Gotta get my timin' right; It's a test that I got to pass

I said I had a surprise for y'all for the Solstice.

But first, I'm gonna go into a long-winded recap of lots of things you've probably either forgotten or no longer care about. We have to do this properly, after all. To begin with, I'm going to need you all to remember this little incident here. For those of you too lazy to click the link (you should be ashamed, go sit in the corner and ponder your life until you feel like the horrible person you are), I ended up cut off from the Path of Black Leaves. Let's back up to the veeeery beginning where this whole thing got started.

You all recall, I'm sure, when Slendy shattered my mind into many itty bitty pieces as punishment for being a bad boy. Then this asshole called Oblivion shows up and offers to put my mind back together 'cause he wants me to be his errand boy or some shit. I told him fuck no, I don't need your damn help; I can fix my mind by my own damn self, bitch! Shut him up.

However, it seems our good old buddy Oblivion was not quite so eager to take no for an answer as it appeared. He left just a tiny bit of his power with me to help me get things rolling. I feel extremely violated after discovering this fact; if Oblivion wasn't already dead, I would have to fuck him up. He really needs to quit ghosting on my blog; it's quite unsanitary. Anyway, immediately following this I was contacted by Rhodes, who seemingly wanted me to get to Indy to stop Konie-dawg from stealing the sacred blade of our great hero, Zero. Of course I obliged and immediately made way through the Path in order to get after our little sword-thief.

Now here's where I offer explanations for the shit that I'm sure has been bothering you all just as it has been me this whole time. When I was briefly in Indy and Maine simultaneously. I had intended to look into that, but as you well know, shit kind of came up and I was busy. But now I am not, and I have had time to look into these things. Doc was very informative. It turns out, the Path of Black Leaves doesn't like Oblivion. Or rather, it doesn't like the source of Oblivion's powers. So that little bit of his power that he gave me? The Path rejected it and threw me out. But for some reason it reacted... odd, and threw me out in both directions. So there were two Ridleys. Now don't get too excited with thinking of all the awesome shit I could do with two of me. As soon as Oblivion brought both of me to Indy, we merged together again. So sadly, there is only one of me now.

Nevertheless, that bit of Oblivion's power was still with me, and only became stronger as I continued being subjected to doing stupid shit for him. Thus, I was not allowed to traverse the Path. No big thang though, the Boss let me make my way through the Empty City when I needed to be places. He's a cool dude like that. Oblivion's power being all inside my head seems to also be why the Book was able to interface with me at the beginning. But by then the Master was tired of putting up with Oblivion's bullshit (as were we all, let's be honest) and promptly killed the fucker.

TL;DR It's all Oblivion's fault. And Rhodes. The donkeyfucker.

So now that we've explained all that away, we can get to the part where I tie this in to what I did for the Solstice. Well, now that I was armed with such knowledge, I intended to set about and immediately rectify the situation. First order of business was to get onto the Path. My dear cousin, Glorianna, opened the thing for us and I forced my way on. To accomplish this, I merely leapt right onto the Path, however I would need an anchor, and so I grabbed Cadence in one hand and Arpeggio in the other. Being revenants, they would of course have a greater concentration of Slenderpower in their systems, more than enough to keep us all from being flung unceremoniously back to earth.

And what do you know, it actually worked, too.

The idea here was basically to allow enough of the Path's energy to build up inside my body that it would expediate the evaporation of what remained of Oblivion's energy. We were just about there when a bullet whizzed by and struck the ground next to my right foot. We scattered, instinctively taking cover as a second bullet passed through the air in the exact spot I had been standing only moments earlier. I looked up in the direction from which the shots had come. There was a figure in one the window of one of the buildings, hidden behind the black leaves of a nearby tree. A sniper!

I quickly formulated a plan and shouted orders to my team. Glorianna, Hazendorf and I would move around back and head inside the building. Arpeggio and Cadence would stay hidden someplace where they could keep an eye on the place and shoot if anything tried to get out. We sprung into action, the three of us circling the building before splitting up and each heading in through a different entrance. I was the first to make it up to the appropriate floor and was thus greeted by our mysterious sniper. But he was mysterious no longer, for though I had never before set eyes on the man on the man, I recognized him immediately. Robert Sagel. The most evil man in the world.

"I thought I'd made it clear to you fuckers that I am master here now!"

He punctuated the statement by smacking me in the head with the butt of his gun, knocking me backwards and down the stairs. At the bottom, I regained my composure quickly, but not quickly enough to dodge the shot he was about to take at me. Luckily, I didn't have to, as at that moment Hazendorf tackled the motherfucker. Listening to the sounds of the struggle, I made my way back upstairs to find that Hazendorf had separated Robbie from his gun, but was not faring so well against Robbie's knife. I interrupted the dispute with a few short, but well-articulated counterarguments from my fists. With Robert properly silenced, we left the bloody pulp on the floor and went to find what had become of Glorianna, as we had not yet seen her since coming inside.

As we made our way down the corridor we heard noises and so we headed in that direction. We were quite surprised to find Glorianna locked in a shootout with Robert. I still had the gun I'd taken from Robert before, so I thought it'd be properly amusing to kill him with that and fired off a few shots. Then I noticed the grenade launcher. Robbie must've felt like fighting in a gentlemanly manner and thought that explosives would just ruin the fun. I couldn't disagree more; as far as I'm concerned, explosives should be used whenever possible. I launched one down the hall and it went kaboom! on the door Robbie had been using for cover. Thank goodness, we finally got rid of that crazy motherfucker.

Then we heard the gunshots from outside.

Yes, we couldnt' fucking hear it over the shooting we were doing, but Cadence and Arpeggio were sniping at, you guess it, another Robbie from the trees. The new Robbie was sniping at them from... well, everywhere. He kinda kept teleporting around all over the place. Yeah...

After facing down two Robbies, I was quite done with this shit. Solstice be damned. But I just couldn't let that self-righteous cock go on doing things. Something had to be done. So I did something.

 From the depths of the flaming black underpath, I called forth the fearsome Beast, Scaglietti Harlaown. The ground rumbled and I motioned to my team to evacuate quickly. I alone would stay to ensure that our foe was vanquished. Soon the Beast emerged from the ground and flew at the twisted Sage, it's massive jaws opening wide. I felt my victory was assured, but then I saw Robbie drop his gun and clap his hands together. Shit. They always do that when they're about to do something massive and destructive. A green light shot down from the sky and surrounded Robert as the Beast drew ever nearer. Just when it was right on him, Robbie let out a shout and unleashed the blind fury of his Kamehameha at the Beast, splitting it in two.

I was not about to just let him get away with that. I called the dead halves my pet to me and absorbed them into my body. The transformation was painful, but I emerged in my hellbeast form and took charge at Robbie. He was caught off guard, having not ever thought I would seriously attempt such a dangerous stunt. My time was quickly running out though; I could only maintain such a massive power level for a few minutes, and he knew it. I would have to act fast. We engaged in a way over the top, totally awesome anime-esque fight scene that was just so awesome I couldn't possibly describe it to you all.

But all that's really important is that I kicked. His. Motherfucking. ASS!!!! Hell yeah. Robbie put up a good fight, but he went down in the end. Then all the birds and the cute little animals came out of hiding and surrounded me and broke into song to thank me for liberating their land from that tyrant. They offered me control of the Path, but being the modest guy I am and remaining ever loyal to the Big Guy, I of course kindly refused. The Master showed up then, and He too thanked me for taking the Path away from that blowhard. He offered me a great pay increase and a corner office in the corporate HQ, but I just couldn't accept. In the field is where I belong, not pushing papers behind a desk in some stuffy office. So I left the Path in His capable hands and took off to reunite with my team. Then we went out and got drunk to celebrate.

And that's absolutely totally the truth of what happened this morning. We certainly didn't just find out that when Oblivion died all of his power disappeared and so I was totally capable of returning to the Path anytime. And we definitely didn't just go out and spend all morning drinking before returning to the hotel where I wrote up this awesome post for you to read. Well, that did happen. But only after everything else happened. It's all absolutely true. All of it.

Oh, and I'll be sure to fill you all in on the Salieri case. But damn, I need to rest up after that awesome huge totally-actually-happened fight with Robbie. So I may be gone a few days. And then Christmas is after that. So maybe longer. But New Year's is after Christmas, so...

You guys might hear from me again sometime in January. Until then, stay frosty. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Hanukkah. Brush your teeth. Good night.

P.S. I made up absolutely none of this post. It is all 100% factual truth. Go die in a dumpster for doubting my veracity.