After five minutes of receiving an uncomfortably quiet and incredulous stare from the two men, I took it upon myself to recall the events leading up to my loss of consciousness, yet failed miserably in perceiving what Rick and Rory gaped about.

Finally, Rory tentatively extended an arm to grab my hand, kneeling at my side. "Y-y-y-you're alive? How...? The hand just...and the hole in your..."

"Oh, that hole's been there for a while, from when I served in the war. Dr. Vindaluuk told me it was a miracle I survived. He's got quite the silver tongue, you see, and is really a remarkable doctor too!"

"You mean you've had a hole in your torso? Since the war...that's six years! And...Doctor...Vinda-who?" Rory scratched his head, unable to process everything.

"Doctor Vin-da-luuk! Told me it was a miracle I survived. He's got quite the silver tongue, you see, and is really a remarkable doctor too!" I repeated automatically, nodding affirmatively to my own words.

Eyes alight with sparks of ideas firing off in his mind, Rick hesitated opening his mouth until he decided upon what to address first. "I'd like to hear more of this doctor when we've got the time, but since you're conveniently alive right now, I believe we owe the Endigo speakeasy a visit."

"Right!" I agreed, bouncing up onto my feet. Rory was more reticent to tag along with Rick's suggestion, but rose eventually, appearing to come to terms with whatever conflicting notions he had. We made haste towards Piggy's, which, from Rick and Rory's explanation on Wendigos being cannibalistic monsters borne of greed and insatiable hunger, gave the restaurant's name a more sinister meaning.

"That's rather ironic, wouldn't you say?" I quipped, hurrying alongside Rick and Rory. "How did you come about realizing what these guys were, though?"

"Haha, about that..." Rory trailed, managing a guilty chuckle before falling silent.

"We were tracked back to our main office in Oplichten and 'recruited' by the Purple Gang after Emil reported to the police in Chicago last month. Needless to say, we were being tracked for different reasons, but our resident redhead here helped speed their search for us," opined Rick, starting off irked but ended up somewhat amused by the occurrences that led to our adventure today. "We were told to help with the purging of rival bootleggers, though we were planning to investigate the Endigo brothers anyways since they were involved in a string of strange incidents. It was a beneficial arrangement."

"They offered to blow a hole in our noggins if we didn't agree to help them," mumbled Rory, bitter from the memory. "Enlighten me, Alan. Why are we heading to the speakeasy? We've done our part in scoping out the locations and reporting them to the Purps."

"There's still a Wendigo and a Djinn on the loose. For posterity's sake, I think we should at least finish what we started and deal with them appropriately, Emil. That is, assuming they haven't fled."

We came upon Piggy's surrounded by an eerie and blood-misted aura. The streets were surprisingly devoid of life and sound, save for erratic gunshots heard from within our targeted restaurant, accompanied by screams muffled behind brick walls. Urgency propelled us to bust through the door, but an explosion from within the restaurant threw us backwards, and flames popped out of the broken windows, writhing like fire puppets before our eyes. We listened helplessly to the desperate groans of the restaurant's structure as it rumbled under the assault of fire, crumbling slowly.

Rick tackled the task of controlling the chaos by working magic with flicks of his wrists, containing the flames to Piggy's alone. His preoccupation and the flaring loud noises kept us from recognizing the looming forces coming from the shadows of night: a cold, bony hand grabbed me by the neck, and bore a slick line of frigid metal upon my throat.

"You recover from a blow through the torso, but I wonder how well you'd do re-attaching your head to your body after it's been sliced off?" Yoni Endigo smiled cordially at a shocked Rick and Rory. "It's a rather shoddy front you put up, Richter. Rorschach. One cannot help but wonder if you meant to be discovered with such horribly close names: Rick? Rory? You've got to do better than that."

A luminous purple orb floated about Yoni and me, bouncing deliberately around his ears. Yoni pressed the blade harder on my throat and listened to the orb's message, yet the night air was silent to me. My eyes wandered to the man's face, which was still human, save for the stain of blood in the corner of his lip.

Rick struck the orb with the flames that originally plagued the burning building. Yoni cleared his throat, mildly agitated by the interruption. "That's terribly rude, especially since the message was about sparing your lives."

"We've already taken down the majority of your gang, Yoni. What makes you think we won't do the same of you?" threatened Rick, ropes of fire suspended around him. Rory knelt on the ground beside him, facing us with the posture of a beast and a contemplative look in his eyes.

Yoni Endigo tutted the dark-haired man, brandishing a glance at the knife against my neck. "Because I can end the life of your trump card."

A familiar voice spoke from behind Yoni and myself. "Well, Theo's technically dead already, so..." Rory wielded the same stone dagger Rick used before at Yoni's face.

The man conceded defeat, lowering his weapon. Yoni cocked his head over his shoulder to Rory, a foxy grin emerging in the shadows of his features. "Tell me, Rorschach. Have you had any luck finding that monster you've been hunting for in the last ten years with ol' Richter there? Or is the search still stagnant?"

The comment summoned a deeply buried rage from Rory, and he grabbed the unmorphed Wendigo by the collar, lifting the slender man from the ground with his strength. "How the hell do you know about that?" he growled, his eyes on the precipice of madness.

Yoni parted his lips to respond, but instead blew shimmering gray dust into his face, then turned to blow the same substance at me, and successfully incapacitated us before disappearing into the ether, narrowly escaping Rick's fiery wrath.

The world, hazier since my encounter with the gray dust, transitioned from blurs of colors to melting shadows. A progressive din prevented my ears from catching Rick's frantic words, and the persisting noise soon promised slumber as I allowed the darkness and sound to lull me to sleep.

∞