A Killer Life

Chapter 18

Between 'Nightmare' –who really seemed to not know how to deal with me– and I– who just smiled and zoned out afterwards out of boredom– the conversation didn't live long after that.

With the Negativity Guardian grumbling about forgetful skeletons and how 'all are idiots' and that he 'always has to do everything himself'. He looked at me straight in the sockets, then told me to wait in my spot on the couch and proceeded to leave in the same direction as the other ones went.

Such great hosts. (sarcasm)

I sat in silence once again waiting for the next new thing to happen. So far, all the monsters I saw are entertaining in some way. Red-Z being a raccoon of all things being muy highlight.

Hehe, raccoons.

The other ones are also exciting. Mirror-me-but-also-not is definitely more talkative than me, Hood seems like a frustrated wet cat, and Goopy guy is Goopy guy.

So, yeah. Interesting.

The silence of the room was quickly taken away when all the skeletons that ran for first aid came back from their healing session in whatever room they had. Clearly they have too many halls and rooms and halls and more rooms, but it's not like I can complain about it. It's not even my house.

The first one that walked in was the one with the hood up.

He seemed to be trying to quiet his footsteps, but his shoes shouldn't allow that with all the squeaking it's doing. Sounds like someone is stepping on baby mice everytime he walks.

The second one that walked in was the chatty one.

I heard him even before I saw him, and that's saying something because I started hearing him 1 minute before I saw him round the corner to join his hooded buddy on the couch in front of me. He's loud as fuck.

The last one was the one that carried me. Raccoon, hehe.

His steps were quiet unlike Hood. He moved as if each step might wake a nearby sleeping dragon if it was too loud. He carried himself in a manner that lessened unnecessary movement that's just as effective as it was deadly.

When he joined the other two, Chatty started teasing him on being last when he didn't even have much injuries, which caused Raccoon to nag Chatty about how he was lucky that he didn't get an infection from the piece of glitched code that accidently entered his system through his injury.

Chatty pouted.

"It's not even my fault! Ink was aiming one of those orange paints that he has at Nightmare, and you know how Boss doesn't like it. So me being me, I decided to use myself as a body shield since the attack isn't lethal to me."

Raccoon squinted at Chatty.

"If it's not lethal, why did you get injured?"

Chatty shrugged exaggeratedly with a grin.

"I never said it doesn't do damage."

Racoon facepalmed.

"Why are you like this?"

"Because I'm fun."

I could hear the grin from his tone and face.

"Aaanyway. As fun as this conversation is, I really wanna know what Boss's gonna do with the newbie here. You said this guy accepted the proposal right?" Chatty asked Raccoon while pointing at me.

I tilted my head in indecision. Face still blank.

"Well, yeah. That was the whole point of this mission?" The monochrome skeleton shifted his posture to lean on the arm of the couch. "It was pretty easy too. Just asked and he nodded right away. Unlike a certain someone that literally fought the Boss when he was being recruited."

Chatty gasped and raised his hands in offense to that.

"Nightmare looked like he came out of an eldritch horror movie with the dim light. It's not my fault that my magic didn't know he wasn't a threat with the LV still fresh in my system!"

The two went off track for another few minutes– arguing about LV influence, slipping into a debate of how much it can affect monsters, and into a theorizing session of 'does it affect the same way to a human like it does to a monster?' –before Hood brought the topic back to me.

"Oh yeah, so is he like an alternate version of me, or is he a classic variant? Because last time I checked, I didn't have any alts." Chatty got into a thinking pose, scrunching his eye sockets, looking at me in mild curiosity.

I blinked at his question. Memories coming back to me in a trickle.

Oh yeah. I'm just a copy.

"He's probably closer to you if I go just by appearance. I don't think classic has any alternate timeline variants other than us." Hood said while the other two nodded.

"Yeah, maybe"

With that being said, all three of them looked at me.

The sudden spotlight was a bit unexpected with how they seemed to talk to each other forever, different topics being brought up one after another.

I sweat under the attention.

My solitude in my own AU might have affected me in the long run after all. I forgot how to talk to strangers. So I did the next best thing; I panicked.

How am I supposed to answer when I can't even talk?!?

Social anxiety is a bitch.