Finding George was a lot easier than I had expected. He was literally on a bench in the park, eating a sandwich, which was very different from the evil lair I had been looking for.
My first instinct was to slap his sandwich out of his hand as revenge for him helping Smiley and generally being annoying with his skeletons, but I wasn't about to waste a perfectly good sandwich.
The park was still full of people, even though it was getting harder to see. People training with things like sports balls, rackets, nets. Kids laughing as they played on the equipment, being normal civilians, not having to worry about some murderer dude who drew pretty flowers with the blood of his victims like some weird creep.
George was happily munching away at his sandwich. If I didn't know him or what he could do, I'd say that he was just as normal as the kids in the park were. He didn't look like anything worth noticing. No muscles being flexed. No crazy anime hair or scars or whatnot.
I sat down next to him. "I hate you so much."
He glanced up at me warily. "Can't you just say 'hello?'"
"Hello," I amended. "I hate you so much. Why'd you have to go all necromancer-mode on me at Tryxel?"
George lowered his sandwich and frowned at me. "That's what you came to talk to me about? Gosh. I really wish there'd be a day when someone comes up to me just to hang out."
I didn't respond, mostly because I knew that anything I said would probably just make him more angsty. Technoblade with a filter. Improvement.
"To you, Smiley must seem like a horrible person," George said. "A killer with no morals, ruining your city. Threatening your friends and everything you hold dear, especially as a Gifted."
"And you're gonna tell me that he's not a horrible person."
He blinked. "No. I totally agree. He is a very horrible person."
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Talking with George gave me a headache. Maybe that was why I hadn't tried to find him and start up a conversation after our first encounter.
"So why'd you help him, then?" I asked.
"I have my own reasons," George said evasively. Then he sighed. "Well... I'm trying to help a friend. He was really dear to me, and I miss him a lot, but things happened and took a turn for the worst. I'm just trying to protect him."
A "bad guy" with a good heart. Not exactly what I had been preparing to deal with, because it made it infinitely harder to hate him for letting Smiley go. However, I wasn't deterred.
"If that friend you're talking about is Smiley, I still hate you," I said.
George harrumphed at me. "Well, he is and he isn't."
"What the heck is that supposed to mean?"
"It's---"
"'Complicated?'" I said, cutting him off. "'A long story?' I know you want to say that, but those are excuses. A person can't be is and isn't. That's some Schrödinger's cat-level stuff that I don't want to deal with right now."
"You asked if he was the friend---"
"You replied with a freaking mind puzzle."
George threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. "I don't know, okay? Everything is just all over the place right now, and it has been for so long. I--- I... it's..."
He looked so depressed that I couldn't help but feel sorry for him, which was counter intuitive, because he threw skeletons at me and Philza and gave me a perfectly good reason to hate him while doing so. But at the same time, it was clear that he was struggling with something.
"Look, I don't know what's up between you and Smiley," I said with a sigh. "But to me, Smiley is a very big problem. I came to you looking for information on either him or the rest of his accomplices."
The necromancer Gifted shook his head, returning his attention to his sandwich. I looked back out gloomily at the kids. They screeched like sirens and jumped around the playground, moving with surprising agility.
To be young. I felt like a grandpa.
"The world's changing so fast," George said, almost as if he could hear my thoughts. "These people are technically the same generation as us, but they're so different from how we are. It's such a weird feeling, watching your life fly by like this."
"Time waits for no man," I said.
"No. So you have to take every opportunity you get and do whatever the hell you want, right?"
I gave him a sideways look. "Is helping Smiley what you want?"
He shook his head. "What I want is to save my friend. I don't condone killing, and I don't agree with what Smiley's doing. Honestly, following his code of 'I hate Gifted,' we shouldn't even be working together. My only job is to make sure that he's safe."
Wilbur's words echoed in my mind. "You'll be safe, right?"
I could tell that George really did care about Smiley, or whatever person it was that he saw beneath that killer mask. That put us on two different ends of the fight, and in all honesty, I didn't want to fight the man.
"Don't pull that skeletons trick again and I'll leave you alone," I said, standing up to go.
George scoffed. "I'm exhausted. I won't be doing it again. But if you ever come to see me again, it better be because you actually want to chat."
"We chatted."
"Not in the same sense. Go away."
I couldn't help but grin. "For someone who really wants social interaction, you sure seem eager to get rid of me right now."
He waved me away, looking annoyed. "I'm trying to eat my sandwich and get a break from everything. Seeing you right now is not helping my break. You better have an actual greeting prepared for the next time we meet."
***
I didn't want to head to the Tryxel building and see all the bodies again.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw blood splatters in the dark. Smiley's grin followed me everywhere. It was as if he was haunting me.
Not only that, but the voices were more constant as well. Before, they rarely popped up, and when they did, it never lasted for long. Now, they constantly demanded revenge.
And as for the other problem...
I turned around in annoyance and glowered at the glowing wisp following behind me. "Are you seriously going to do this forever?"
The bowling ball face stared back at me silently.
"Where are your friends? The rest of you guys? I know they're out there. Go hang out or something."
Still no reply.
"What even are you?"
I looked up. The wisp was still floating above my head, turning in lazy rotations. It didn't seem to have any intention of responding. Not that I expected it to anyway.
Actually, I was beginning to have an idea of what was happening to me. Fragments were starting to fit together, and even though it kind of made sense, I knew that I needed Phil to confirm things for me to really understand.
The glowing wisps... they were spirits, like the kind I had seen in the limbo train station. I didn't know why they were suddenly appearing in the physical world, but they couldn't interact with anything and didn't seem to be able to do much harm. As for the voices, it seemed like they were restless spirits. They didn't seem to align with the spirits I could see, though.
The only question left was why? Why could I see and hear them? Because I was a Gifted? It seemed more like something someone like George would be able to do, not me.
My phone chimed, breaking the silence. I pulled it out of my pocket and looked down at it. One new notification from Tubbo: "Hey, I'm outside Niki's office. Wanna?"
"Wanna?" I knew what he meant. He had seen Niki yesterday, too. If he was sitting outside Niki's office, waiting for my decision, then he wanted some answers as much as I did.
I tapped at the digital keyboard for a second, then hit Send.
Niki had seemed like a pretty nice person when I first met her, back when Wilbur brought me to their office building. "She's the most overwhelmingly wholesome person you'll ever meet," he had said. "You'll love her."
If there was anyone whose opinion I trusted in the world, it was Wilbur. And if Wilbur said she was a good person, then maybe we were wrong. Maybe Niki wasn't the associate.
But I still had to check it out. There was a possibility, and as much as I didn't want to believe it, I had seen her that day. Sketchy as heck. And maybe, just maybe, even though it was a horrible thought, I kind of wanted it to be her. That way, it would all be over, and I could finally focus on catching Smiley without the threat of secret helpers breathing down my neck.
I glanced down at my reply again. "I'll be there in five minutes."
I didn't need five minutes. Heck, I didn't even need one. With teleportation, I could get there in the blink of an eye. But I was in the park, which was right next to my destination anyway. A stroll would help clear my mind. My thoughts were in dire need of organization. The mess was so bad that it was ready to rival the state of Tommy's locker, a fact that scared the holy potatoes out of me.
"Are you ready, Smiley?" I said out loud, to no one but the wispy thing still floating annoyingly above me. "I'm about to end your entire career."
***
"There you are," Tubbo said, a frown on his face. "You took ten minutes."
"I walked here," I said with a shrug.
"You can teleport."
"Is she in there?" I asked, ignoring him.
Tubbo fumed silently for a couple of seconds before replying. "Yeah, I saw her while flying around as a bee. She's sitting in that area near the really big window."
I gave him a sideways look. "Stalker bee."
"Shut up," he grumbled. "There's no paparazzi around, either. Now's the perfect time to ask her some questions."
I scratched the back of my head. "So... do we even have questions to ask her?"
Tubbo looked about as annoyed as I had ever seen him. He looked ready to slap me, which was a state I usually found people in when I talked to them. "Yes. 'Why are you working with Smiley, Niki?' 'Why did you let him out, Niki?' 'Can you bake us some bread, Niki?'"
"That last one doesn't fit in."
The boy scoffed. "Clearly, you've never heard of her exception reputation of being a baker. She can bake those buns like nobody's business."
"She's working with a mass murderer and you want her to make you bread."
"Priorities, man."
I followed Tubbo into the building. We headed towards the elevator. Since I was the only person out of us two who had actually been in the building before, I was the one leading Tubbo through to the place with the sofas and large window, one of the only places in the building that I actually knew.
We found Niki right where Tubbo said she'd be, sitting on the couch, staring down at her phone. Her blonde hair fell over one shoulder like a cascade. The glow of her phone reflected onto her face and skin in the lack of daylight.
My feet stumbled as my brain was thrown back to a different time, when I had approached this exact scene as a sick, poisoned, self-denying Gifted who had been blissfully free of any problems relating to a green, smiling man. The celebrity was the same. The scenery was the same, even if the time wasn't. The anxious mood was the same.
The only things that had changed were me, and the person next to me.
And the story as to why we were there.
"Niki," I said.
Niki looked up at us. Immediately, her eyes widened. "O-oh, Techno! Hello! What do I, uhm, owe... uh... this visit---"
"We wanted to ask you about the killer," I said, cutting her off mid-ramble. "Or, more specifically, why you're helping him."
A bead of sweat trickled down the side of Niki's face. "What?"
"Don't play dumb. We saw you go into the building. Right after you went downstairs, the bounties were let out. You're the prime suspect."
It sounds like he's playing detective or something.
Shut up. He's being cool.
Is he? I beg to differ.
I gritted my teeth and tuned out the commentary in the background of my mind, focusing as hard as I could on the lady sitting in front of me. There was no doubt about it; she was nervous. If anything, it just proved my suspicions even further.
"Look, you've got the wrong person," she said firmly. Then she hesitated. "Well... maybe not, but at the same time, I'm not the one you want."
"You're just like Goggles," I grumbled. "Can you try to speak in a language I can understand, please?"
For a moment, confusion flickered over Niki's features. "'Goggles?'"
"Nevermind that. How did you get information on people in Tryxel? Who are you connected to that can tell you all that info for you to pass on to the killer?" I sat down across from her and glared so hard she flinched. "Who's helping you do it?"
"Stop!" Niki said, pressing her hands to her eyes. She screwed her eyes shut and exhaled. "I didn't do any of that! Tryxel's so mysterious, there's no way I could get information, and if I did, I wouldn't just hand it to Smiley!"
I smiled. "I never said his name was Smiley."
For a moment, there was silence as she processed what I had just done to her. The media didn't know what we called Smiley yet. All the news articles had their own names when referring to him. The fact that Niki knew his name was enough for me.
"You've got the wrong person," she said again softly. "I don't work with him. I'm trying to help a friend."
Her words activated my memory, pulling out the conversation I had had with George beforehand.
"So why'd you help him, then?"
"I have my own reasons. Well... I'm trying to help a friend."
"You're working with George," I realized. "That's how you know Smiley's name. That's why you reacted to me mentioning Goggles."
Niki's hands dropped into her lap. She opened her eyes again and focused on me. "I'm sorry, Techno."
"I know you hate Gifted," I said. "You basically told me that the last time we met. So why work with Smiley? Or George, for that matter?"
She shook her head firmly. "Even if I hated Gifted with all my heart, I would never condone the killing of innocents. George isn't directly helping Smiley, either. You've got it all wrong."
I buried my face in my hands. This was too much for my brain to handle.
"Tubbo, any thoughts?" I said, my voice muffled.
Tubbo, who had stayed silent throughout my entire conversation with Niki, finally spoke up. "You are so short."
I raised my head just in time to see Niki's indignant look. "What?! Y-you can't just say it like that! I--- I'm--- I am vertically challenged!"
"You are short," Tubbo insisted. "Wow."
And just like that, the mood did a complete one-eighty degrees turn. I tried not to burst out laughing for the sake of Niki's ego while she simmered angrily, tossing looks at me here and there, as if challenging me to laugh at her.
"Shut up," she said moodily. "I don't like saying it, but please, shut up. I know I'm short. You don't have to remind me."
She didn't seem like the type of person who would help a murderer like Smiley. Neither did George, if I was being honest. I'd have to believe them when they said that they weren't helping him kill people.
"So you're friends with Smiley?" I asked, calming down. The atmosphere was a lot less tense, thanks to Tubbo. He was like Tommy in that he could change the mood with a simple sentence.
Niki pursed her lips. "You could say that. He's not who he used to be, though. He's changed a lot. I'm friends with the former version of him."
That's what George had meant. In their minds, Smiley wasn't the friend they had made, only one personality. But what could change a person like that?
"At the same time, I don't want him to die," Niki continued. "I want to save him from the mess we've all gotten into. Please, Techno, you have to believe me."
Tubbo and I exchanged a look. "I believe you," I said. "The problem is, that means that the associate --- you know, the one actually assisting in the killings and the person who let him out --- is still on the loose."
Niki paled. "And you think it's someone within Tryxel? You were asking me how I knew things about the organization."
"Exactly," I said. "But now, I'm positive of it. If even a celebrity like you has next to no information on Tryxel, then it's got to be a bounty hunter who knows the other hunters well. Someone outgoing."
"There aren't many females," Tubbo said doubtfully. "And I don't feel so good about going up to them and interrogating them."
"We won't do that," I assured him. "If it comes down to it, I'll do it, but you won't have to."
"B-but... interrogating girls..."
"Don't be soft."
"Women..."
I shook my head. "Seriously, you're just like Tommy."
"I don't know if I should feel insulted or not."
Niki hid her smile behind her hand. I gave her a sidelong look, contemplating the situation. My only suspect had been ruled out. There was no one left that I thought might be the associate, and even though I had narrowed it down to someone within Tryxel, it was still a big organization. There were plenty of possibilities. I didn't have the time to go after each and every individual.
But one thing was for certain: I still had time. Smiley had been badly wounded, not only physically, but his pride, too. My ego was in pain as well. I was positive that he wouldn't attack anytime soon, so the streets would be safe for a while. In the meantime, I needed to train myself up and build endurance as well as fighting skill. Smiley was quick. I needed to be quicker.
Whatever it took. I had a brother to protect.
Techno support 🐷🎗