Don't kill me for being a super slow updater... but yea. Life got in the way. :/ But i'll have chapters 4 & 5 up before Christmas as a present :)


Chapter 3:

They were being sliced apart by seemingly nothing, and Jim figured they had about sixty seconds before they were reduced to ribbons. He yelled and crouched to the ground, pulling his backpack open to grab his pistol, and Morph flew out. The blackness tried to slice through the little shifter, but they passed right through him.

Jim had tried to fire at the shadows, but nothing seemed to be working, as the lasers simply glided onward through the blackness.

"Dimitri!" he yelled, fumbling around for his brother. His hand, at this point bloody and cut up, found Dimitri's jacket, and he slid over to crouch with his brother, covering up as much exposed skin as possible.

Suddenly, Jim felt something, seemingly a tarp, cover him completely, and he was hoisted into the air by a pair of strong arms. He squirmed and struggled, but a voice from somewhere above him yelled "Stop! Do you want to die? I'm helping you!"

Jim fell still at these words, and allowed himself to be carried a few more steps. Then, he was set down and the tarp was taken off of him. His eyes adjusted to the light, and he became so dizzy that he started to sway.

"Whoa, there. You'll be needing to sit down," the voice said, and steadied him. He was lead to a chair and he sank into it gratefully. He then surveyed his surroundings. He was in a small room of some sort, with very industrial architecture. It was filled with many sorts of strange but homey pieces of furniture and decor, such as clay and terracotta vases and a purple carpet under his feet. There was a fire blazing in a dug out pit in the middle of the room. Large guns filled with strange ammunition decorated the walls. Jim then noticed the other people, those who had rescued him, staring at him.

The owner of the voice was a big, brawny guy with reddish hair and kind blue eyes. Standing next to him was a thin, tall girl with long curly brown hair tied up in a ponytail. She had angular features that made her seem to be someone Jim didn't want to cross.

"You took quite a slashing out there, kid. I'll go get a rag so you can wash up," she said, and hurried out of the room. The buff guy chuckled.

"She's great. She cares so much for others, I don't know what I'd do without her. That's Meg, by the way. An I'm Herc, Hercules actually, but you can just call me Herc." Jim nodded, and stood up briefly to shake his hand.

"Jim Hawkins."

Meg then returned to the room carrying a small bowl and a white rag soaked in warm water. She began scrubbing Jim's face, and only then did he realize how bloody and cut up he was. His skin cried out in protest as the hot water hit it, but he only winced slightly. After he had been cleaned up and bandaged, it suddenly hit him. Dimitri! He leapt out of the chair, not really knowing what he could do, when the metal door burst open and three figures burst in. One was covered with a tarp.

"Dimitri!" he exclaimed, and ran to his brother. He pulled off the tarp and hissed when he saw how much blood covered his brother. Meg rolled her eyes and went to get another washcloth. The two others were pulling off their protective gear, some leathery dark black material that stuck to their skin. One was a thin guy, with a dark complexion and shaggy black hair. He was built, but not as brawny as Herc. The other was a curvy girl with the same dark complexion, her long black hair tied into a loose ponytail that extended past her waist, with a silvery coronet around her head. She had a heart shaped face and piercing eyes, another tough girl.

"Your friend came this close to getting shredded. Aladdin had to hoist him across his back to get him, what, five feet into this building? What were you thinking?" she exclaimed fiercely. Jim felt a twinge of anger flare up in him.

"Uh, excuse me, princess, but how was I supposed to know that those weird whatever they were things would attack us the second we touch down! We just got here, how was I supposed to realize the dangers of this place? I hardly could tell which dimension the machine was taking us, so how the heck can you tell me that I knew what was going to happen? I didn't even know there was a house five feet away, and-"

"Hold it, did you say another dimension?" Herc interjected. Jim nodded, his mouth open to continue yelling at this girl with the weird crown on her head.

"How did you... Never mind. We'll figure this out after your friend wakes up." Herc said firmly, and closed the matter. Princess glared at Jim, but stayed silent, even with Aladdin trying to calm her down.

When Dimitri woke up, Jim was instantly alert and at his brother's side. Dimitri groaned as all of the pain of being practically shredded to bits was suddenly pulled into sharper focus.

"Owww... Jim, what did you do this time?" he groaned, sitting up from the cot he was lying on. It was only then that he noticed his surroundings, and that every person in the room had their eyes fixed on him.

"Dimitri! I'm so glad you're awake! Some weird stuff has been going on... You wouldn't believe where we are! We landed into some crazy apocalyptic dimension..." he began excitedly. Dimitri stared at his brother. It looked like someone had taken a knife to Jim's usually flawless features. Jim noticed his brother gawking at him. "It will clear up when I put some of that stuff Meg is making on it. Yours too." he reassured his brother.

Dimitri relaxed, but he continued to stare at the building he was being housed in. From what he could gather, it looked like they were in an unused warehouse of some sorts, converted to seem more homey, what with all of the carpets and vases and mismatched furniture.

"Where are we?" he asked, his throat scratching as he spoke. One of the two other guys inn the room, the more slight of them, handed him a glass of water, which he drank gratefully.

"You and your brother are in our little hideout. I'm Aladdin, by the way, and that guy over there is Herc, that little lady making your healing paste is Meg, and this beautiful creature next to me is Princess Jasmine" he said, his voice full of a soothing, and almost musical quality. Jasmine huffed and rolled her eyes, yet a small smile tugged at the corners of her lips.

Herc leaned away from the fire pit, which he was tending to, and gave him an encouraging smile. "Your brother explained everything to us. I've got to admit I'm impressed with that kid, that's some high-tech stuff he's made. You're just lucky to have survived the shadows, is all."

Dimitri saw Jim redden a bit at that comment, but he was now full of an intense curiosity. "What are those shadows?" he asked. Meg looked up from the wooden board she was crushing herbs on.

"They're the souls of the viciously killed" she spoke ominously, and then returned to crushing herbs.

Dimitri felt a shiver run down his spine, and Jim clenched his fists. Meg looked up again, as if sensing the tension in the air, and spoke again.

"Not so long ago, yet it was also before my time, during my youth, a war broke out among every member of mankind on this planet. It was as if a deadly disease took hold of all of the people alive. Only a few were spared, for they hid from the shadowy plague descending upon our planet. They locked down places like these with enough people that were not infected by this bloodlust, and we remained here ever since" she paused, and took a breath.

"Yet outside, as people continued to kill each other, the methods being much too brutal for me to describe, the dead lying in heaps across the lands, their souls became as mangled as the bodies they came from. They morphed into what you saw today, the dark shadows that covered everything, as far as the eye can see. If we venture out without our protective gear, we most certainly will get cut to bits, and then join their bloody ranks. So we stay put" she said.

For a moment, Dimitri thought she had finished talking, although there was so much more he wanted to know. Yet she began again.

"Herc, Aladdin, Jasmine, and I are the last of us. That we know of, at least. There could be more hideouts like ours, but I doubt they are as strongly protected as this one. We are currently inside the remains of the safe house of the Royal Palace, thanks to Jasmine here. She was the newborn princess at the time the war broke out" she paused again, to dump the crushed herbs into a bowl, and then to add boiling water and some greyish paste to the mixture.

"Eventually, this whole planet will be consumed by the shadows. We will all die out, and the dead will have their way at last" she finished solemnly, and stirred the paste. She then got up, stirring, wandered over to Jim, and began dabbing his face with the gooey substance. Jim winced repeatedly.

"So... our mother couldn't have..." Dimitri began, and Jim shook his head, earning a glare from Meg, who told him to keep his head still.

"Whoever took her wouldn't have come to this place. They would have been killed instantly" Jim said, and a wave of reassurance passed through Dimitri. He then frowned, and began racking his brains. He wondered if there was a way he could help these people; Meg said that it was almost like a disease. Were there ways to counter a disease such as this one?

"Are the bodies still lying out there?" he spat out suddenly, and he earned a quizzical look from Aladdin.

"Yes, we don't want to go too close to them... It's around them that the shadows are most concentrated. They seem pretty attached to their bodies..." he trailed off, brow furrowing.

Dimitri's glance shot to Jim immediately, who was thinking the same thing, it seemed.

"Then all we have to do is get rid of the bodies!" Jim exclaimed, leaping up and knocking Meg's hand away in the process. She scowled, muttered "You're done, anyways," and moved on to Dimitri. She began lathering the paste over his face and hands, and it had a curious sting to it, as if it were knitting his skin back together.

Herc looked thunderstruck. Dimitri could tell his brain was formulating many ideas as to how that could work. He was staring intently at the fire pit, but not tending to it anymore, the poker lying limply in his hand.

"Well, that's... well it certainly could work, but how do we get rid of the bodies?" Jasmine spoke in an almost curious voice, yet the hard edge was still there beneath it all.

"We burn them."

Herc had raised his eyes from the flames at last. There was a thick silence for a while, and it was then that all those present in the room knew that they had come across a solution.

Oil and gasoline in tow, ("The last of it, may I remind you... So if this doesn't work..." Meg let that hang as they gathered their equipment. Herc ignored her.) all six of them were huddled about the door, protective suits covering every inch of their bodies. There was so much that they had to carry with them, that for a while they stood there motionless, floundering silently as they stared at the equipment. Then Aladdin hoisted a jug of gasoline over his shoulder, grabbed one of the largest guns, and stepped to the side.

"Next" he said playfully. His was about the only cheeriness in the room, but it was effective enough for Jasmine soon followed suit, and picked up a smaller gun and a jug of oil. When nothing more was left for them to carry, Herc stood with his hand on the door's intricate lock. He performed a complex movement, and there was a clang as the door unstuck itself from its metal frame.

They quickly filed out into the darkness, and it was only thanks to the protective suits that nothing rushed out at them. Aladdin shut the door with another loud clang, and they marched forward into the blackness.

It was eerie, and Jim felt the unsettling feeling that was associated with being watched. He trekked after the others, the suit clinging tightly to his skin. He could see them through a strange contraption covering his eyes; or rather, he could see their outlines in a faint purplish tint that fought against the blackness. As they walked, Jim felt the uneven cobbles of the road that they were walking on through the thin material of the protective suit, yet it did not impede his walking.

It really was one of the most peculiar sensations, being inside the suit, and Jim itched to take it off, for it was a suffocating thing to wear. He would have given in, had he not known of the dangers lying just beyond the protection of that strange material. He trudged forward, the small pistol and the two jugs of gasoline he had been given to carry awkward at his sides.

From what he could feel as he walked, they were approaching a well walked area of this town, for the stones had become much smoother. Then, abruptly, they came to a stop. The eerie silence was suffocating. Herc pointed forward, and Jim walked to stand with him shoulder to shoulder. His hands being full, he leaned his knee forward to see if there was anything there. It came in contact with something soft. A body.

Jim leapt back. The body was at knee height, so that could only mean that there were more, many more, stacked like a giant pyre ready for burning. The oppressiveness of the darkness was worse here, and Jim wondered why the shadows hadn't attacked them yet.

At Herc's signal, Jim pulled the cork out from the bottle neck, and began sloshing gasoline all over the massive pile of bodies. He saw the outlines of Jasmine and Aladdin doing the same, except they rounded the circle of bodies, still pouring, and kept going until the corner took them out of sight.

Jim poured and tossed gasoline as high as possible, and heard a soft wet slap as it made contact with the bodies. He continued to do this until both his jugs of gasoline were empty. Similar situations must have occurred to the others, for the wet slap of oil ceased. Jim gripped his pistol tightly. Why hadn't the shadows attacked yet?

Herc's voice cut through his thoughts.

"Now!" he boomed, and Jim fired straight ahead. That was when all hell broke loose.

An eruption of flames engulfed the mass of bodies, and suddenly they were no longer in darkness, but the heat of the flames pushed Jim and the others back into the darkness, where the shadows were waiting. There was an intense feeling of something trying to push into Jim, something trying to get past the suit, but it simply couldn't. Therefore, it resolved to grabbing Jim and pulling him, trying to tear him limb from limb.

Jim flailed madly against the iron grips, and pushed his way back to the burning pyre of bodies. Looking back, he noticed that the darkness was receding. There were screams all around him, for he felt as if that suffocating atmosphere was lifting as those agonized screams continued. The shadows were dissipating, and more and more of the world that was covered so long in darkness was being revealed.

The cobbled stones were coming into view with the light of the fire, and Jim stared at those so as to avoid looking at the twisted faces burning behind him. He felt a hand on his arm, and turned to see Dimitri. He gave him a meaningful look of relief, although he doubted his brother could see it through the suit. Yet Dimitri squeezed his arm tightly, and turned to see the world open up before them.

The screams of the shadows were still there, but the darkness had almost completely retreated into nothingness, leaving light for the first time in its wake. Finally, as the screams faded, a vast empty city was revealed to them. Jim stared at the expanse of disheveled buildings, the broken windows, and greyness that colored a city without use. It made him restless.

However, as he and Dimitri walked a bit further along the cobbled stones of the streets, he saw vast expanse of grey land stretching as far as the eye could see at the city limits. He turned back to the fire, and gasped. From the buildings began to emerge small amounts of people; they came out in twos and threes, but all together there were quite a few. He looked at Dimitri, who had taken off the head covering of his suit, and was smiling,

The darkness had retreated as far as the city's suburbs, and probably much further, and Jim knew that the people of this planet could fight it off completely, once their forces had banded together.

Returning to the center of town, they met up with Herc, Meg, Aladdin, and Jasmine, who were visibly overwhelmed with shock to be seeing more people alive. Beaming, Jasmine gave them both a hug.

"We did it! We can fight this off!" she exclaimed happily, and turned to kiss Aladdin.

Jim and Dimitri laughed in an awed relief; they had helped this place become well on the way to healing.

All packed and ready to leave, Jim and Dimitri (along with Morph, who they had discovered cowering in Jim's backpack for the remainder of their visit to this world) were saying their last goodbyes to the four people they had helped.

Meg had given them each a hug. "Those scars should be gone in a couple of days, but if they don't disappear quickly, I made this for you to take with you" she said, handing them a jar of the pasty ointment she had used to seal their cuts. Jim stuffed it carefully in his backpack.

"Thank you, for everything. I don't know how to thank you enough" Herc said, shaking their hands. Aladdin had simply smiled and handed them a rolled up green carpet that had previously been lying on the floor of the shelter.

"You'll see how useful this will turn out to be. It's been dormant for a while but... I think with the crazy stuff you guys are bound to get into it will wake up" he said, and grinning, wouldn't say more. Puzzled, Dimitri stuck the carpet under his arm, and Jim grasped the amulet tightly in his hand. With a nod to Princess Jasmine, and one last look at the faces of those four people, he twisted the dial.

The orb grew hot in his hand, and the chasm that opened the passageway into the dimensional vein appeared. Dimitri gripped Jim's arm tightly, and they were sucked in.


Reviews, please? :D Tell me what you think... I'm a bit iffy on this chapter, so I need feedback! Thanks :)