How to Establish Your Gang and Take Care of the Children in It (On Hiatus)

Rule 2: Make Sure to Develop a Tolerance for Pickup Lines

Nightmare crouched down and picked up the discarded positive arrow, snapping off the blood-soaked head. A golden substance, almost like a powder, flared up from the broken staff. Wherever the shimmering powder touched the neon blue blood, both substances faded into a dull grey, the feelings negating the other. But enough of the powder fell into Nightmare's outstretched hand to form a small pile of pure positive emotions.

"Where is my brother?" Nightmare whispered, closing his fist around the golden powder. He opened his hand and let it drift slowly to the ground. It was corrupted now, a burnt reddish black in color. "Where is Shattered Dreams?"

He stared at the powder for a long while, but nothing happened.

Nightmare took a deep breath, trying not to jump to any conclusions. Shattered had gone off the grid before. He'd made it impossible for anyone to track him down magically. Maybe he'd done it now. Maybe he knew Mare wanted to see him and had hidden himself for some reason.

Or maybe Shattered was dead.

It made horrible, bone-chilling sense. The reason there was only one new positive guardian and a new negative one as well. Maybe while Nightmare was dormant, Shattered had been- his mind shied away from the word- and these two new guardians had been made to replace them.

No. No. Nightmare was still around. Dream was around. Somewhere that other negative guardian was probably around. Shattered must still be out there as well. He had to be.

And if he wasn't around to be found, Nightmare would have to go out and find him. Hopefully while finding out things about himself as well. Other people seemed to know him and what he'd done, and until he figured it out he'd be at a disadvantage in all of his interactions.

So multitasking it was.

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Nightmare stepped through the portal and let it close behind him. He closed his eye, trying to sense the other SOUL's in the area- specifically which ones were carrying the most negative aura. He knew Shattered well enough to know that randomly AU hopping and hoping the most negative AU would be where his brother was would never work. Shattered was far too clever to leave such an obvious way to track him down. But random luck was the only thing Nightmare could think of to find his brother- and his memories. No plan was, unfortunately, the best plan he had.

Nightmare opened his eye as the sound of screaming registered in his brain. Well, that was probably not Shattered and was almost certainly not anything to do with his memory gap. But again, probably not was the best straw for him to grasp at. So going toward the screaming was his only shot.

As bad as that was.

He walked toward the sound. Several monsters were running away from the direction of it, looking panicked. The reason for this almost immediately became clear- a fight was going on.

A skeleton was fighting with three other monsters, clearly winning. But rather than fight with magic, he acted almost feral, grappling and biting and occasionally using the ax in his hand. The other three monsters were also fighting similarly, but the skeleton was the one Nightmare noticed.

He wore a blue jacket that was torn and bloodstained, a white t-shirt similarly worn and torn, shorts that were about in the same condition, and sneakers that might have once been white but now it was impossible to tell what color they were.

The skeleton won the fight, clearly, and the three monsters all started running, cutting their losses.

"Yeah, you'd better run!" The skeleton called. Now that he wasn't moving, he swayed unsteadily on his feet. "Urgh," He muttered. "That was... harder than I thought it would be..."