Anybody out there?

Edit (11/9): Added more to RyKnow's part.

Blake:

It had been three days since we all found out Jaune had been kidnapped, and these past three days have been hectic, to say the least.

It came as a surprise that Jaune was kidnapped, to me anyways. If I hadn't seen solid proof otherwise, I would have believed he had just gotten lost. No offense to the blond, but he does seem pretty daft from time to time.

But now, he's been kidnapped by someone.

To say it was completely unexpected would be an understatement. Who on Remnant would ever have any sort of reason to kidnap Jaune? I personally never interacted with him much past a simple hello and a few short conversations, but from those alone it was easy to see he was a great person. A little insecure and awkward, sure, but a great person nonetheless. So that begs the question, what could have he had done to warrant something like a kidnapping in broad daylight in the middle of a prestigious school full of highly skilled hunters and huntresses?

"Jaune, please be okay." Ruby said to herself for what was probably the thousandth time since Jaune went missing nearby.

We, as in all of team RWBY and the remainder of NPR, were currently combing through one of the patches of forest outside of the kingdom of Vytal.

Now, aside from the question of why he was kidnapped, the even more frustrating part was we had no idea where to look. No idea who even had kidnapped him. So, with nothing to go off of, we only had one choice:

Start searching from one point and spread outwards.

And with only a handful of trainees, that was one large problem to tackle.

Well, I suppose it's not just us. Obviously, the Arc family had been notified immediately, and they too had began their own search with their family members as well as friends and acquaintances, so that broadened our reach a bit. We also have the Vale PD, but as of this morning, they stopped searching for Jaune and are now searching for a dead body.

Needless to say, Nobody took kindly to that notion.

I believe that Weiss and I are the only one's who have not been predominantly affected by this. With Jaune having had constantly annoying Weiss with his constant shows of one-sided affection by asking her out constantly, she was doing this more to help Pyrrha than out of actual worry for Jaune. Not to say she despised him by any means, but apparently Weiss and Pyrrha had been friends prior to coming to Beacon. Not surprising, seeing as how they both come from rich and fabulous backgrounds. And as I said earlier, for me it's just simply a lack of knowing him.

Apparently, though, we were the only ones.

Nora understandably took it pretty hard. With her often over the top attitude and displays of emotion, she showed nothing but determination to find her 'glorious leader' and a frightening promise to break a lot of legs.

Ren on the surface seemed fairly calm about the whole situation, but if one looked hard enough and knew what to look for, they could see this was affecting him as well. Minute things, such as a certain lingering for a millisecond here or there.

Yang actually seemed distraught as well as being determined to find Jaune. I had never really thought she would have been so concerned about him. I'll be sure to question her about that later, see what the cause behind that is all about.

Ruby was devastated. She wouldn't stop concentrating on finding Jaune, thinking of places he could have been taken, what she could do to make sure he was okay. This was understandable, seeing as how she is as close to the blonde doofus as she is. He is her first friend here, and most likely her only male friend. I wouldn't put it past her to possibly think of him as something more, actually. Ruby seems like the kind of person who would date a friend, and honestly speaking, they seem like they were pretty compatible.

But Pyrrha… Oh boy, Pyrrha.

Pyrrha had almost stopped talking altogether, only speaking whenever it was absolutely necessary. She also had not slept at all since we first found out about Jaune, so she had been awake and searching for him the past three days straight. When the police officer had told them they were now searching for a dead body, she had been the one to almost knock his head off his shoulders.

"Don't worry Rubes, we'll find him." Yang reassured her younger sister by giving her a side hug as we continued to walk, approaching a cliff and getting a decent look at the forest beneath us.

It would have been a beautiful sight, had it not been for the circumstances. Ruby still looked unsure of that.

"But how are we supposed to find him?" The silver-eyed huntress asked unsurely, "We don't even know who took him… A-and if he's even… E-even-"

"Ruby."

Everyone turned to see Pyrrha was the one to have interrupted her, eyes fixed in a stern but supporting gaze as she too walked up to the young huntress and laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

"Jaune isn't dead, I can tell you that right now. We will find him, and we will make whoever is responsible for this pay dearly."

Ruby suddenly found the ground to be very interesting as she hung her head, seemingly ashamed for even entertaining the thought of her best friend being dead. I couldn't help but feel a bit of sympathy for her. She was a friend, after all. But, when Ruby looked back up with glassy eyes, she looked Pyrrha in the eyes with a look of determination and nodded.

"Yeah, your right Pyrrha."

"Not to be the bearer of bad news…" Weiss spoke up from behind me and gained everyone's attention, "But before we can do anything to help him, we have to know where he is first."

Küd:

These past three days have been nothing but uneventful.

Okay, so I haven't run into any of the Demented monkey things yet. Or any, for that matter. All that has happened in the past three days is me just wandering around this damn prison, searching as many rooms as possible and find anything I could.

Well, that's not entirely true, I suppose. I apparently no longer feel the need to eat or drink. I haven't even slept since I came here, not feeling the slightest bit tired after walking for this whole time.

Yeah. That's new.

So I may not remember anything about my old life, but I can remember something as simple as the need to eat and drink. But here's the thing: it just hasn't happened. I noticed it yesterday, the fact that I had not eaten anything for the past three days and didn't feel hungry at all. My throat wasn't driest in the slightest, and I haven't gotten tired in any sort of way, sleep or exhaustion.

And speaking of memory, I couldn't remember much of anything still. I would get little bits here and there, like a picture of someone blurry or a word, but nothing as annoying as two words that won't stop popping up in my head.

Red hair.

Why that, of all things? Red freakin' hair? What did that represent, exactly? The only kind of connection I could think of was someone I knew beforehand must have had red hair. But who was it? No matter how hard I concentrated, it just wouldn't come to me. God, having amnesia was a pain in the ass.

But one thing I can figure, though, the person has to have some sort of strong significance in my life to be the one thing I can remember that really sticks out in my mind.

But no longer having to eat or drink ever again aside, yeah, uneventful.

Except for the Nights.

Even if I don't have to sleep, darkness still comes apparently. Every Time I had seen the sky once I reached a roofless section, it looked like it was overcast skies all day with fog building up and giving one about twenty feet of visibility around them. So it was already dark enough as it was, but when night came, that's when things got serious.

The first night had been a horrible experience, that was for sure. In almost three minutes, it went from bleak and gray to almost pitch black. Thank whatever deity there is that I had managed to find a flashlight with a few spare batteries, or else I would not have made it through, I have no doubt in my mind. Cause once the darkness fell, they came out.

Like I said, I hadn't physically seen any Demented yet, but I've had some pretty close encounters. During the day, it feels like they're just right round the corner, waiting for you. But during the night, it's like they're breathing down your neck. I had just barely kept ahead of what sounded like a group of roughly forty of those monkey things that had killed that man in the cafeteria, locking myself in one of the rooms and hiding in there until the daylight shone back through one of the barred windows.

This prison, though, is freakin' massive. I've literally been walking this whole time, and it doesn't look like it's ending any time soon. Just a seemingly never ending prison. Mess halls, cell blocks, yards with barbed wire fences.

I may not have seen any living people, but I sure as all hell have seen dead ones.

Some of them were fairly intact, just a cut or a crushed skull that look like they came from someone else. So at least I had something to clue me off that not everyone in this place is friendly. But others, others could be in much worse condition. I saw one guy that looked like he hung himself with barbed wire from a rafter. but if that wasn't enough, it looks like some of those demented things had found him. At least, if his legs shredded to the bone was anything to go by.

Needless to say, I'm feeling less and less keen to meeting some of these Demented.

But one thing that I really noticed about every time I ran into a dead body, though, was how apathetic I was to it. I should have probably felt sick, or angry, or something, but I just… Couldn't, really. It was kind of like I was looking more at a statistic than an actual human being.

What had that guy done to me, exactly?

"Come on, guys, can't we all just get along?"

I'm broken from my inner musings when I hear a voice nearby, the first one I've heard since I woke up. I picked up my pace and walked towards the source of the voice, but was sure to be as quiet as possible as I did so. Like I said earlier, not everyone here seemed like the friendliest of people.

I turn a corner and see the usual, a long hallway with three rusted iron doors on each side. Only one was opened, with some light coming out of the doorway. oddly enough, this one room had a barred window between the hallway and it. Walking up to it, It had some grime and other stains on it, but I was able to look through and see three different people inside.

Two of them were next to each other, both seeming to be surrounding the other.

One man seemed like he was some sort of farmer, wearing a brown dirty trench coat with a blue flannel button up under it, tucked into some blue jeans with brown leather boots. On his head, he wore a brown… What were they called, cowboy hats? Yeah, a cowboy hat. But, despite his whole rancher outfit, his mask looked like some sort of bird. It had two glass eyeholes, one being the small while the other was twice it's size. It also had a long beak, probably the length of my knife. He held a long pitchfork in his hands, pointed at the third man.

The other one was dressed differently, though. He wore a black t-shirt, showing off brown skin riddled with scars and stitches until it reached some long, black rubber gloves. He wore some blue jeans as well, but the most predominant feature was the freaking flamethrower attached to his back. Where in the hell did he find one of those!?

Anyways, his mask actually fit the rest of his outfit. It was a variant of a gas mask, with the breather coming down in front of his face while he had two tubes on where his cheeks would be leading to a box on the back of his mask. He also had some black fins sticking out of his head, looking sharp enough to cut someone if he were to headbutt them.

The third guy, the one who looked like he was being hustled by these two, wore what looked like ordinary clothing. He had a long sleeved white shirt with black sleeves and tribal markings on it's front. He had black cargo pants and some sneakers, as well as some black gloves and a black backpack. His mask, though, was anything from ordinary.

It looked like it was covered in some sort of rubber, a tanned brown that stretched over his face. It was divided into two pieces, a vertical stitch going across right under his nose as if it was once cut in half. Under it, his mouth had a zipper that was currently opened with small metal bolts around it. The mask didn't cover all of his head, only reaching halfway back before three black straps reached behind his head. He wore a black covering under it, so that covered up the rest of his head. The real icing on the cake, though, was the long rubber nose that looked like it was six inches long or something.

Just like everything else in this place: Unsettling and weird.

The one with the long nose was backing away from the two guys until he backed into a table. the one with the flamethrower crept forward slightly, keeping his weapon trained on long nose while the bird hanged back near the door.

"This isn't going to end peacefully, is it?" Asked long nose.

The only answer he got was stares from the two men holding him up. He sighed.

"I didn't think it would."

Quick as a flash, I saw him wrap his hands around some sort of handle before he swung forward and smacked the flamethrower guy in the face with the business end of a hammer. He nailed the fin guy right in one of the eye holes, making him stagger back before long nose lunged forward and started beating him in the face with the hammer. The bird was about to jump in and back up his friend, but that was when I decided to intervene.

I ran through the door and shoulder checked the bird man, sending him sprawling. He recovered quickly, grabbing his pitchfork and pointed it at me, forgetting his comrade for the bigger threat at the moment. He didn't hesitate before charging forward and attempting to skewer me, but I swiped the pitchfork away at the last second before twirling onto my knees while simultaneously slashing open his stomach with the knife, my dreadlocks swinging across my face before I came to a stop.

The bird man stumbled past me, one arm cradling the new wound while the other still held onto his pitchfork with a death grip as he surveyed the damage. Then, he looked back up at me and got back into a fighting position.

I switched my knife into an ice pick grip and charged forward, screaming my head off as I barely dodged a jab from his pitchfork. He threw a backhand at me, but I caught his arm with my free hand before it could connect and stabbed him in the forearm. With the blade cutting straight through, he screamed in pain as I twisted it and slashed upwards, severing half of his left forearm clean off. He dropped his weapon as he stumbled back and tried to stop the bleeding, clutching at the bleeding stump where his hand used to be.

I didn't give him a chance, though, as I lunged forward and slashed his throat, sending blood flying in all directions and getting a few spots on my mask.

He fell backwards, clawing at his throat as he bleed out, before turning to me and looking at me as his life slipped out. Then, he went still.

I had just killed someone.

And now I have to make sure that his buddy dies too.

Turning to the long nose man, I see that the guy with the flamethrower had knocked Long Nose of of him and was now standing with his weapon aimed at his opponent, but he was bleeding through a cracked eye hole on his mask.

"Burn in hell." He garbled out through his mask before pressing the trigger and letting a stream of fire come pouring out.

Long Nose just barely rolled out of the way, the stream engulfing a empty bookcase that was behind him and catching it on fire instantly. Flamethrower was about to aim at him again, but Long nose kicked outwards and struck him in the knee cap, bending his leg at a painful looking angle. He didn't even give the flamethrower guy a chance to scream as he uppercutted him with the hammer, sending him flat on his ass.

Long nose then came at him with the hammer turned, the side used to pull out nails facing forward as he swung downward and pierced the Flamethrower guy's eye hole and ended his life, sending blood spraying out and getting a few specks on Long nose's mask. He stood there panting before remembering that there was someone else in the room and looked up to see me standing there, knife in hand.

We just kind of stared at each other in silence. Was this guy going to attack me too? Should I? Would it really be worth it? He was probably asking himself the same questions.

Finally, he was the one to break the silence. "So, you aren't going to, like, kill me or anything, are you?"

I just shrugged. "Should I have a reason to?"

"None that I would know of." he admitted. He then stopped for a second, before sticking his hand out to me as a sort of an afterthought.

"Thanks for the assist, man. Name's RyKnow."

And with that, the hostile vibe was gone. I took his hand and shook it, like if we were two friends who just got done playing a game. If it weren't for the dead bodies bleeding out on the floor, that is.

"It was no problem. And i'm Küd. Pleasure to meet you."

That caused RyKnow to laugh. "Holy shit, able to go from killing guys one second to formalities the next." He took the hammer and slid it into a strap on his back pack before kneeling down next to the Flamethrower guy and patting him down, "I'm beginning to like you already."

Under my mask, I feel a bit of a grin growing. This guy seems pretty cool.

"Do you think the flame thrower is salvageable?"I ask him as i follow his example and begin checking the bird man. I look up from the dead body to see him shake his head negative.

"You see this?" He said as he tapped a display gauge on the tank strapped to his back. It's needle was in the red zone, "Means it's empty. Guy was practically using an empty gun."

"Guy would've been a hell of a poker player." I remarked to myself. One hell of a bluffer, even if he did have a little bit of fuel left.

RyKnow chuckled a bit before standing back up. Having had found nothing on the Bird Man, I followed his example while swiping some blood off of my knife and sheathed it. He then looked back down at the two dead guys on the floor, his nose flapping a little bit with the movement before looking back up at me. "Hey, listen. A few other guys and I have a temporary camp a little ways from here. Since you helped me, you're welcome to come along if you want."

A proposal to join this guy, eh?

Three days, and this is the first guy i've seen who hasn't died violently. Well, lets see here: He apparently knows how to fight, he has other guys with him, and I could probably use the help. I'll have to see what his friends are like, but so far RyKnow himself seems pretty decent. Well, as Decent as a murderer in a bondage mask can be. Final verdict?

Couldn't hurt, I suppose.

"Doesn't sound bad to me." I told him after hardly even having to think about it. "In a place like this, allies would most certainly be helpful."

RyKnow nodded. "Amen to that, brother."

Reviews

Harutora75:This story is based on an idea I've had for a long time now. For a summarization, think of Hunger games in silent hill.

ISeemNew:Good to know.

Guest:Good to Know.

advisorysum09: Yes, that is Jaune. And if you want a better description, here's one right now.

The blade is about eight inches long and two and a half inches wide, black and with the top curving to a point. There is a small plate of metal two inches long and one inch wide just above the handle with a bolt going through it.

Guest:Yes, this is from my own mind.

Guest: Thank you for the support.

curious viewer: I am currently trying to get the actual cover image I drew up on the site, but google is being as helpful as a dead rat. But, yes, that is a very close description and is what the actual mask is based off of. The mouthpiece would be closed, for obvious reasons, and would like a stitched together frown.

Rest assured, Jaune will be the only one going through this transaction.

Thank you for the assurance.

GhostRipperD31H: The length depends on what is going to happen. Don't worry, not all chapters will be around 2,000 words. Most, hopefully, will be around 4 to 5,000. Thank you for the support.