Wanderer

I thought I would find answers…

"…but it turns out that nobody knows what this guy is…"

If anything, everybody looked at me as if there was something wrong with me.

"Must be some sort of sibling quarrel." One of them said.

I tried telling them that he wasn't really my twin, but they just laughed me off as someone who was just being mean. I mean, I did try to explain to them why that thing looked like me, but they still just kept being ignorant.

Wait, now that I think about it, they were pretty fast to just shrug it off.

I wish I could study up more on this world's history, but I wouldn't be able to read a single word printed on those books.

I looked back over to my clone who was sitting squarely on the middle of the floor. His usual routine was look all around the room and then stare at me for five minutes. Something that struck me as weird was that he didn't look menacing at all. He just looked really confused.

Xylvia was still sleeping. All the blood she had lost looked to have went back into her arm, but she was definitely still exhausted. After what I had just witnessed, I figured that I should at least try to kill whatever this thing was. However, if Xylvia couldn't do it, then it'd probably be a bad idea if I tried to.

For now, I'll just try to as it questions.

"Hey, you." I said to the creature.

It looked at me, still confused but with a bit of focus.

"You mind telling me what the hell you are?"

It didn't say anything. However, it did raise its hand and extend its index finger straight at me. Then, he slowly shook his head while wearing a depressing look on his face. It's eyes suddenly grew wet. It wiped at its face, but didn't seem to understand why. To anyone, it would seem like a normal reaction. However, it took it by surprise.

"…purpose…"

It can speak?

"H-Hey, tell me," he suddenly said, almost panicking as he hastily crawled towards me as if he were a beggar asking for money. "Please tell me. What's my purpose?"

Purpose? How the hell am I supposed to know that?

"So far, it looked like your purpose was to kill Xylvia," I said to him. "But now, I've no clue what you're wanting to do."

"She's the one who cut my arm off!"

"Aren't you the one that started stalking her?"

"Right after she grabbed my arm."

"Then explain to me why the hell you were banging a pipe on a wall like that?"

That's where it stopped speaking. It caught its words quickly before it could say something stupid. It's words sounded just like mine. It's attitude. It's anger. It's confusion. It's way of speaking. All of it belonged to me.

"You should know that anything you say to me won't even matter," I said to it. "You're nothing but a copycat. Everything that you're saying doesn't belong to you. Your words. Your attitude. Your looks. None of it is yours."

"You think I have a choice? How else am I supposed to survive?"

Survive? Is this some kind of requirement for its species, or just a dumb excuse?

"Why do you look so confused," it asked me, using my eyes to form its own sense of confusion. "Wait, do you not know what I am?"

"No, not really." I responded.

"Are you a Summon?"

"Yeah, you could say that. Why's that important?"

"I'm a Wanderer."

A Wanderer? Am I supposed to know what that is?

The clone, or Wanderer, gave me a reassured look as if he knew what was going on. I was still left in the dark and extremely skeptical about this guy, but I don't really think I have much of a choice when it comes to finding information other than by listening to it. Plus, I wasn't as worried anymore since it probably would've killed me and Xylvia if it wanted to. That part I was still a little on edge about though.

"Wanderer's are a species of entities shrouded in a black void," Wanderer began to explain. "We're a species that just…exist. We don't know what we are. We can't speak, eat, drink, sleep. We can't do anything that the Named Ones can do."

I can assume that the Named Ones are people that speak and think like humans, like Xylvia and I.

"We don't even have any families," Wanderer continued. "Sometimes, we'll just pick roles and play them out as best we can. Even when we don't know what we're doing. In our so-called lives, we only have two options: we can waste cycles in an aimless wander until we die, or we can create someone within ourselves."

"Is that what you did to me?" I asked it.

Wanderer nodded.

"I was at my last Cycle. I could feel myself fading. …I didn't want…I didn't want to die… I got so scared, so…desperate. I didn't know what to do…"

It started to cry.

…

I was very confused. Was it really sad? Was it trying to find the right emotion and decided to just cycle through he ones it knew? I tried to figure out if it was mimicking my tears or if it was creating them on its own. And do I really look like that when I'm crying?

"There was a man that came up to me one day," Wanderer continued once again. "I had abandoned my pretend mother and brother, so I just wanted to be left alone. The one thing I wanted was to just die alone, without anyone seeing me and being sad about it. However, this man felt…different. I could tell that he was someone with a lot of power. I was scared, but then he made a promise to me."

"What did he promise?" I asked.

"He said: 'I promise to grant you a life, but I will be the one to choose your host.'"

"You're saying that someone made you choose me? That doesn't make any sense. I've only been in this world for three days."

"Three days? Wait, you're a Summon?"

"Yep. Which is why I'm extremely confused right now. How does this man know me specifically when I've been here for a short time?"

He could just be someone who's interested in me because I'm a Summon. Maybe he's a Felinian who doesn't want a repeat from the last guy? He probably lives in this city as well. And he didn't come up and talk to me himself.

"I think this man wants to kill you." Wanderer said to me.

As bad as that sounds, that's a pretty likely scenario.

"Did he say anything else to you?" I asked it.

It shook its head.

"He knew where you were as well. He just told me to wait by the alleyway and do whatever I could to grab your attention. I never wanted to hurt that girl, I swear, but the look on her face… She wanted to kill me…"

That's a bit of a strong word. I mean, I knew that she was pretty pissed off, but I don't really think that she wanted to actually kill it.

Then again, I don't really know much about her.

"But what should we do about that man," Wanderer said. "I never meant for anyone to get killed."

"Well don't talk in past tense like it already happened," I frowned at Wanderer. "If I can figure out who that guy is, then maybe I can convince him not to kill me or something."

I noticed movement from my peripheral vision, so I turned to see Xylvia slowly sitting herself up, her eyes only half opened.

"Wha…t-two Hiros," she tiredly muttered. "Heh, that's…strange…*!*"

With a sudden realization, she quickly looked me and Wanderer up and down before she bolted straight at Wanderer with a knife held to it's neck. The only thing stopping her knife from slicing Wanderer's jugular was Wanderer's quick arms keeping her from getting the kill.

I quickly pulled Xylvia off of Wanderer. She was insanely pissed.

"What the fuck are you doing," she spat at me. "Do you realize what that thing did?!"

"I'm surprised you put two and two together that quickly," I said to her while trying to get her to lower her knife. "However, I kinda need Wanderer alive right now."

"Wait, we're naming it now?"

"No, that's just what he told me his name was. Anyways, long story short, some shady guy made a deal with Wanderer that they'd help him get a life if he helped this guy out. And it turns out, this guy probably wants to kill me. And I don't think that Wanderer meant for any of this. Just an unfortunate coincidence for me and him is all this really was."

"Ok, so then let's run away," Xylvia proposed. "We can just leave this for that thing to deal with."

"Will running away really solve our problems? Besides we could just talk with this shady guy. Maybe we can make him understand."

"Why do we need to help this Wanderer out? Did you not see what it did to my arm?"

"I'm not saying that I fully trust him, but I just think that us confronting this person might be the least complicated outcome for us."

I fought with my head to not replay that scene again. Whether Wanderer's intentions are I'll or not, I knew that replaying that scene again would send me over the edge. I don't think I'll ever trust him, but I'm at least willing to let it slide. After all, we've got another problem to worry about.

"Can you be sure that it's not already working with whoever this guy is?" Xylvia asked.

"That's a fair point," I said. "However, I do have a plan for that, but it'll require a bit of time before we can try it."

"What are you thinking?" Wanderer asked.

Xylvia was still clearly irritated. Can't really say anything about it since Wanderer was the one who ripped her arm off.

"I want to talk to this guy, but I want it to be on my terms. My guess is that you were gonna lead me to him anyways, right?"

"Y-yes." Wanderer admitted.

"My plan is to lure him over here instead. I won't show up to him, so he'll get agitated and walk all the way over here. Once we spot someone that looks shady, we'll catch him on the spot."

"How will we do that?"

"Simple, we'll have this whole section of the city wake up and be ready to help."