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[h1][color=lightblue]Donnie[/color][/h1]
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1,253
[b]EXP:[/b] (37/40) + 3 = [b]40/40[/b]
[b]LEVEL UP![/b]
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A crazy serial killer on the loose. On top of the tower-sized ghost, the horde of zombies that would attack at any moment, and the [b]GIANT DEMONIC TREE[/b] they were here to kill. [i]Just what he needed.[/i] And on top of that, they were down yet another person. Excellent. He didn't know Louis personally, but he seemed like a good man for the hour or so Donnie knew him, and the monk [i]knew[/i] the pain of losing one of your own to something random and out of your control. He didn't envy the survivors, not one bit. And to make matters worse, if the freezing ever wore off, Louis might come back as a zombie, which none of them needed right now. [i]FUCKING. WONDERFUL.[/i]

"Dammit, I figured there were multiple ghosts!" Donnie said to Blazermate. "Look, before you tell us everything, you missed a lot. So here's the deal: Fox and I went to the Break Room and found a magazine with an article on numerous monsters. We've got a bunch of potential names for this thing, but we don't know which one it is, because someone ripped out the rest of the pages. I figured the key to stopping the hungry ghost was food, so I picked up some Cup Noodles. But more importantly, Banjo, Kazooie, and Miss Fortune headed to the Library, where there was a door that wasn't supposed to be there and opened into a section that didn't make any spacial sense, at which point the hungry ghost, which is roughly as big as the police station, smashed its arm through the window and they ran away. It looked like Pichai: Small mouth, long neck, and one red eye. Jak and Daxter found a satchel filled with incense, candles, and cursed nails and it might be linked to Pichai's area."

"So now that we've got THAT out of the way," he said with some exasperation, "we need to catch this killer. This is a city guard barracks, right? It's a bit more advanced than what I'm used to, but some tools we can use to help us out."

He turned to Captain Howard. "Captain, I saw cameras on the ceiling here and there. You guys have some kind of surveillance system here? If you can get access to the footage, that might help us track him down, maybe we could see the killing itself."

"Anyway," he continued, "I vote we stick together from now on. We move as a group and make sure someone is always watching our backs. He can strike from any direction and freeze you with the press of a button, we cannot afford to take him lightly. If we keep moving in smaller groups, he [i]will[/i] strike again, and easily overwhelm us. But if several sight lines are covering every direction, it becomes exponentially harder for him to take us down. We can rush him, break that camera, and then kill him, assuming he's even willing to engage a group that large at all."

"I also vote we don't try to deal with him right now, but instead focus on Pichai. I've taken out giant monsters before. If we can all focus on him and stay away from his attacks, we might be able to kill him through brute force alone. I'm sure he has some kind of weakness that would let us skip the whole process, but I'm almost 100% sure that our sharp-dressed killer is the one who stole the pages, and we're on a timer. The next wave could come at any moment. And while I don't trust the word of a depraved murderer for even a second, we at least know he's not willing to attack large groups. Otherwise, he would already have made his move. While the fight against Pichai will be brutal for sure, I think it gives us the highest odds of getting out without becoming zombie food."

Speaking of zombie food, Donnie was internally seething at the revelation of just [i]one more[/i] stressor to his already-full plate. How were they even supposed to deal with Galeem's Guardian when the Dead Zone's [i]wildlife[/i]--or what [i]passed[/i] for wildlife, given that everything was dead--was enough to pose a massive threat on its own?

On the other hand, he had heard about Master Hand last night. Apparently, Galeem's agents liked to dress themselves up as patronizing guardians that liked to show false concern for their subjects. But he only had to take a look at the Dead Zone to lay all of Galeem's lies bare.

The Dead Zone was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most vile and disgusting place he had seen in a long time. He could understand a capricious god obsessed with creating an interesting world including a monster-filled area to provide conflict. It was [i]hideously unethical[/i], but he could at least understand it. But these survivors. They didn't [i]willingly travel[/i] to the Dead Zone like Donnie and his companions did. These survivors...they had been [i]dropped[/i] here and forced to fend for themselves.

What kind of callous [i]monster[/i] would willingly throw dozens of people into a disgusting, bloodthirsty, disease-ridden meatgrinder of a city with no escape route, no chance of rescue, and no sense of direction? Galeem, that's who.

Stopping Galeem, at this point, was a matter of principle. For all of the chaos and horror of Donnie's own world, the problems were borne from the fact that it was defined by conflict between powers both great and small. Life fought death, light fought darkness, order fought chaos, Alliance fought Horde, and no one being was responsible for it all. On a certain level, he wouldn't mind a nice vacation from Old God attacks and race wars and cosmic struggles for dominance. But not like this. This world was a sick joke, a prank played by a malicious and unloving god who only cared for his own desires.

And Donovan would [i]personally[/i] be there to [i]end[/i] him.

But at the end of the day, was he actually Donovan? The body, mind, and soul of the original Donovan had been shredded when Galeem joined the worlds. His body was a cheap fake that would probably turn to ash when he died. The Spirit inhabiting it didn't seem to be a [i]soul[/i] per se, more like some kind of conceptual essence. Otherwise, forcing it into someone else wouldn't give them superpowers. He couldn't even say he was the original Donnie in mind, not when he was missing half his memories and two entire [i]disciplines[/i]. He supposed it was a side-effect of the Spirit gradually attaining its full power, but at the end of the day, one thing was clear.

What Galeem had done to him was an act of pure, unadulterated, bodily [i]violation.[/i] on a cosmic level. Any concept of his body being [i]his[/i] had been completely overridden. He had been brutally torn apart, mind, body, and soul, and co-opted to be a set piece for some patronizing prick of a god's little play.

With this single act, Galeem had made himself worse than Arthas, worse than the Old Gods, and worse than Sargeras. At least their corruptive influences didn't completely rewrite who you were on a conceptual level. There was something especially grotesque about treating living beings as playing pieces to do whatever you wanted with.

But back to the matter at hand. They had a police station to escape.