"Found one!" Lina said to herself as she pulled the flashlight from the drawer she'd been fishing through behind the front desk. After fumbling for a bit she clicked it on and was just about to continue her search for the emergency kit when Hanon's bloodcurdling scream filled the room. Lina quickly moved around the desk and made a dash for the kitchen. As she reached her destination she stopped dead in the doorway, her arms going limp and dropping the flashlight.
Her mind automatically switched gears, instinctively going into survival mode. The green haired beauty quickly bent and caught the flashlight. As she did this, her emotions took the back seat and logic took the steering wheel. She straightened and surveyed the room. Near the entrance was the body, laying unnaturally and entirely red. The cause of death was obvious; nearly half of the victim's head was caved in, skull and all, leaving a sickening pull of brain matter, bone fragment, and tissue visible within. Around the floor, on the cabinets, everywhere was blood. A trail could be seen of someone crawling to the left, and the handprint on the counter suggested they used it to stand.
"Nikora…" Lina whipped her head, and flashlight, in the other direction, lighting upon Hanon, sitting against the counter and dyed red.
---
Hanon's mind had done just the opposite of her friend's, kicking into slow motion. The role of the flashlight sounded like a slowly moving boulder, and the body's condition, constantly illuminated by the flashlight's cruel rotation, came in bits and pieces. There was a body. It was covered in blood. Not just the body, its all over the floor and cabinets. That was what she slipped in. There was a large cavity in the body's head. That must have been where her hand—ugh. There was a blender, its base dyed red, near Hanon's feet. It was probably the culprit. The body…has purple hair. Its…
"Nikora…" Hosho muttered, eyes widening even further. A sudden light hit her, nearly blinding her, but she took no notice. "N-Nikora!?" She finally registered what was going on, her eyes filling with tears. "Nikora!!" She scrambled forward and grabbed uselessly onto the older woman's pants leg. "Nikora, wake up!" She cried futilely, tears openly streaming down her face. She grabbed her more forcefully now, beginning to sob. "Wake up!!" She screamed between sobs, shaking the corpse. "Wake up, damn it!!"
Two hands grabbed her, one on her arm just below the shoulder and one on the opposite side under the armpit, and yanked her backwards and up. She came to her feet, though the hands were the ones supporting her weight, her limp body unable to presently support itself. Hanon was becoming unaware of anything and everything around her, but even without seeing Nikora's corpse before her the image was burned into her mind. Suddenly she was spun around to face the other direction, and shaken violently.
"Hanon! Hanon!! Get a hold of yourself!" A harsh slap to the side of her face brought Hanon back to reality. Her vision returned and her hitching sobs dwindled to a steady flow of silent tears. She looked up to see Lina staring back at her. The taller girl gave a curt nod, apparently satisfied with Hosho's condition, dropped her to her feet, grabbed her hand, and started walking quickly away from the kitchen.
"L-lina!? What're you doing?" Hanon stumbled along behind her.
"Leaving. What does it look like?" The mature teenager answered.
"B-but, what about Nikora?" The aquamarine replied. Lina stopped, turned around to face Hanon, and put her hands on her shoulders
"She's dead. Who cares!?" Hosho just stared unbelievingly into the burning green ones. Lina blinked and straightened, letting her arms slide off Hanon's shoulders. "T-that's not what I meant, Hanon. Its just, there's nothing we can do for her now, and the killer could still be around."
Hanon blinked stupidly. That hadn't occurred to her. Killed. Nikora was dead, that had come across easily enough. But she hadn't thought about how she had died. Nikora had been murdered. More over, that meant someone had to have murdered her. That meant everyone in the hotel was in danger.
"Now let's go, we have to get out of here and alert the police." Lina continued calmly, turning to continue walking. She was stopped by Hanon grabbing the back of her shirt. She turned back around to face the shorter of the two as Hanon began speaking.
"Hold on! We can't just leave! This is a hotel, remember? We have guests! And Lucia and the others are still unaccounted for! Are we supposed to just abandon them?" Hanon demanded.
"Going for help isn't abandoning them." Lina said, but the determination in Hanon's eyes didn't fade. "Well…what do you want us to do then?" Hanon opened her mouth to reply, but she was interrupted by a distant moan.
---
Nanami slowly faded into consciousness. Her eyes slowly slid open and her blurry vision began to focus in on the ceiling. Her head reeled, to lightheaded to think clearly. Her numb hands clumsily found their way to her side, where they investigated the bloody cloth. Finally they discovered the hole in the cloth, and her eyes shut tightly in a grimace of pain as she poked through to inspect her skin. Her foggy mind decided that whatever had ripped through her shirt had ripped through her skin as well.
As her hands fumbled slowly around her soaking shirt, unsure of what to do, her eyes began to slip closed again. Distantly she heard a door swing open and someone shouting her name. In a paradox, the approaching footsteps grew fainter and fainter.
Author's note: Well here's chapter two, finally! When I wrote the first chapter I had some semblance of a storyline in mind, but this chapter doesn't even have the same dead person, so as of right now I don't know where this is going. Thank you sheshe-mimi fan, CrossAcademyNightClassStudent, lolineechan for your reviews, and Archerygurl's, your's gave me the final push to actually write another chapter.
And to the vampire, I do usually spell it Rina, but from what I've read most people spell it Lina. And as for the mermaid, I'm not sure if you're referring to the blood or the sink, or both. As for the blood; I believe it has to be water for them to transform, and though there's a lot of water in blood, I don't consider it water. As for the sink, I also believe it needs to be a decent amount of water (a water balloon, a spray gun, a dive into water, etc). She only got her hand wet in the sink, which I don't consider enough. If I'm wrong on either of these notes, please just ignore it for the sake of the story :P