Disclaimer: Victorious and all of its associated copyrights are not my property and I stake no claim to them.
A/N: Damn, where have I been? Long story short, RL is kicking my ass, so I haven't been able to write much. Ah, but here we are, a new story. This one's a bit odd, gotta say, but I hope it's interesting anyway. This is the one I gave a little preview of in the last chapter of Life in the Fast Lane, and no it really wasn't a spoiler, there is much much more to the story. This will be rated M, and not for sexy time, I'm afraid. That said, read on...
The gang was sitting around Sikowitz's classroom, listening to his somewhat educational psychotic ramblings. Jade was sitting in the back, daydreaming while absentmindedly playing with Tori's hair, when she was suddenly ripped from her little world.
"We are going to do video projects!" Sikowitz said enthusiastically as he sat on the stage. Most of the class groaned in annoyance, which made him frown.
"Oh, don't be a bunch of negative Nancy's. Now, we're grouping up in teams of six to create a short film on…." He paused for dramatic effect, to which most of the students were on the edge of their seats.
"Horror!" He suddenly blurted out.
"Woo!" Jade shouted with a sinister smirk.
Sikowitz gave her a scolding look, "Keep it PG, Jade."
She frowned, her party suddenly pooped upon, "You're no fun."
"And you're a very disturbed young lady," Sikowitz responded with a smile.
Jade leaned over to Tori, "How many weeks of detention do you think I'd get for using real blood?"
Tori shook her head and laughed at her girlfriend's antics, opting not to answer such a question.
Ignoring Jade once more, Sikowitz jumped up and clapped his hands together, "Alright! Robbie, Beck, Andre, Cat, Tori, and Jade, you will work as a team for your project."
The gang exchanged looks of excitement, until it clicked that Jade's name was also mentioned, to which they were both thrilled and dismayed. Everybody knew of Jade's talent in film production, but then again, it was no secret that her forte was horror, and she did a damn fine job, if you don't mind gut-wrenching themes of cynical or, in her view, comical pain. They knew they were in for one hell of a ride working with Jade on a horror flick.
"Are you sure this is the place? It's really scary looking," Cat said as she hid behind Beck.
"Are you kidding? This place is perfect!" Jade said excitedly.
The six of them were standing outside their apparent filming location, as dictated by Jade. According to her, it was an old prison, once used to confine war captives, most often coming from the various battles spread throughout Japan. Though it hadn't been used in decades, she also claimed it had reports of 'unusual happenings' within the crumbling walls of the uninhabited, intimidating brick structure, which did nothing but seal the deal for Jade.
"Don't you think an abandoned prison is going a bit far?" Tori asked with a skeptical look to her girlfriend.
Jade scoffed, "A bit far? No way. There is no such thing as too far."
Beck focused on consoling his terrified girlfriend while Jade remained adamant that this place was the perfect location for their project. Tori sighed and gave up, knowing this was an argument she couldn't win.
"Robbie, give me the bolt cutters," Jade said as she walked up to the once prominent large front entrance of the building.
He complied, and Jade made short work of the chains holding the doors closed, one solid kick to the door had it flying open. Without further ado she strutted into the building, with the rest of the less enthusiastic teens in tow. Setting her backpack on what seemed to be the front desk of the building, Jade set to work getting her camera ready.
Noticing the others just standing there nervously looking around, she sighed and snapped them back into action, "Come on guys, get moving. We're losing daylight here."
Beck and Robbie both got out cameras as well, and once they were all ready, they set out to explore the building, with Jade leading the pack. After a good hour or so, they had gathered a decent amount of aesthetic footage, all of it being perfect for in-between shots for their horror film. They had long since split into three groups; Beck and Cat, Robbie and Andre, and Jade and Tori, so they could cover more area in less time. They were planning on coming back the next day to shoot some clips starring themselves to complete the video.
As Jade was grabbing a camera she had set up on a window sill for a time lapse shot, Tori was leaning on the doorframe of the room, responding to an irritating text from her sister. She looked up to see Cat walking down the hallway, which she thought was strange, as Beck was nowhere in sight.
"Cat!" Tori shouted, to which the redhead never even acknowledged that she had heard her. She frowned in annoyance as Jade came up her, looking down the hallway, also noticing Cat's retreating figure. She turned to look at Tori, and behind her saw Robbie at the other end of the hall, disappearing into a room.
"What the hell?" She said as she walked down the hall to see what Robbie was up to. When she got to the room he had gone into, it took her a moment to actually process it; Robbie wasn't in there. She looked to Tori with bewilderment.
On an entirely different floor of the building, Robbie and Andre were gathering up their equipment in a large mess hall type room, when Robbie noticed Beck at the other end of the room. He thought it was odd, as he was just standing there, looking at the wall. He tapped Andre's shoulder, getting his attention before pointing over to Beck. He looked at him with the same look of confusion, as out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tori standing in a doorway, her back also to them.
"Yo, Tor! What are ya doin'?" Andre yelled to her, slowly becoming more and more confused as Tori never moved a muscle. Andre and Robbie looked at each other like, 'are we actually seeing this?' As they looked back to where they saw the two, they were both gone.
On the opposite end of the building on the ground floor, Beck and Cat were making their way back to the lobby, while Cat continued her incessant rant about the creepiness of the location.
"I can't believe Jade made us do our film here," She whined.
Beck just gave her a comforting hug, "It is a good location for the genre, despite the eerie feeling here."
She just mumbled more incoherent things into his shirt, when Beck looked up and noticed Andre slowly ascending a staircase.
"Hey, Andre! What are you doing man?" Beck asked him as he pulled away from Cat. She looked at him for answers, as Andre never even looked back. They then glanced back at Andre, only to see he was nowhere in sight.
Beck shrugged and let it go, deciding to just get to the lobby. As they passed one of the offices, Beck saw out of the corner of his eye Jade just standing, looking out the window.
"Jadey, where's Tori?" Cat yelled to her, again looking at Beck for answers when Jade never spoke or even moved. When they looked back to Jade, they saw only an empty room.
Jade and Tori had forgotten about their strange sightings, just gathering the last of their cameras and making their way downstairs. They went down one flight of stairs and turned to go down the second, only to see themselves standing at the bottom.
Exact duplicates of them were standing like statues at the bottom of the stairs with their backs to them. As the girls stood there in shock, their twins suddenly began to turn around, finally showing their faces, or lack thereof.
Tori gasped when she saw herself and Jade, as if in a mirror, but neither had a face; it was just blank skin. They both suddenly had a white hot pain on their forearms, but only for a moment. And both were speechless as their counterparts abruptly dissipated into nothingness.
Robbie and Andre were spanning the last hallway to get to the lobby, reviewing some of their footage as they walked. Andre looked over to Robbie's small viewing screen to see the short clips he had shot of various parts of the building.
Robbie shifted his hold on the camera, in turn accidentally bumping the camera button, turning the video back on. In the little screen, they saw in real time, right in front of them, perfect matches of themselves. They both looked up in shock to see the figures turn around just long enough to expose the same lack of face, as a searing pain ripped through their arms. When they looked back up, the two faceless matches turned on their heels and disappearing into opposite walls of the hallway.
Cat and Beck had put away most of their equipment, and were going through old archives in the offices behind the front desk. Beck decided it'd be a cool shot to get some footage of the various files spread about the room, just for more of an aesthetic touch.
As he recorded those clips, Cat stood off to the side, so she wasn't in the videos. Beck put his camera down to switch around the placement, Cat offering her assistance in the task. Suddenly, they heard footsteps out in the hallway. They looked up just in time to watch duplicates of themselves walk by the room, before the door to said room violently slammed shut on its own accord; this strange occurrence was accompanied by an unexplained burning sensation on their arms.
Cat screamed uncontrollably in fear, attracting the attention of the others, who rushed to find them.
"What the hell happened, Cat?" Jade asked as she ran into the room, out of breath from running so far.
She was shaking in fear, seeking refuge in Beck's embrace as she struggled to speak, "Th-the door, it slammed shut after we saw these, things!"
Andre spoke up in an apprehensive voice, "These 'things' wouldn't happen to be your twins with no face, would they?"
"You got it. And just before the door slammed, we both felt a weird burn on our arms." Beck grumbled.
"We saw those too, and that same thing happened with our arms," Tori said as she hugged Jade's arm for comfort.
"Fuck this, let's get out of here," Jade said, turning to the door. The rest of the group had no objections, all quickly gathering their stuff and heading out of the building.
After she had dropped everyone but Tori off at their houses, Jade drove the two back to her home. Beck and Robbie had left their cameras with her so she could review the footage and edit it to her desires.
The two girls settled on Jade's bed with their laptops and headphones, setting to work reviewing all of the videos they had recorded. Jade got rather bored with it, and decided to look at one last set before retiring for the night.
The set was from the 3rd floor of the south wing of the building, there were six clips in total. The videos were pretty good, and she made a note to put them in the final cut. After she reviewed those, she and Tori put their computers away and called it a night.
The next day, after Tori had left, Jade decided to put the set of clips from the previous night onto her desktop computer so she could better review the audio. Halfway through the first video, she heard a very quiet voice. She replayed it, with the audio enhanced.
"You will be marked."
There was no way either of the guys could've talked that quietly or in that voice, so Jade's level of confusion was through the roof. She just let it go, though, and proceeded to the next clip. This one was no different.
"Each mark represents a target."
She was thoroughly freaked out now, and watched each of the other videos, listening for that voice. Just as expected, it came through once in each video.
"You must eliminate your designated targets in order."
"Nobody must know."
"One, four, two, five, three, six."
"Failure to comply results in your demise. You have six days."
Jade wrote down each of the messages, in the order she got them in the videos. Now confused beyond belief, she sent a mass text to the other five members of her group of friends.
Need you guys at my house, ASAP
A/N: This is gonna be one of those stories. This is going to be kind of like a mix of I Am Number Four, The 13 Assassins, and all of those Blair Witch Project type movies. I'll have the next chapter up in a day or two, until then review and let me know what you think so far.
The name of the chapter is a song by Pink Floyd, so credits to them for being fantastic.