Chapter 3: Delta and the Unknown Ninja
Location: Omnibasu Academy: Foreboding Forest
Unit: Delta
Time: Early Night
Date: Month 9 Day 3
Delta ran through the dense forest, crunching leaves as he went. He had an idea of where the scream came from, but he wasn't entirely sure of the exact place. He kept running, not sure if he wanted to hear another scream or not. The trees all looked the same. The crunches of the leaves sounded like gunshots. Wait, those were gunshots. Delta stopped to listen. Yes. They were indeed gunshots. Delta made his way towards the gunshots. They stopped. Delta, panicked that something worse had happened, ran faster towards the now stopped sound of gunshots. When he finally arrived at the source, he found two guards, laying face down, their rifles out to the side. Delta began to check their pulses and was relieved when he found them on both guards. He stood up and looked around. He didn't recognize this part of the forest at all. He was about to take another step when a large shuriken struck the ground where he was about to step. It was then that the man clad in ninja gear dropped from the trees. "You're a fool to come here, project Delta. You have two options. Return with me to the Academy peacefully… Or I will take you by force." Delta's body seemed to react to the man's presence, tensing up, and almost wanting to burst out of his skin. Instinctively, he took a fighting stance and was prepared to fight, when a bright light flashed from his hand repeatedly. Delta stared and was amazed when a shuriken of his own appeared in his hand. The man smirked and got into a fighting stance of his own. "Seems like you're remembering how to use your copy core. Now, enough talk! You're coming with me!" The man threw another shuriken, this time directly at Delta, but he jumped to the side and avoided it, throwing his own shuriken. His weapon landed a hit, and another shuriken appeared in his hand. Curious, he began to keep throwing shurikens at the mysterious man. The man, wising up now, began to dodge the shurikens thrown at him, and throw some of his own. Delta sidestepped the shurikens, returning fire. The battle raged on, each side taking turns firing and dodging. Suddenly, the man stopped fighting. Delta paused as well. "What's the issue?" "Did you not hear that?" Delta paused before he heard it. Rustling. The crunching of leaves. The man's eyes widened in fear. "He's here. You need to run. Get out of here, now!" Delta looked around for the source. "Get away from what exactly?" The crunching and rustling grew louder. "Project Alpha. You won't be able to do anything yet, just run! I'll meet you back at the Academy!" Delta felt a crippling chill run up his spine. The rustling had stopped. He felt a presence behind him. The man grew wide eyed and took off into the woods. Delta knew he didn't have to worry. The true threat was behind him. He didn't even turn around to face his foe. He ran. The strangest sense of Deja Vu washed over him as he ran. The footsteps behind him were growing closer. He kept running. He ran until his lungs felt like they were on fire, and his feet about to explode, and even then he ran. He stole a glance behind him and saw his pursuer. He recognized him almost instantly. White faceless head, almost like a mask, tall, slim stature, business apparel, and six spider like tendrils coming from his back. Project Alpha. The oldest of the living weapons projects. Designed to be able to rip his prey apart with his tendrils, and able to steal someone's soul just by having the person look at them. And said project was headed straight for him. Delta tore his gaze from Project Alpha, getting rid of the white dots that had clouded his peripheral vision, and continued running. Delta ran, jumped, ducked, and slid through the forest, narrowly avoiding branches and other obstacles. He did not dare turn around, he knew that Alpha would be right behind him. Finally, he came into a clearing. He looked around quickly. He didn't see Alpha, but he knew that he'd be back soon enough. He attempted to look for the Academy, but to no avail. He was lost. He gave the clearing another look and found something on the ground. He picked it up, and was greeted by a harshly scrawled picture of project Alpha. He stared at it for a bit before heading off into the woods again. He knew what he had to do.
Information Unknown.
Visibility is Zero.
"So, Project Alpha has a self destruct mechanism of sorts?" "Sort of. In order for Project Alpha to come to be, I had to instill fear of a creature that doesn't exist. In children, specifically. Once they started to give me what they thought of him, I took those papers and extracted the fear to make a living being. Essentially, I've made a physical embodiment of fear. Well, one of them, anyway. I repurposed that fear to make other creatures as well." "So how would one destroy Project Alpha, should he disobey orders?" "That's an oddly specific question, but to put it simply, if you can repurpose the papers into a weapon, you could destroy him. Either that or burn the papers." "Multiple ways of destruction seems a bit excessive." "I wanted to make sure I had multiple fail safes." "What about the other creatures? Would they be affected?" "No, they have separate fear frequencies, if you will. The destruction of one will not affect the others." "Good. We'll need all of them for the plan to work."
Location: Deep Forest
Unit: Delta
Time: Dead of Night
Date: Unknown
The leaves rustled and crinkled as Delta sped over them, looking for the papers. He found a couple here and there. One on a tree, one inside an abandoned shack, various places. He had five in total. He felt the presence of Project Alpha growing steadily closer. He needed to move quickly. He seemed to feel a slimy object creep upon his shoulder, and he whipped around to face Alpha, but he found nothing. Ahead in the forest, he heard a scream, much closer now. Identical to the one he heard before. He sped ahead, knowing that if he moved quickly, he might be able to catch the screaming person before he lost the source of the sound again. He pushed past some branches, and into a clearing, which was empty. He cursed, and gave the clearing another look. Yep. Empty. He looked up into the sky. Nothing to see. Except for the moon. He turned around and saw a dark opening. Almost beckoning to him. He sighed. He somehow knew that the scream came from the dark opening. He pushed past some branches and stepped through.
He came upon another clearing, and he saw it before he stepped into it. He looked into it, seeing a girl with purple looking hair. She looked panicked and frightened. She held something, and Delta moved a little bit closer to get a better look. Papers. Two of them. He stepped into the clearing, not sure of how to approach this. He figured out a way rather quickly when he stepped on a branch accidentally. He froze. The girl whipped around so fast Delta was concerned that she might have whiplash. She stared at him. He stared at her. This went on for several minutes. Delta finally broke the silence. "Are you okay?" She nodded slowly, unsure of how to respond to him. She must not have seen people in forever, because either that or… "Have you seen a tall faceless ma-" "Yes, I've seen him. He's been following me ever since I've found these…" She showed him the papers. "He does tend to guard those with his very existence, since it's the key to destroying him." She opened her eyes wide. "W-We can defeat it?" He nodded. "Yes, but only once we have all the papers. I'm not sure how many there are, so don't ask." She nodded slowly, then opened her eyes wide in fear. She opened her mouth, possibly to scream, but the sound never came out. Delta stared at her before quickly realizing something dreadful. She wasn't staring at him. She was staring behind him. After realizing that fact, he didn't even need to look behind him. He grabbed her hand, and pulled her with him into the woods, running as fast as he could. The girl was tripping over herself. He hair was a mess, and her eyes were wild with fear. She gripped the pages tightly in one hand and held onto Delta's hand with her other hand, fearfully attempting to keep up. Somehow, Delta was dodging branches and trees entirely, almost with superhuman speed and reflexes. He managed to make it to a clearing, with a tree in the middle. A tree stump, really. With a single paper on top of it. Delta stopped in his tracks, making the girl crash into him accidentally. He turned to her sheepishly. "Sorry. Good news, we've lost him for now. Bad news, we've found another paper." He picked it up. "That's eight in total, right?" She nodded and handed him her two papers. "For safekeeping." Delta nodded and accepted the papers. Upon adding the two papers to his own six, they began to glow. Delta stared at them. "I think we've found our way of beating him."