Chapter 102: Fading
Gary truly felt like his body had become a bottomless pit as no matter how much he ate, his hunger didn’t seem to get satisfied. On the plus side, he discovered that with his sharp teeth and string jaws there had been no need for him to worry about bones.
After each bite he could feel the human flesh energise his body in unique ways, and after a while had passed, all the bodies had disappeared. Alas, his supernatural devouring turned out to be limited to flesh. Once Hawk’s hand had disappeared, Gary had tried to bite down on the cloth, yet to his surprise he had found it hard to swallow, forcing him to strip all of the bodies naked.
Leaving the karaoke room, the high schooler quickly searched for the cameras. Fortunately, all of them had already been turned around, which was a huge relief since he wasn’t exactly a whiz-kid with technology. The teenager wouldn’t even have known where to start if he might have needed to delete some evidence.
With that out of the way, Gary headed to the supply closet. It had been locked, though given his strength breaking the door had posed no challenge. Grabbing the strongest chemicals and cleaning supplies he could find, he returned to the room.
With the help of Charging Heart, the high schooler was able to clean the room in record time. He knew that it wasn’t perfect, heck he was well aware that at least the door, the chemicals and the tools would have his fingerprints now, but since Gary had never been brought in for criminal charges, the police didn’t have his fingerprints or DNA on file to outright identify him.
As soon as the room stopped looking like a murder had just taken place, Gary proceeded to put all of their clothes in a large black bin bag, while putting their personal items like phones, wallets and keys in a seperate smaller bin bag.
‘I guess I should bury their clothes somewhere deep in the woods or something. I can’t just throw them away in a garbage can, or the police will just find them. I can’t bring them back with me either, since I already have enough evidence of other things hidden in my room.’ Gary thought.
After returning the supplies, Gary had already decided to leave a note. He wrote it out on the reception desk, stating that the sunglasses guy quit effective immediately, with a few other words added here and there. This way, for those that would arrive, would assume the receptionist had rage quitted and was closed for the day. To top things off he turned the sign that said open to closed, making it less likely for people to enter. Another reason for doing this, was so the boss of this place wouldn’t ask any questions. Thinking he just had a bad rude employee.
Leaving the Kobe Karaoke Club, he was happy to see that Amy and Stacy were nowhere to be seen and he took a deep breath still holding the bin bag.
‘Good, no one saw me enter this place. That Hawk guy claimed he was linked to the Grey Elephant gang. If that’s the case, the police probably won’t take a missing report seriously and if they do find out that they have been killed as long as they don’t link it back to today they’ll just assume it’s another gang. It will be okay, Gary.’ He told himself.
While he was still worried about Amy, Gary had no way of following her. The high schooler had been unable to Mark his sister today and her phone was currently with him. As such, he chose to trust that Stacy had gotten her out safely and that the two had gotten to a hospital.
As for him, Gary made his way back to Chavley, where the war was taking place between the colour gangs. He was shocked to see that the police had barricaded the entire area around it.
‘That wasn’t there when I left! Well, I guess trying to contain it to just one area is the best they can do in this situation.’
Gary had placed a hand on his chest. For a second, when he had seen them, the teenager had feared that they had come to arrest him, but noticing how many vehicles there were and seeing them just standing there he understood the situation.
It didn’t matter to Gary though, he just needed to find another way in. Using his newfound talents in jumping and climbing, the high schooler was easily able to use the alleyways between the apartments, to get over a built fence and into the area where their apartment was.
Once he got in deep enough, that’s when Gary decided to destroy all of the phones he had retrieved from the others. It took him a while, since he first needed to figure out whose phone was whose. Stacy’s was easy enough to identify thanks to the pink case, but for the rest he had to turn them on.
He didn’t want to destroy the wrong ones by accident. The reason why he hadn’t just destroyed them on site and dumped them somewhere was due to GPS. If the police had a way to track the last known GPS location of those phones it would have taken them to that karaoke club.
However, if they could figure out that the last time they had been seen would have been today, the day the gang war had happened and tracked it to this area, they should assume they would have gotten involved in the gang war. Gary just hoped that after finding that much out, that the police would be too lazy to run a more thorough investigation of all the spots they had been to.
‘I guess being in the Underdogs helped me out quite a bit.’ Gary thought. ‘All that time, I was thinking what would I do if they told me to do something dangerous. What would happen if I needed to avoid being caught, so they taught me a lot.
‘Kirk taught me a lot.’
After disassembling the phones and spreading them around in different places, the last thing Gary needed to do was get rid of the clothes, which led him to the trusty forest he had been visiting more often than he ever had thought he would be doing.
[Skill activated Charging Heart]
[All stats have temporarily been doubled]
[-10 Energy]
[98/120 Energy]
Gary activated once more and with his hands he started digging away. He needed the hole to be deep enough so no animal, and no one else would accidentally stumble upon the clothes. While doing so, the teenager thought about many things, none of which were the lives he had taken.
No, he was worried about his sister, and how he could protect the rest of his family, using the powers of the system.
‘If it hadn’t been for this Werewolf System, could I have helped Amy in that situation today? What if it had been the Underdogs that had managed to capture her? My Energy got too low, I need to learn how to control my Heart rate so I don’t need to spend the Energy on activating Charging Heart.
‘I can’t believe this thing doesn’t have a reserve! I mean with how much I’ve eaten earlier, I’m surprised I didn’t increase it naturally. Just where did it all go, if after using Charging Heart my Energy is already down slightly?’
Eventually, Gary had finished burying the clothes. What felt like a very long night seemed to finally be over. Originally, he had planned to rejoin the fight hoping to gain more Exp, but after what had happened, he just wanted to check if his sister was safe.
However, that was when he noticed something strange. One of the green Marks he could see was fading in and out. This was the first time something like that had ever happened, so he wasn’t quite sure what it meant. Nevertheless, that wasn’t important, because from the smell of it he knew who it belonged to.
‘Mum!’