More Trouble For Slender Man

Slender Man awoke to his carefully crafted woods in shambles, thanks to NT's handiwork. He didn't have time to think about it much, because he heard a figure approaching. He had to teleport out of there, and fast. He didn't care to get a second thrashing in one night. In a flash, he was gone, leaving a taunting note behind.

When he returned much later, he was utterly confounded at what had happened to his domain. Everything was topsy turvy. Even worse, when he tried restoring them to their proper places via teleport/magic, was sent into convulsions with the feeling of undergoing electroshock treatment fully conscious.

He knew this had to do with whoever confronted him that night since no one had ever given him any trouble before. There had been a troublesom smasher at the Pasta Manor an irate woman who downed a few hosts of their annual event with the sudden swiftness and frightening ferocity of a ticked off elf. Slender Man knew he had to bug out of there while she was busy with the others. But he didn't think the girl who KO-ed him in the woods was the same person. This girl seemed much calmer, even playful in a strange way.

He hid out in different places for months, but found his teleporting capability severely hampered since the night of the confrontation. He could no longer teleport through different times and to different worlds, and this multi-dimensional stuff was completely gone. The best he could do was teleport from place to place on Earth and in the present, and try to teleport his proxies to where he couldn't get to himself.

He kept a low profile for a few weeks while experimenting with his powers to see what exactly he had left. He found he could teleport proxies through time and to different worlds and back, he just couldn't go himself.

Then one day, he got the best news he could have imagined.

Two girls in the United States had stabbed their classmate nearly to death in devotion to him.

Slender Man breezed unseen, to that location to gloat and revel in the suffering those girls had caused.

On the heels of that crime came another, when a mother was attacked by her own daughter. Same motive.

Slender Man was elated. He had actually managed to gain such devotion from some people in the real world, so maybe his powers weren't so weak after all.

That elation was brutally ended late one night when Slender Man experienced an agonizing stabbing pain that went from his left calf to his right shoulder.

~

This was accompanied by an irate voice that hissed, "You will pay for what your fangirls did!"!"

He convulsed, trying to clear his head and look for the source of the voice.

"Much as I'd like to end you here and now, I am not authorized to do so."

"What's going on?" Slender Man snarled, trying to hide being so taken aback.

"It must really make your day knowing some of your stupid fangirls actually tried to kill people beyond the fictional realm."

He knew he had heard this angry voice before, but couldn't quite recall where or when. He decided to answer with his own authoritative command. Nobody had been able to say no to him when he raised his voice, especially since he rarely did so. Surely this would frighten this pest into surrendering. "Show yourself, whoever you are!" Slender Man demanded.

The response he got was not what he expected or hoped for. "Oh, I will, when the time is right. You will not try to order me around unless you want me to forget I'm not supposed to kill you yet!"

Slender Man roared, enraged at his futility to get rid of these sensations or make the source of them reveal itself.

No proxies came into his wood that night, but Slender Man was disturbed by kicks, pokes, and shoves from something he couldn't see. Every so often, he thought he saw a shadow gliding to and fro in the distance, but it would only catch his eye, then disappear again.

This was the start of months of torment for Slender Man. He never knew when he would hear an angry voice hiss in his ear, see a strange shadow, or feel an unpleasant sensation, and it wasn't limited to his waking hours. During sleep, he sometimes dreamed about a scowling face that threatened his life, only to awaken in a cold sweat. Sometimes this was accompanied by pain, and more spitting, hissing, angry utterances at him.

His group of proxies had decreased too, since the Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weber incident, and he needed more of them to rebuild his domain.

One night, a small creature scurried up to him. "Your mansion is on fire!"

Slender Man stared at the creature in disbelief. "A furby?"

"Yes, and I've been a fan of yours for some time." it said.

It was an all black 1998 model.

"You better not be playing a sick prank. Slender Man said, reaching out and grabbing the furby with a couple of tendrils.

He scuttled through his wood until he found his mansion on fire, and a number of trees along with it.

He released the furby, but there wasn't much he could do other than watch his precious mansion burn.

The furby watched in fascination. "I wonder what it would be like if there was anyone in there. That would be entertaining."

Slender Man grimaced, "Except for that it's still *my* mansion." he pouted. "If it was just an apartment building filled with nobodies, that would really be a sight."

Eventually the flames above the wreckage spelled out a message:

"I'm Sick Of Sparing You, Slender Boy."

"What does that mean?" asked the furby.

"More trouble." said Slender Man. "But there might be a way you can help me, little guy. I need more proxies to rebuild. I will give you a permanent home wherever you can recruit proxies for me, or where you can manage to get someone killed."

They discussed plans as they moved away from the smouldering ruins.

In the next nights, those proxies that showed up were aghast when discovering the Slender mansion had gone up in flames. Still others had the ultimate misfortune of being accused of treachery, and were killed by Slender Man.

~

The attacks on Slender Man's person became more severe, and they went anywhere from five minutes to an hour long. These attacks never happened at regular times, so Slender Man could never brace himself for them.

One day as Dawn broke, Slender Man awoke from a horrifying nightmare in which the message from the flaming mansion reappeared, then out of those flames came a shadowy figure, wielding a sword.

Slender Man jolted awake just as the sword was about to get him in the throat.

"Much as I want to end you here and now, I'm holding out for someone else to have the honour." an angry voice hissed in his unseen ear.

In a wasted effort, Slender Man tried to snatch at it with an arm, then with a number of tentacles.

The thing shrieked back at him, disturbing some branches in one of the trees several feet away. Some of the branches broke off and were sent flying by unseen hands.

"I'm sick of waiting!" the shadow screamed. "I won't wait forever!"

No matter how Slender Man bellowed back at it, or tried to scare it into showing itself or leaving him alone, nothing worked.

His furby friend kept returning every night to report that he hadn't found any new potential proxies.

This, along with slender Man's decreasing number of slaves, and the bizarre attacks on his body and mind were taking their toll.

An autumn went by, but that winter, Slender Man's black furby friend told him he would be away for a while.

"I found a home with a lot of other furbies. So there could be a potential proxy living there. maybe more. I'll try to get in and befriend them. If they keep their house shut up over night because of the cold, I won't be able to make it back here until it gets warmer and they open a window."

"Good luck. For your sake and mine." said Slender Man.

Most of that winter was rather quiet but for the all-too-frequent unwelcome visits from Slender Man's shadow enemy and the painful side effects they seemed to bring with them. No matter where he went in the world, he couldn't hide from it or shake it off. Now he was getting even more physical sensations like being sat next to, breathed on, etc. when no one was there to do these things.

One bitterly cold day, he felt his tentacles being pressed into as if something was burying itself in them. But when he tried to grasp at it, he got nothing.

A warm breath in his ear said, "Since I'm still waiting, you might as well do something useful in your worthless life and keep me warm."

All those months of increasing torment had Slender Man in a state he was accustomed to putting others in, and he couldn't deal with it happening to himself. He was actually creeped out. Finally, he cracked. Throwing himself down on the ground, rolling, kicking and flailing, he screamed, "Get out of here! Leave me alone!" And similar protestations over and over.

"You could always kill yourself, then I'll stop!" his shadow foe taunted, landing next to him and putting an unseen hand on his Beth-made face.

He slapped at it, but only managed to slap his own face, causing it to smart. "Doh!"

Loud laughter rang out. "You can't slap hard enough to tickle, so whatcha bawling' about?"

"Silence, stupid!" slender Man roared.

"ain't much fun getting your head messed with, and a taste of your own medicine, is it?"

"Just go away!" But Slender Man might as well be shouting into the wind.

His ordeal went on until the unseen enemy tired itself out and left on its own. But it would be back, just as it had returned so many times before.

The furby didn't return, but a proxy it had befriended, came to Slender Man with news.

They were bugging a house full of furbies and their owner, a woman named Jessica Smith. That household was revealed to be preparing to wage war on Slender Man and Jeff The Killer, or so the furby spy claimed.

The proxy let Slender Man know when all the bugs were installed, and Slender Man would check out what information they could provide him after some time had passed.

There was no further news about it, and months went by.

Finally in mid 2015, Slender Man decided to check out the bug info to see if Jessica Smith was behind the attacks he kept getting from the enemy shadow.

To his frustration, the recordings contained no information. They were blank but for the start of each where the furby spy had entered the house to plant a bug. This was followed shortly by crunching for a moment or two, and that was it. Nothing further was recorded.

"Stupid creature!" Slender Man fumed. "Probably thought those bugs were to eat."

Angered, he went looking for the proxy associated with the furby spy operation.

"You!" He burst out from behind a tree in a yard, startling Robert Mortonson out of his skull.

The boy didn't look any less worried when he recognized his master, Slender Man. Robert cowered.

"You didn't tell that furby not to eat the bugs, did you?"

"Of course I did." Robert said, backing away.

"He didn't listen to you. There is nothing on those tapes but a few moments of crunching. If you see that furby again, hold on to him, and bring him to me when you can."

With that, slender Man teleported from Robert's sight.

~

Back in his wood, he was greeted by a warm breath into his invisible ear that said,:

"You came so close to being ended tonight. By sparing that boy, you escaped your destruction by a hair."

Slender Man tried to ignore it, but he couldn't put it out of his mind. Would he be afflicted with this for the rest of his life? Was this the result of his messing with other people's minds? he had never asked himself about side effects of super powers when he first discovered what his were and how he could use them to his advantage.

Slender Man never regained the support of a strong proxy base after his mansion went up in flames. Too many simply knew nothing of construction work and slender Man was not the sort who could teach or work with them.

Still, others had different reasons for leaving. Some committed suicide. Others were sent away to special facilities dealing with mental and emotional problems. Some were caught committing crimes and sent to prison.

Then he began to think about the tangible enemy, the one Robert Mortonson and the spy furby were supposed to keep an eye on. Jessicaa Smith and her group of furbies. There were over a dozen of them, Robert had said, but Slender Man had dismissed it as a threat. But Robert had mentioned Jeff The Killer, and that Jessica was after him too. Slender Man thought nothing of that either until he re-read the posting to the internet by Jeff during the commission of an attack. Sure enough, the name Jessica was in that letter.

This gave Slender Man an idea, and immediately, he set off to try it out.

"What's going on?" Jeff approached a tree several feet away from a manhole he'd just crawled out of. There was no wind, yet it appear some of the branches had waved at him. He knew what it meant. Slender Man wanted his attention.

"You are in danger." Slender Man told him.

Jeff scoffed. "From Jane? hardly."

"Not Jane." "It's another woman, one who intruded into my wood and turned everything upside down while I was asleep."

"I didn't know you ever slept." said Jeff.

Not wanting to admit he was knocked out by Beth, Slender Man covered. "I don't sleep as often as most, but I was super bored that evening." What a liar.

"So who's the trouble maker?"

"Jessica Smith." Slender Man replied. "One of my proxies found this out from another proxy via infiltration of a certain home." We don't know much more than that, the first proxy to get the news just disappeared. but for your own safety, I'm offering you some protection.

"What kind of protection?"

"Teleport through time so you won't run into her in the present. I can shift you into the future so you can get rid of Jane, but then back into the present to give you a, shall we say, reboot.?"

"If you're going to bring me back here again, what's to stop this Jessica from searching for me?" Then Jeff snorted indignantly. "She's nothing to be scared of anyway."

"The reboot means you won't look like yourself. That will keep the police and the Smith woman off your tail."

"What's in it for you?" Jeff sneered.

"You can help me rebuild. Jessica has done extensive damage to my wood, and it will require all of my allies to help me get it back to normal."

Of course, Slender Man was way off as to who was behind his own attack and the damage to his precious woods, but that didn't make any difference to what he was proposing to Jeff.

"What? I don't know a thing about building stuff." Jeff said incredulously. "Why can't you just restore it using magic?"

"Jessica is a mage. She would detect my use of magic to rebuild and return to tear it all down again. And she has already claimed one of us. Salt has been salted. She found out he could be destroyed by the very thing he was named for."

"She's no match for my knife." said Jeff. "No one is."

"With her magic, she could be."

"Jane thought she was magical too, and look what happened." Jeff sneered. "She still can't catch me. She kills everyone but."

"Jane's abilities were the result of a science experiment. This is different." said Slender Man.

"You're threatened by this chick?"

Slender Man made no response.

Jeff rubbed his greasy forehead. "I haven't got time for this."

"I will make it worth your while." Slender Man finally said.

"How?"

"For every day you do a good job on my rebuilding project, I will let you kill the most useless proxy on that date."

Jeff stood for a moment, considering. Then he finally looked at Slender Man. "Deal."

"You will be sent back through time to 2008, to give you the appearance you had before you killed your first parents, Peter and Margaret."

"My first parents?" Jeff looked blankly at Slender Man.

"Before your apparence gets changed in that time, you will then be teleported to a later date, which I will determine."

"Does that mean my mom and dad are still alive?"

"No, you killed them. But this is the only chance you have at changing your appearance and hiding from Jessica, as well as helping me win against her. It was very foolish of you to drop names in that open letter to the public."

"No it wasn't, not if I got people shaking in their chairs." Jeff retorted.

"It's good to terrify people, but sometimes you have to be more subtle about it." Slender Man explained. "So, do you want a chance at a kill a night or not?"

"Duh." Jeff muttered.

"I can't go with you back to 2008, but when you are brought back to the present, you will look like you did at thirteen."

Jeff nodded, and with a touch from Slender Man's hand, he disappeared.

Slender Man stood for a few moments and made another gesture.

Jeff was transported back to 2008, then before he could do much of anything, he was transported to 2015, where he killed his second set of parents, and was returned to the present, along with Randy, Keith, and Troy, the three bully boys who had harassed him in both versions of his story.

When all three returned to Slender Man's wood, Jeff cussed. The other bullies shouted unpleasant things back.

"You never said anything about bringing those losers back too!" Jeff stormed, but checked himself at a growl from Slender Man.

"Of course I didn't, you never would've agreed if I had." Slender Man replied.

Randy began to smirk, but Slender Man interrupted his gloat.

"To work, all of you. I didn't bring you back here to bully and fight with each other. Your job is to rebuild my home. It's a mess. And don't ask, if you value your lives."

All of the Slender Man proxies present shuddered and genuflected, then went scurrying about, trying to figure out how to rebuild the mansion. Most had absolutely no experience building anything beyond model cars and planes.

But Jeff's reaction was different. He just stood there, pouting.

"What are you waiting for, Jeff? The mansion to build itself?" Slender Man asked.

"I told you, I don't know - "

"You don't know anything but how to kill. Well. It won't hurt you to learn something new."

"And then you even get to decide who I'm allowed to kill." said Jeff, frowning, for the restart thing Slender put him through, had made that possible again.

"That was the agreement."

Jeff sighed, and shuffled off in a huff.

Slender Man watched after him. "If you don't like this plan, there's always what could have happened. I think I'll give you another re-start."

Jeff cussed as he suddenly found himself in the home of another couple, with his story from age 13 blaming everything on schizophrenia, a mental condition he didn't have. In that story, he gutted a few school mates, killed an intruder and his third father while sleepwalking, went to jill, killed a couple of doctors and some inmates there, eventually killing a guard and his own mother just before escaping, to kill yet another doctor.

After his escape, he hunted down Jane Richardson, and the two rival killers had it out, nearly killing each other, only to do it all again 9 months later when Jane's liquid hate allowed her to pull a pregnancy act on Jeff.

They had another go at it, and during all of this, Jeff managed to get hospitalized, where he killed a patient, and somehow ended up passing out during another escape attempt. That last scene found him waking up in a coroner's office.

He wasn't there long. Once fully awake, he found himself back on the street where Slender Man had first sought him out as an ally and potential proxy.

Jeff's appearance had been changed back to the way it had been since before Slender Man had mucked about teleporting him to and fro.

As for Slender Man, he abandoned Jeff, who was simply too mouthy and useless, too much of a disappointment to even get some form of goodbye.

Now, it was time to pout, sulk, and fume. First, the black furby. Now Jeff. Two proxy-grab attempt fails. Was Slender Man losing his touch?

--

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