Chapter Text
Tree, tree, another tree… Oh! A powerline! More trees…
Branzy watched in silence as things zipped past the window. The car ride wasn't too long between the towns, but the other man was obviously not much of a talker.
Speaking of the other man…
“So uh…” Branzy began.
The other man turned his head slightly to look at him, but was still keeping his eyes on the road.
“What uh- I don't think I ever got your name.”
“Leowook.” he said.
“Nice to meet you Leowook. I'm Branzy.”
“ I know.” Leowook straightened his head so that he was looking directly at the road.
Branzy nodded to himself as he looked back out the window to the forest they were driving through.
Leowook wasn't trying very hard to carry the conversation, so they just let the silence settle between them.
Branzy allowed his mind to think about the things he was trying to avoid.
This is it. I'm really going back to that city. I'm really going.
Are Subz and Vitalasy okay? I should go see them. ( Will I have time to?) Have they changed much? I hope they still recognize me.
Branzy reached a hand up to pat his hair to make sure the magic he was using was still working, making sure his horns were hidden.
Who are those heros anyway? What do they want? Why do they do what they do? Are they really the good guys?
It felt weird that he was going to fight against the heros. He had spent so much time looking up to them when he was a teen, and had spent years studying to become a redstone engineer for them.
And now, he was going to be a redstone engineer for the people who were trying to stop them.
Funny how some things play out.
He was going to be working with Leowook, and whoever else was on their team to help defeat the heros.
And he was working for ClownPierce to do it.
ClownPierce…
There was something about him.
When they met, he was very eerie. ClownPierce had been quick to get on topic. He was very direct.
And what was weird was how Branzy had felt.
His hands had been sweaty. His heart is fast.
It felt terrifying. But also oddly enough, it felt thrilling.
Branzy thought the man's jester themed outfit was unique, and terrifying at the same time.
But who was he? Branzy had never heard of him before on any media (but that would most likely be because Branzy uses an old flip phone).
He was very clearly villain-aligned, if not a villain, and he was definitely based in Lifesteal. Branzy knew one of his motives, but outside of all that, he knew nothing of the man.
Maybe he could ask Leowook about ClownPierce.
“Leowook?”
“Just call me Leo.”
“Okay… Leo, who exactly is ClownPierce?”
“The deadliest assassin in Lifesteal. He is respected by a lot of villains. Even some of the heros i think… but that just might be fear.” Leo turned off the highway they were driving on just outside the city and turned down a small gravel road. “We're almost there.”
“Almost where?” Branzy turned back to look at Lifesteal as they drove around it.
“We have a base set up outside the city for safety reasons. There are cars that can take you to the city if you need to be there.”
They pulled up to a large dark mansion-looking house built out of bricks and stone. It had three visible floors from the outside, as well as several chimneys sticking out of the roof.
Many of the windows were made of stained glass in upside down ‘u’s. The largest of all the windows was above the door. It was a five foot by five foot circle, and was made out of stained glass. In the middle of it was the flower of a milk thistle.
In front of the house there was a massive driveway that led up to several garages that were located on the left side of the house.
All around the house there were many gardens filled with the most beautiful flowers Branzy had ever seen.
“wow…”
“This is it.” Leo said as the car came to a stop in front of the garage. Leo pressed a button on the little mirror in the front of the car and the garage opened.
Leo drove the car in and closed the garage behind him. He parked the car next to other black vehicles. Leo took the keys out of the eginition and exited the vehicle, with Branzy hurrying to grab his backpack and follow him.
“This is the safe house?” Branzy asked as he slid out of the car. He followed Leo to a single black door. Leo held it open for Branzy and motioned for him to enter the house.
“It is.” Leo shut the door behind them when they were inside the house.
The room the door opened into was a medium sized mud room. There were shoe racks lining the floors, coat hangers on the wall, and a floor to ceiling mirror on the left. On the right there was a small bench where people could sit, as well as a massive dark oak clock hanging above the bench. The wall immediately in front of them had a tall dark wooden archway with intricate designs that opened into a large living room. The entire room had black and red themes to it.
Leo led Branzy into the living room and sat him on one of the sofas.
“I'm going to go find Clown. He will show you around and introduce you to the rest of our team.” Leo turned away from Branzy and walked upstairs.
Branzy looked around the room he was in while he waited for them to return.
There were two sofas. The one he was sitting on, and the one directly parallel to it. In the middle of the two there was a glass coffee table. On Branzy’s right there was a large brick fireplace. On his left there were two chairs. Underneath the furniture there was a black rug with red swirls on it. Above him hung a massive black crystal chandelier.
Coming off of the living room were many closed doors, however there were also some open archways that led to other rooms, such as the kitchen, dining room, and the mudroom that he had come from.
The staircase Leo had used to disappear to the second floor was grand. Its stair part was black, with red handrails. It led up to a catwalk where a second staircase led up to the third floor.
Branzy could also see the front door and foyer from his spot on the sofa. The door seemed to have some sort of advanced redstone locking mechanism, reminding Branzy why he was brought here.
“Ah. Branzy. I'm glad you decided to take me up on my offer.”
Branzy returned his attention back to the staircase in time to see ClownPierce descend down them. While he still wore his mask, his jester outfit was replaced by a dark black and red suit that made ClownPierce look dashing.
When ClownPierce reached the bottom of the staircase, he stopped and motioned with his head for Branzy to follow him. Once he saw that Branzy had stood from his spot on the sofa and was making his way over to the stairs, ClownPierce turned and walked up them again.
“Unfortunately, it's only me, Minute and Leo who are at our base currently. You should have met Leo already. He was the one who drove you here.” Once they reached the top of the stairs, ClownPierce took a left leading them towards two dark oak doors.
ClownPierce effortlessly pushed them open, revealing a council room. There was a dark oak table in the middle of the room with dark oak chairs with red cushions surrounding it. Under the table was a black rug with white and grey swirls on it.
Only one of the chairs was occupied, to the right of the head table sat a demon. He wore a gold crown on his head with a single pink gem in the middle. He wore a suit, similar to that of ClownPeirce’s, except it was only black and white. His skin and hair were pitch black.
When he looked up into Branzy’s eyes, Branzy could see his completely white eyes widen.
“Hello Branzy.” The demon said,nodding. “I'm MinuteTech, but please just call me Minute.”
Branzy nodded in turn. “Nice to meet you Minute.”
From behind him ClownPierce cleared his throat.
“We should keep going, we still have the rest of the safe house to see.” ClownPierce said as he placed a hand on Branzys shoulder and guided him out of the room.
The rest of the house was primarily straight forward, mostly offices and bedrooms, with the odd planning or living room sprinked in here or there.
At the very end of the tour, they stopped in front of a door. ClownPierce reached into his pocket, and pulled out a key handing it to Branzy.
“This is your room. You are free to do with it what you please. Your office,” ClownPierce pointed behind Branzy to another door. “Is that one.”
He pulled out a second key and handed them to Branzy.
“This is the key to your office. I also have one, but not for your room.”
“Thank you, ClownPierce.” Branzy ssid as he unlocked the door to his room and stepped onto the hardwood floor.
He was about to close it when ClownPierce stopped him.
“Clown. Just… call me Clown.”
Branzy nodded and Clown pulled his hand away and let Branzy close the door.
Branzy looked around his room as he set his backpack down.
It wasn't a big room, but it had everything Branzy would need.
In the corner on the left there was a twin bed with black bed sheets pushed up against the wall, with a black night stand on the other side of it. There was an empty wooden dresser pushed up against the foot of the bed, with a standing mirror across from it. On the other side of the room there was a sleek dark oak desk, filled with pencils and mathematics supplies and paper. Above it hung a mostly empty bulletin board, only having a calendar hung on it and some thumb tacks in one of the corners. To the left of the board sat a nice round clock. Beside the door there was an empty bookshelf waiting to be filled.
There was a cell phone on the desk, as well as a piece of paper and a keychain with some keys. Branzy walked towards it, picked it up.
The note read:
Hello Branzy,
We are very glad that you have decided to join our team. Since you are now a part of our team, we have given you a burner phone. The phone already has our team's contacts on them. If the need arises to contact us, feel free to do so. There is also a keychain on the desk. The bigger black key will unlock the front door of the house, and the little gold one will unlock the door to your room. If you need anything else, please let me know.
Sincerely,
ClownPierce
Branzy put down the paper and picked up the phone. He opened it and true to the note, the team's contacts were there.
He took some time to explore the functions of the new phone. While Branzy did have a phone of his own, it was an older one. It did not have a touch screen or wifi, and certainly didn't connect to the internet.
He shut the cell phone off and picked up the keys, putting them both in his pocket, alongside his own old phone.
Branzy moved his backpack from the spot it sat beside the door to over on his bed, and began putting his stuff away.
First he put his clothes in the empty dresser with his hair brush on the top. His book of redstone was taken out of his backpack and found a place on his desk next to the mechanical pencils.
Once everything was done, Branzy stepped back and surveyed the room.
It certainly wasn't his home, but it wasn't bad.
But Branzy had an itch in the back of his head, he wanted to go see the city. He wanted to look around and learn.
So Branzy took one last look around the room before turning around and left his room.
He walked through the halls, looking for someone who could drive him to town. Eventually he came across Leo sitting in the meeting room, which was now empty.
Leo was reading some kind of book while he fidgeted with a little yellow cube.
“Hey Branzy.” Leo said as he stopped fighting with the cube to look at him. “You need something?”
“Yeah, um…” Branzy began, “would you be willing to go into town with me? It's just… I want to see what it's like.” Branzy asked.
Leo closed and put his book down as he stood up and motioned for Branzy to follow him. “Sure. Why not, I also need to go into town.”
“Thanks.” Branzy said as they made their way to the garage.
They got in a black car and the engine roared to life as Leo drove out of the house, and towards the city.
***
Branzy swears that out of the corner of his eye he can see something following him. It's dark, like a shadow and if he looks fast enough he swears it's wearing some kind of a cloak.
But everytime he tries to sneakily glance over, it's gone.
Branzy hopes it is just his imagination. But there's a chance, however small, that it might be a hero stalking him. And Branzy’s brain was choosing to ignore all logic and panic that they might have found him again.
He began to walk faster, eyes darting around the alleyways he walked through, looking for other heros preparing to jump him, or for any available exits to get away from the shadow.
Eventually Branzy gets out of the alley way, and into the sun. He kept walking and eventually he no longer felt as if he was being followed. When he did he finally took note of his surroundings. He found himself in a park. Around him were tall buildings with electronic billboards on them.
There were many regular billboards, advertising household items and such. But there were two that stood out to Branzy.
The first billboard had a yellow smiling man with his thumb up. On the top of his head sat a crown. His outfit resembled one of a royal, more specifically a prince if you look hard enough. Next to the image of his face was a quote. The quote read ; Help us build our better world.
But then that billboard and all the one around it began to glitch.
The people in the park who were previously paying little to no mind to the billboards in question had now stopped what they were doing in favour of watching the billboards.
Then the billboards went black for a second before they slowly flicker back on one by one, each one no longer displaying what they were before, instead displaying a single question written in dark purple that read;
‘A BETTER WORLD FOR WHO?’
The people in that park began to take out their phones and take photos of said quote, murmuring to themselves about who would hijack the billboards.
Somewhere beside him Branzy heard a cackle. When he turned to look at the source of the loud mischievous laugh, he saw two people.
One was a guy wearing black sunglasses and had his black hair slicked back. He wore a red suit with a white shirt and a black tie.
The other was a human looking man, in a purple and black suit. But the man was very clearly not human, for every few seconds he would glitch a weird purple and become transparent for a second.
“Nice.” The one in red started as he crossed his arms in front of his chest, turning to the other. “I didn't think you could actually do it.”
The purple one huffed in annoyance, “Of course I could do it.”
Sirens began to wail somewhere off in the distance.
“We should probably go before they get here.” the purple one said, turning around and beginning to walk away.
“I agree. I dont think they're very happy that you hacked their billboards.” the other one followed after looking one last time at their work.
Branzy could hear their bickering getting quieter and quieter, and as the sirens grew louder.
Branzy looked back towards the billboards just in time to see police cars pull up, as well as a white limo.
Out stepped a man, which Branzy recognized as the same yellow man that was on the billboards. The man looked at the billboards and then he began to look around the crowd.
Before the yellow man’s eyes could land on Branzy, he stepped back into an alleyway and began to walk away.
Branzy walked in silence for 15 minutes, going over what had just happened in that park before he was torn from his thoughts by a buzzing in his pocket.
He stopped and leaned against a wall as he pulled out both of his phones. It was the phone provided to him by Clown that was buzzing.
Leo’s name appeared as Branzy answered it and pulled it up to his ear.
“Hello?” Branzy said as he checked his surroundings.
“Clown called us back for a mission briefing. I have your location, i'm on my way. Be ready.” Leo said as he pulled away to hang up, but was stopped by Branzy.
“What do you mean you have my location?” Branzy questioned.
“Clown didn't tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That there's a tracker in your phone. There is in all of ours. He’s paranoid.” Leo said over the phone. “I'm almost there. Go north and wait at the road for me.”
Branzy was about to confirm but Leo had hung up on him. Branzy sighed as he put the phone back in his pocket and left the alleyway. Sure enough, Leo pulled up just a minute later and Branzy opened the door and got in, watching the surroundings change as they drove out of town.
But what Branzy didn't see was the pair of focused purple eyes watching him as he left.