Monster-Hunters in the US, and not only are they in the same area, it happens to be us! One's a normal guy from the suburbs and the other is an unemployed bum!"
"Hey, I never said it was 100% only us, just that it might be only us."
"I know, I know, it's just funny to imagine that in all the world, we stand alone as the monster-hunters of the Human Protection Company, aiming to kill and wipe the world of monsters. It's too funny and ridiculous to not laugh at, honestly."
Aubrey kept laughing for some time, but eventually calmed himself. The snow, by this point, had piled up on the ground about an inch. So as they kept walking, some spots were covered in dirt, others were covered with snow.
They kept tracking through the forest. As Fate would have it, they didn't need to walk for very long.
"...You."
The two immediately turned around, seeing a horde of men and women around them. Their skin was pale yet absolutely clear, with piercing red eyes which stared into the soul.
"Trespassers upon the land… must die."
The speaker smiled, baring two sharp fangs from the corner of their mouth.
"Vampires, huh? I was wondering when we'd eventually face off against you," Aubrey said, as Sam took a step forward.
"Y'know, my girlfriend in middleschool left me because I didn't like her always talking about how hot a movie vampire was. I've always hated vampires ever since," Sam spoke, clenching his fists.
"Your futile human struggles mean nothing, mortal. This is our land. Neither skinwalker nor werewolf is permitted on it. You merely killed a skinwalker we were already hunting."
"Is that so? Well, we'll kill you next—"
"Aubrey, excuse me for a second," Sam said, grabbing Aubrey's hatchet. Aubrey looked at him for a moment—and he was gone.
He looked back at the vampires, finding a black blur amongst the sea of white snow, moving around at speeds which he himself couldn't comprehend. In less than 20 seconds, the group of 10 vampires were all beheaded, their blood staining the snow.
And, towering over the pile of corpses and severed limbs, Sam wiped his bloodied chin nonchalantly.
"Alright, that takes care of them."
Once more, Aubrey's heart raced. Not just out of fear—or rather, a different kind of fear. He was not afraid that Sam would kill him. He had no fear of death, not by Sam's hand.
What he felt before him was the ancestral fear of seeing a monster before him. Not a dangerous one, but merely the knowledge that something like this could even exist in this world, living amongst him.
His previous thoughts ran true through his veins, as he was helpless before the harsh reality of his own words.
Monsters… are scary.