Chapter 3 : Exodus.
Their fight wasn't over quite yet. There was a reason why Sawako had been running and that reason knocked down the door to the light music club as if it were made out of card stock. This new adversary stood ten feet tall on two legs and was covered in gray bristly quills, much like a hedgehog. Underneath the insulation, its skin was the same color as the ladybugs. Its two arms ended in seven claws that were dripping some type of fluid that Azusa suspected was venom. It lacked a head. Its face seemed to be a part of its trunk. Put simply, it was a beast. Azusa saw eight beady eyes looking right at her and an open mouth that seemed incapable of closing awaiting its next meal.
Even worse, the song she played had absolutely no effect on the monster. It lunged at her and if she had been a second too slow she wouldn't be making it to the end of this paragraph in one piece. Tsumugi threw one of the chairs from the tea table at it, knocking it back a few steps. Ritsu pulled Mio to the wall and hoped they would be able to pick up her slack since she wouldn't abandon Mio. Yui grabbed a music stand for defense and stood beside Ritsu. Tsumugi kept throwing everything she could at the creature while Azusa went for the rest of their instruments.
The only other instrument she could play was her father's saxophone and she was not very good at it. However, there had been a couple of times when the girls had taught each other how to use the instruments they played just for fun. She took off the Mustang and set it aside carefully, still valuing it as the poignant gift that it was. Azusa tried an extremely basic riff on Mio's bass and Chopsticks on Tsumugi's keyboard, both of which did not take any heat off of Tsumugi, who crawled under the table just in time to avoid being filleted. Azusa grabbed one of their bags and hurled it at the monster, trying to get its attention off of Tsumugi.
It worked. Apparently crawling under the table was too much of a hassle. Besides, this thing knew it had all day to kill them. Undeterred, Azusa got behind Ritsu's drums. The bristly thing was now practically right on top of her. All that stood between the hunter and its prey was a Yamaha Hipgig drumset.
If this didn't work. . .
Azusa screamed at the top of her lungs and let lose. Her inexperience didn't seem to matter. If any degree of skill was required, a novice would survive. The hairy creature reared back, offended by the noise, and began to spin around in a distorted circle. Azusa played even harder, not caring how it sounded. Green blood began pouring out of the open mouth, accompanied by a bubbly hiss. It fell to its knees and appeared to go into a seizure. Ritsu saw an opening and made her move.
"This is for Ton-chan!" was the only discernible statement that made it through her rage.
Ritsu gritted her teeth together until her jaw popped, pulled her arm all the way back, gripped the crowbar until her knuckles cracked and her fingers went white, and drove it right through the spine of the monster in a blow so absolutely devastating that she immediately crippled it.
That had been for a turtle. But not for Kirino, oddly enough. Nobody liked her. She was kind of a shrew and that was a conservative way of putting it.
As Azusa continued upsetting everyone in the room, not just the invader, Ritsu turned its back into Swiss cheese until it finally stopped moving. Each blow produced a sick thuck as she wailed on it relentlessly. This thing bled like a stuck pig. It was everywhere. Ritsu's school shoes were ruined, not to mention her outfit. Azusa quit trying to play the drums after Ritsu had stopped going completely psychotic on the beast.
They looked at each other for a moment, their breath starting to appear in a fine cloud of condensation. It was getting so cold in the room that Tsumugi could swear she saw steam rising from the blood of the recently deceased monster.
"That sounded horrible." Ritsu said hoarsely.
Azusa smiled and chuckled a little bit. The laughter was infectious. Ritsu tried to hold it in, but she broke out into a hysterical fit. So did the other girls, except for the adult, who was busy digging glass out of her face, but had caught on quite well to what had just happened in front of her.
"Did the music just stop that thing?" Sawako asked, her voice clearly begging for an affirmative answer.
"Yes, sensei!" Tsumugi said. "I can hardly believe it myself. It sounds impossible, but. . ."
Tsumugi trailed off, completely unable to provide any kind of explanation for it.
"Yui found out." Tsumugi stated, giving up.
"I'd say my crowbar stopped it." Ritsu said, tossing the crowbar into the air in a fancy arc and then catching it. "But music seems to help as well."
"Sawa-chan. . ." Yui called, her voice breaking again. "Ton-chan. . .he. . ."
Sawako looked over to where the tank had been. She embraced her student as Yui cried fresh tears, though not nearly as hard as before. Sawako thought briefly about mentioning that they could get another one and then decided that was highly inappropriate.
"We have to keep on going." Sawako said instead. "It's what Ton-chan would want."
"Why is this happening?" Yui asked, her face ruined.
"I don't know. We'll find out, though." Sawako assured her.
She saw Mio lying on the ground and her mouth went agape. Sawako stood up and ran over to Mio with Yui buried between her breasts.
"Oh, no! Mio. . ." Sawako lamented as Yui tried to pull herself out of Sawako's cleavage.
Ritsu grinned darkly.
"Alas, poor Mio! We knew her well! Just kidding, just kidding. It's okay. She's just out cold. Mio can't take this kind of stuff." Ritsu assured her.
"Then it isn't going to be any better when we try to get out of the school. It's a slaughterhouse down there!"
Yui gasped for air when she finally managed to break free of Sawako's grip.
"Sawa-chan, you smell like pomegranate." Yui observed dreamily, blushing slightly.
"We need to get to the PA room." Azusa said. "If we can play over the schools loudspeakers, we might be able to save some of the students!"
"I'm not so sure about that. We would only be wasting time. Trust me. You would be surprised at how quickly a high school can be evacuated, especially since most of the clubs have already gone home." Sawako said.
"In that case, the radio said that we need to get to the Chihara Station."
"Wait, what? They only set up one checkpoint?" Sawako asked, shocked.
"Maybe that's all they had time for." Tsumugi offered.
Or perhaps this whole situation was a lot worse than they thought. Yui's cell phone chirped when she suddenly received a text message. She retrieved it, almost dropping it when she tore it out of her pocket but managing to catch it before it fell to the floor. A message from three minutes ago from Ui had finally made it through the network.
Gym. Hurt.
The cell phone began shaking violently as Yui suddenly became very concerned.
"What's wrong?" Ritsu asked.
"Ui is in trouble." Yui said.
She swallowed the knot in her throat and showed everyone the message, unable to keep her hands steady. Her bottom lip was trembling, threatening to break at any second to release the sobs she somehow managed to keep trapped inside her chest. Since tears were quiet, she had no problem letting more of those lose. Today was just not her day.
"I. . .it's my responsibility as the older sister to make sure she's okay. We were supposed to walk home together today. I'm going after her." Yui said.
Azusa could see it. Fear. Finally there was something that had truly gotten through to Yui. Her little sister was in danger. At that point Azusa was reminded of her own family. Would they flee to the station, or would they lock themselves in their house and hide somewhere together? It hadn't taken much for Ritsu to kill the hairy creature and her father was fairly strong. If they were all still alive, surely adults stood a far better chance.
"You're not going alone, Yui-senpai. I'll come with you." Azusa said, expecting karma to return the favor.
"We all will." Tsumugi said on behalf of everyone.
"There's a bit of a problem, though. They're not all weak against the same instruments and with the way you were butchering my drums its difficult to say what that sasquatch didn't like." Ritsu said.
"Now is your chance to find out!" Sawako said, pointing at the open door in front of them.
Another one of the hairy creatures stepped in. Tattered bits and pieces of their school outfit were around its mouth. Obviously it had just finished feeding on one of their classmates and had come to kill again. That lead Azusa to suspect that it could probably eat twice its weight in food if it wanted to. What a funny thought to have at a time like this.
Sadly, it was right next to the drum kit and Azusa was still sitting in the chair. Tsumugi reacted quickly and took one of the extremely expensive saucers from the China cabinet and hurled it at the creature. She struck it right in its grouping of eyes, which caused it to shield its face and back away. Her friends moved quickly.
"Catch!" Ritsu said, throwing the crowbar at Sawako.
The tool cluttered noisily to the ground in front of their teacher. Sawako scooped up the crowbar and stood defiant, her true nature breaking passed the charming exterior she struggled to maintain. Sawako unbuttoned her blouse and tore her skirt to give her hips some room as Ritsu took her seat behind the drums and began playing a solo. It didn't appear flustered at all until she used the cymbals. One of its eyeballs popped out and it immediately began vomiting up the former champion of the tennis team.
In an effort to make the sound go away, the sasquatch lashed out blindly and fell over the drum kit. Ritsu got out of the way and made off with the hi-hat. She still managed to keep a decent beat going even without her drums. Overcome with agony, their nemesis finally tapped out and beat its head against the ground. Too bad this wasn't a friendly game. Sawako moved in for the kill. She bludgeoned it to death and continued beating it so hard that everyone was certain she was still hitting it in the afterlife. That brought After School Tea Time's kill count up to four. Their adversaries had scored at least three so far.
"Sawa-chan, I think it's dead." Azusa said.
"Sensei, it's even more dead now." Tsumugi pointed out after a moment.
"You have pounded all of the continues straight out of that thing, Sawa-chan." Ritsu mentioned.
"I had a date tonight!" Sawako roared as she started to strike wood. "This could have been my chance! My Christmas cake is getting stale!"
"Everyone, please!" Yui shouted.
They all looked toward her.
"If you're going to help me find Ui, we need to do it now. I can feel her. She needs me! I can't wait any longer, I have to go to her now or I will be too late!"
The two weren't twins, but they did seem to share a rather close bond. Perhaps that was enough to kindle some ESP.
"Okay. We will find Yui, but only because we know where she is and we know she needs help. After that, we need to get to the station. This is going to sound horrible, but it has to be said. It would be better for your parents if you tried to make your way to safety." Sawako stated.
Sawako was right. It was indeed a very terrible thing to say, but that didn't stop it from being the truth and they were already prepared to accept it.
"Once we get there, we might even be able to help." Tsumugi said brightly.
"Yes, that's exactly right." Sawako said.
"Yui-senpai did more damage when she had her guitar plugged into her amp." Azusa pointed out. "I don't suppose we'll be able to take it with us, will we?"
"Uhh, no." Ritsu said. "Where would you plug it in?"
"True." Azusa muttered, feeling a little foolish.
Ritsu nodded, crossed her arms, and stood up from her seat.
"Sawa-chan, carry Mio. Tsumugi, take the bass." Ritsu instructed.
While Tsumugi retrieved Mio's instrument and the case that went along with it, she gave her keyboard a quick pat.
"I'll be back for you later." Tsumugi said, blowing it a kiss.
Sawako found Mio unusually heavy as she used a fireman's carry to ferry her to safety. Ritsu approached Azusa and held out the crowbar, covered in the blood of the creatures it had helped slay.
"Looks like your hands are free for now. Time to bust some heads, Azunyan." Ritsu said with a wink.
Azusa didn't like Ritsu's grin. A part of her thought she couldn't do this, but now was not the time for self-doubt. She would do her best. Azusa took the crowbar and quickly put her own instrument away in its case and slung it over her shoulders in case they would need it later.
"Make sure you don't put your eye out." Ritsu said.
A very strong sense of déjà vu assaulted Azusa, but she couldn't explain why. She rubbed a sharp, brief pain out of both of her eyes.
"I think I'll be fine." Azusa said, smiling reassuringly.
"Before we go down there, I want to warn you one more time. It's not going to be pretty. I barely made it up here alive. However, if those things are so affected by music that they become completely defenseless, I think we can make it. Stick together and stay as a group." Sawako explained.
"And nobody left behind." Azusa added.
They all nodded affirmatively. Ritsu and Yui took the lead with Azusa in the middle. Tsumugi valiantly decided to position herself at the tail end of the entourage. She gathered five more saucers for good measure and was the last to leave the music room.
Azusa rubbed her hand across the turtle at the top of the stairs for good luck once again as they descended into hell.
Sawako hadn't managed to capture just how brutal the attack had been with her words. There were at least a dozen of them on this floor and they were all preoccupied with the students they had killed. All of them were ladybugs. The kills the ladybugs had made were particularly obvious since there was a big gaping hole where the offspring had burst out of. Ritsu rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn't imagining the babies maturing by the second, but they were indeed growing very fast. One of them took flight, decided that was far too much work, and collapsed to the ground with a thud. It began moving over to the corpse of a girl who had been trampled to death during the stampede to get out of the school.
"Keep going, they're not bothering us." Sawako whispered.
Azusa counted maybe twenty or so dead senpai's. Almost every window on this level had been smashed in. They went down the stairs to the first floor. Tsumugi watched their rear carefully, her neck nearly getting a whiplash from all the work it was doing as her head darted in every direction. The smell drifting up from the first floor was what hit them first. A bunch of eggs were all lined up in the stairwell. Some had already hatched. A little sasquatch the size of a Chihuahua was crawling out of a translucent shell. It's eyes opened and it felt so full of life right up until the point where Ritsu's foot ended it violently.
The sasquatch's were marking their territory with blood, covering the walls in bizarre warnings and cluttering up the hallway with desks and whatever else they could throw around to create disorder. Azusa's eye twitched as she realized that this behavior technically made them more intelligent than the ladybugs. They must have been social creatures. Furthermore, they were covering up the windows with a thick mucus that they secreted from their mouths. A new trick! Azusa couldn't say she was impressed and she wondered how much they would like it when they found out that the second floor had already been claimed.
Mio suddenly began to stir on Sawako's back. Sawako took one look at the condition the hall was in and knew this was no time for Mio to be waking up. She rocked back and forth on her feet, trying to soothe Mio back into her dead faint.
"Mio, everything is fine." Sawako whispered. "Don't open your eyes."
"Why not?" Mio asked as her eyes opened.
Sawako braced herself for the scream. When it came, it just about woke the dead. Mio had quite a voice in her. They knew they were in trouble. Azusa watched as one of the sasquatch poked its head out of the classroom it was in comically to investigate the noise. Ritsu wasted no time and immediately began playing. Those creatures closest to her immediately backed away as if she were the embodiment of the plague.
"That's right." Ritsu said in satisfaction, grinning from ear to ear as her body moved with the beat she was making.
One of them jumped out of a window to get away from the sound. In came two ladybugs, slamming into the wall and tumbling to the ground. The first hit the wall so hard that it didn't get up again, but the second languidly rose to its feet. Yui readied her guitar. However, the ladybug didn't seem to want them. It went straight for a sasquatch, using its stinger to impregnate it. Mere seconds later, another ladybug popped out of its torso in an explosion so violent the sasquatch was actually cut in half. The top half went sailing through the air for a minute before landing on the ground. Not a good way to go.
"Look out!" Tsumugi warned.
A sasquatch was still coming for them in the midst of its hemorrhage. This one looked different from the others and had a spot at the top of its trunk cut away to signify its position within the clan. It leapt at Ritsu a little too early, its timing thrown off by the pain. Ritsu easily dodged what would have otherwise been her doom and even managed to trip the creature, sending it face first into the floor. She kicked it as hard as she could in the ribs and immediately regretted it since the school shoes weren't that hard. She dropped her drum sticks and pulled her wounded foot up to her stomach, hopping around on her remaining foot as she groaned in pain.
Ritsu felt like the biggest idiot in the world. What she had done was careless and that would get her killed. With as easy as surviving this onslaught seemed to be, she would never forgive herself if she died because she did something foolish. Azusa raised the crowbar and hesitated for a moment before she scored her first kill. She was the second person to discover that there was a soft spot near the top of the back that popped open easily with just a few strikes and let them see exactly what the creature was thinking. Evolution would eventually get around to addressing how obvious this weak point was and provide the species with a means of defense, but that wouldn't happen for another millennium.
This was not her style. Azusa would rather have a gun or at the very least a bow and arrow. On the other hand, Sawako and Ritsu seemed to enjoy getting up close and personal. And covered in stinky blood. She almost asked to carry Mio, who was squirming around on Sawako's back. Sawako held her steady. Eventually Mio would become desensitized to everything around her and then she would be useful. For now, she screamed at everything and would probably die the second her feet touched the ground. Sawako could hardly believe her luck when she saw a roll of duct tape on the ground. With one hand and her teeth, she tore a strip lose and slapped it on Mio's face, all without dropping her.
"Problem solved." Sawako said triumphantly. "Let's stop by the nurses office. Ui might need medical attention."
"We're so far from the station." Yui whimpered. "I hope she only sprained her ankle. She did that once when I ran from her while we were playing. I didn't mean for her to get hurt."
"It's okay. As fate would have it, I actually took a first-aid class in college as an elective. If it's something minor, I can fix it." Sawako said.
"Who was the boy?" Ritsu asked.
"You're out of line, Tainaka-san." Sawako said dangerously. "I'll have you know it looked really good on my résumé when I was in the process of becoming a teacher!"
"I bet it did." Ritsu said, batting her eyes at Sawako.
"I also know first-aid! And CPR! Don't worry, Yui. We will take care of Ui!" Tsumugi interjected to diffuse the situation, raising a hand to include herself.
They headed for the nurses office. Azusa began to notice bodies of people that were not part of their school. The adults must have been out hunting and brought back what they caught. She wondered if they were intending to hibernate and decided that was silly. They came across a couple of young sasquatch's sparring with each other. There was no way around them and they stopped fighting and looked up at their new audience curiously. Even at such a young age their claws were dripping with that mysterious fluid. Azusa kicked one across the room with enough force to score a sixty five yard field goal in adverse winds during a downpour while Ritsu crushed its friend to death with her hi-top. Both squealed for help, but it did not come. The adults at the other end of the hall were not bothered. After all, there were a ton of eggs waiting to hatch and a window to seal where a bunch of ladybugs had suddenly congregated.
The nurses office had been thoroughly trashed. Disorder seemed to be a thing with the sasquatch. However, there was a distinctive red pack sticking out of the mess that Sawako pulled free. Rarely could one be so happy to see a red cross. They now had a very nice first-aid kit in their possession. Once through the side door leading directly to the gym, they were hit with the cold. Adrenaline made it more bearable, but it didn't help that the wind had picked up and a light mist was starting to form in the streets as the clouds held off the helpful light of the sun.
Chaos drifted from the city to their location. Sirens, screams, and a few gunshots followed them as they made their way toward the gym. It was starting to snow lightly. Azusa could smell a fire burning somewhere. They went through the front door and discovered that the gym was now ladybug territory. The volleyball club hadn't made it. Not all the lights were on. Azusa looked up and saw a bunch of ladybugs crawling around on the ceiling. They were busting the fluorescent lights, but they weren't being very proactive about it.
Seven of them detached from the rafters and attacked. Yui knew it was time to shine and played another wicked guitar solo. Their ability to fly was impaired by the music and three of them dropped out of the sky and gave up immediately. Those on the ceiling began crawling away in haste, trying to get as far from the noise as possible. Two ladybugs actually started attacking each other in a show of twisted compassion, both trying to kill the other to end their misery. Legs, wings, eyes, and blood went flying everywhere as they tumbled to the gym floor. One flew at Tsumugi with its stinger forward. She dodged well before the ladybug was an actual threat and it didn't even bother trying to correct itself as it went sailing forward with no intended target. It went crashing through the door they had just entered in from and got itself stuck in the ground.
Azusa sidestepped the final one sailing haphazardly towards her with the stinger poised to impregnate her and caught it with the hooked end of the lengthy crowbar while it was still in the air. She pulled it down to the ground brutally, being careful of its sharp feet as she put one foot down on the stinger and tore the crowbar free with a sick crunch that dislodged a few legs and tore a good chunk out of its body. That was all this one took. Without having to be told, she walked outside to where the other one was. In the process of freeing itself, it had pulled its stinger out of its body. The ladybug appeared to be dying as it crawled slowly away and made a tiny squealing noise. Azusa closed the door to the gym and left it out in the cold where it could freeze to death for all she cared.
Yui stopped playing and opened her mouth to call for Ui, causing everyone to tense and start waving their hands erratically to get her to stop. Thankfully, Yui caught herself. There was no telling what she might call to their attention. Yui went straight for the storage room, drawn to it by her ESP. Inside, it was completely dark.
"Ui?" Yui called softly.
NEXT TIME : Hey, Azunyan speaking. I'm the central character again, but don't worry, this time I get to keep both of my eyes. I hope you're enjoying the story so far. Please join us again next time. I think we're going to take out a ladybug hive. That should be exciting. If you can't wait, give Waltz a read and remember what Yui-senpai said about canon. Later!
