Armin woke up from the dream of his father to a pitch-black room, with no light to offer visual assistance. The moon outside was practically invisible, a new moon that was nothing more than a shadow.
To his right, Jean was knocked out asleep on his bed, snoring absentmindedly. Armin rose up into a sitting position on his bed, groggy and shaken from all that he had been shown by the peculiar dream screen.
"I'll kill you, you fucking faggot!"
He froze in horror as he saw Shane, his father's would-be doppelganger, emerge from the dark corner of his bedroom, a look of utter hatred contorting his handsome face. Armin began hyperventilating, and shot a terrified glance at his roommate, who was apparently unaware of Armin's stalker.
Shane sneered down at him and told him "Nobody will hear you scream as I make you suffer, brat! Nobody can help you, not your roommate, and especially not your beloved Reiner!"
All Armin could do was watch as Shane crept towards him with a horrifically sadistic grin. Shudders ran up and down his spine, and Armin knew that there was nowhere to run.
"How the hell did he get in here without Jean knowing?!"
Then, to his shock, Armin saw the woman robed in black manifest just behind his approaching enemy, looking just as stern as her former appearances in his childhood bedroom. The woman placed a solitary finger on her lips, silently telling Armin to remain silent, and then covered her eyes with her hand.
Armin knew exactly what she was telling him to do, and watched quietly as her moonlight blade was withdrawn, the room's darkness finally being dispelled by its glow. He shut his eyes tight, and willed for Shane to be struck down by her ominous hand.
Shane stopped in his tracks, and snarled "Who-YOU BITCH!"
Without warning, Shane's angry voice warped into a guttural shriek of fury as the same rage-fueled otherworldly language that Armin had heard that day in room 415 roared in response. The two voices clashed violently as the woman, whom Armin realized was both his childhood night defender and also the source of the female voice from back then, fought off her opponent.
After a few agonizingly long moments, with one final echoing scream, the adversary seemed to disappear from the room. Armin waited tensely, clutching his bedsheets and not knowing what had happened.
"Open your eyes, child."
He obeyed, and when he looked, only the dark woman stood before him, with no trace of Shane to be seen. The woman looked down at him somberly as she gripped her gleaming blade.
Armin felt a few small tears slip down his cheeks, and he quickly wiped them away, shame surging in him at how helpless he had felt before Shane. The woman gently shook her head, and took a few steps forward so that she was right next to his bed.
"No, child," she told him, placing a pale hand on his shoulder. "Do not blame yourself for feeling fear in the face of such evil. It is only human."
"H-how did Shane get in here?" Armin meekly asked. "Why didn't anybody see him come in?"
Her face twisted into a look of utter contempt, and she told him "That was not Shane, child. That was something far more twisted than that vile boy."
The response made no sense to Armin. Noticing his confusion, the woman knelt down next to him so that they were at eye level, and went on.
"That fiend took advantage of your inherent fears, and sought to paralyze you as such. That is why I came, to fend off this monster, just as I fought off those abominations that haunted you years ago."
Armin remembered vividly the disturbing shadow entities who would enter from the dark hallway outside his room at night, and the woman appearing to slash them away with her blade made of moonlight.
"But if that wasn't Shane, then who…or what…"
He felt his exhaustion returning quickly, and the woman assuredly told him "I will not allow any other fiends to assault you tonight, child. Sleep, and sleep peacefully."
With that, Armin fell back onto his bed, and almost instantly went back to sleep, dreamless but at peace.
When he woke up, Jean was already up and getting ready for the day, giving no indication that he was aware of the events from that night. He gave Armin a tired smile, and Armin smiled back, still confused as to why Jean apparently slept through the entire bizarre skirmish. Armin took his room key with him and left the room, headed towards the restroom.
In front of the water fountain was Bertolt, Reiner's meek roommate who seemed constantly overshadowed by nervousness. Bertolt saw Armin walking towards him, and greeted him mildly.
"H-hey, Armin!" he said, as he stood up to his full height, towering over Armin at what must've been 6'5", even taller than Reiner. "How are you?"
"I'm ok," Armin replied, not wanting to disturb Bertolt with a description of what he had seen. "What about you?"
The quiet giant bit his lip, looked away, and told him "I…had another awful dream about…about what I did to Annie, my ex-girlfriend from high school…I…I feel like shit."
Armin looked up at him in pity, and said to him "If you're feeling this guilty about whatever happened between you two, dude, you should go apologize to her. She goes to this college to, you know."
At that, Bert's brown eyes widened, and Armin saw a gleam of hope. Bertolt ran up to Armin and placed large, tanned hands on his frail shoulders.
"R-really? Where can I find her?" Bertolt asked him, almost pleading with Armin.
"She lives in the dorms south of here, on the opposite side of campus," Armin told him. "You can also find her at the café downtown once and a while. I would go there first and try your luck."
"Thank you, little buddy," Bert told him sincerely, and with a quick ruffle of Armin's hair, he bolted down the hall and out of sight, the stairwell door clanging shut behind him.
"Poor guy. He really does want to make everything up to her."
A quiet week passed from the dream of William Arlert's past, and Armin bonded even further with Reiner, who took his trauma very seriously. Reiner had refused to mention anything that Armin had revealed in their talk to anybody, not even Bert, until Armin had given him permission.
When Reiner told Connie and Sasha, the comically cute duo was enraged. In the evening, while Reiner and Armin sat inside the giant's room, with Bertolt out enjoying a pleasant walk around campus, the two came pounding at their door. Reiner and Armin exchanged a confused glance, and when Reiner opened the door, he found Connie and Sasha carrying a large laptop with them, looking cunning.
"What the hell, Connie?" Reiner asked, as the couple sauntered into his bedroom.
Connie smirked up at him and told him "It's time that I put my skills to good use, Reiner, and there's no better way to do that then avenge Armin!"
Armin hesitantly asked him "Connie, what are you planning to do?"
Sasha piped up and said "Connie knows how to hack into other computers remotely! He's a computer whiz!"
"Don't say that so loudly, Sasha, you'll get us all in trouble!" Reiner hissed, and Armin could see a drop of nervous sweat trickling down his face.
Reiner turned to him, and muttered "So, you see, ever since we've been friends in high school, Connie taught himself through internet research and very illegal software how to hack into other computers using his special programming. It was the only way he could get back at the people who picked on him. He wreaked havoc by revealing people's embarrassing browser history to the rest of the school, humiliating them like they had done to him."
Sasha sniggered and added "That's exactly what we're going to do to that bastard Shane! I know his type, Armin!"
The whole room paused, even Connie, and her boyfriend asked her "What do you mean?"
She gave him an annoyed glance, and told him "Hello, McFly, Shane's a hidden homo!"
"What the hell?" Armin thought in bewilderment. "Did she seriously just use the term 'hidden homo'?"
Sasha turned to Armin and said "I've watched my fair share of gay porn to pass the time, and a recurring trope is the hidden homo, the oh-so-macho guy who tries to act all manly to hide his massive boner for the other guy. And based on what you've told me, Armin, Shane's the same way."
Armin grimaced, realizing that Sasha had hit the nail right on the head. While he had suspected that Shane was a closeted hypocrite, he hadn't been able to tell for certain. But Sasha's depiction of guys like Shane made it all too clear that Shane also wasn't straight.
Reiner grumbled and muttered "Damn. I mean, I'm bisexual, I don't like to hide it from people. Heck, I don't hesitate to tell people when they ask me. I get why other guys don't like to open up about their sexuality, but going around lashing out at other more vulnerable guys like Armin to hide yourself…that's sick!"
Connie nodded and told them "That's why I've got no second thoughts about hacking into his computer!"
He turned to Armin and asked him "So dude, does Shane live in Sansburg Hall?"
"I think so," Armin replied, recalling finding Shane on his floor with Clair, and knowing that the chances were high.
"Good. Let's begin then."
Connie sat on Reiner's bed, and started clacking away, with various dark green lights flashing on his screen. The three of them watched the screen expectantly, not knowing what they were supposed to be looking for.
On Connie's screen, a map of the area popped up, and when he typed in the coordinates to what must've been Sansburg, the map zoomed in, and brought up hundreds of red dots. Connie swore and fiddled with his hands nervously as the rest of the group looked on in confusion.
"What are you looking for, Connie?" Armin asked as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
"I need to find Shane's laptop IP address, so that focus my hacking program on it and break in. But damn, there's too many of them listed here, and I don't have a clue where to start!"
Then, without warning, Connie's face went sheet-white, and his eyes widened alarmingly. They all watched tensely, not sure if he was having a heart attack. After several moments, Connie slowly typed a few numbers into his program, and the map zoomed in on one lone red dot.
"No way…" Reiner muttered, as they all realized that Connie had somehow figured out which IP address belonged to Shane.
A query box popped up on Connie's screen, and after another strange moment, Connie typed something long into the box. With that, a new screen popped up, showing a desktop-style screen with a background of a guy's ripped 6-pack abs.
Armin rolled his eyes in disgust, and Sasha tutted, saying "Like I said, a repressed homo."
Connie continued to clack away, and what must've been Shane's browser history popped up on his screen. While none of the guys in the room could recognize the odd site names listed, Sasha gawked and blushed at what she saw.
"Those are the kinkiest gay porn hubs on the net!" she told them, and it would've been funny if not for the seriousness of the situation.
He went a little bit further, and brought up Shane's online messaging. Armin gritted his teeth when he recognized Clair's name at the top of the messaging list. Connie took note of Armin's reaction and grimaced.
"Buddy, is Clair his girlfriend?" he asked.
"I'm positive," Armin said, and Reiner wrapped a long, bulky arm around his shoulders, pulling him close and providing steady reassurance.
Connie clicked on Clair's name, and opened Shane's history of messages with her. After reading through the messages, they all watched as the blood drained from his face, and Connie's mouth fell open in horror at what he saw.
"What is it?!" Reiner asked him, and Armin felt an ominous foreboding shiver go down his spine.
"L-look at this!" Connie muttered, flipping the screen around so that they could read.
Armin shuddered at what he read, a set of messages between Shane and Clair that was dated two days prior.
Clair: "That stupid faggot won't be around for much longer!"
Shane: "So you found where he works?"
Clair: "That bookstore on the corner of campus. Figures that the freak is a loser bookworm too."
Shane: "Right. What do you want me to do?"
Clair: "Simple. I'll keep looking where I can and find when he goes to and leaves work. I'll go there soon and spook him, rile him up and leave him on edge, to make your job easier."
Shane: "Gotcha. So you'll have me find him and crush him, right?"
Clair: "That's the plan. I'm tired of waiting for Kayla to take charge, that moron's letting herself get too freaked out by those stupid nightmares she's been having. You and I will be the ones to claim the honor and smear the queer!"
Shane: "Good. I can't wait to get my hands on him!"
Clair: "I know babe. Me too. We'll do to him what Kayla did to Mina Carolina two years ago!"
All four of them couldn't speak for a good minute, as the reality of what they had read settled in. Armin wanted to scream, but no sound came out, his throat was so dry.
"What the fuck is this?!" Reiner finally yelled, breaking the silence. "Holy shit, this bastard's plotting to stalk and kill Armin!"
The image of Shane, looming over him in the darkness of his dorm room and openly expressing his sadistic desires was still fresh in Armin's mind. Despite the dark woman assuring him that what he had seen wasn't Shane, and that the thing in his form was simply trying to paralyze him with fear, Armin couldn't help but shudder violently at knowing for sure that people were out to claim his life.
"They…they really do want to kill me! What…what the hell did I do to provoke them like this?!"
Sasha, looking at the screen agape and disturbed, asked them "Wait, who's Mina Carolina?"
Both Connie and Reiner froze in alarm at the recognition of that name, and Armin told her "Mina…Annie told me about her a few days ago. Mina was her best friend, an open lesbian, and…she was murdered in her town's park one summer night after she graduated from high school."
Connie groaned, and nodded. "I…yeah, I remember her. I remember that I did…nothing. I thought that what that poor thing was going through would end by itself, but…obviously it didn't."
"Those monsters!" Reiner snarled. "This happened after me, Bert and Annie graduated. And now that I think about it, the name 'Clair' rings a bell. This bitch was set to become our school's cheerleading captain after my class graduated. And she was one of the worst homophobes I've ever laid eyes on. She encouraged so many people to go after Mina, especially her cheerleading friends."
"And Kayla…I remember a bit about her, too. Clair's best friend. There were times when I couldn't tell who was more evil, like they were competing for the #1 spot for most hateful girl. Those two put Mina Carolina through Hell and back, and apparently, they're behind her death!"
Connie asked him sheepishly "But dude, I thought that Mina committed suicide! I mean, that's what the school and the town said officially…"
Reiner shook his head firmly, and told Connie "Connie, we both know that the higher ups didn't give a shit about a lesbian dying, no matter what the reason was."
"That's true."
He looked at Armin, and said "Dude, I'm so sorry."
Armin told them "I don't know, honestly, why I'm so shocked. They all made it clear to me in Sansburg Hall that they thought I was beyond worthless. But this is sick!"
"I know it is. And I'm not letting them get away with this," Connie told him. "I'm going to take screenshots of all of this, and send them to the RHD of Sansburg. That way, the higher ups will have the proof they need to take action."
"Thank you, Connie," Armin muttered gratefully.
"And with RHD Levi taking action, they're all screwed."
Reiner patted his friend on the back and said "Thank you, Connie. Heck, you may have just saved Armin's life with what you've done here tonight."
Connie bit his lip and said back "Don't thank me yet, Reiner. I won't feel ok until these morons get brought to justice. I'm gonna head to bed now. Goodnight, guys."
"Goodnight," Reiner and Armin said in tandem as Connie left with Sasha following behind him.
Out in the hall, before he could walk away, Sasha seized Connie's arm and made him look at her.
"Connie, tell me the truth!" she begged him. "How did you know what Shane's IP address and password were?"
Connie shuddered in response, and Sasha drew back in alarm. He hadn't been willing to tell the entire group at once what he had experienced, because everything had been beyond freaky.
"I, well…" he started to explain. "I heard this voice of sort tell me exactly what to do. It, or rather, she gave me his exact IP address, and his password, 'stud678'. I didn't see it coming, obviously, and I'm still shaken."
Sasha gawked at him, and muttered "That really is freaky. Well…okay. I'm just glad that we found this out."
"Me too. I need to get to bed, Sasha. I'll see you in the morning."
"See ya."
She walked away, leaving Connie to walk back to his room. He put his hand on the door, and shuddered again as he recalled the woman's disembodied, vengeful voice whispering her sinister command to him.
"Let JUSTICE be done."
"THEIR BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS"
Kayla sat with Clair in the lounge on the 4th floor of Sansburg Hall, still horrified by what she had read on the door to room 415, those glowing red words seemingly oozing crimson. She could still smell the acrid stench of blood from beyond the door, and the overwhelming nausea that she had been feeling since she had seen the words had been steadily building up to the point that she felt seriously ill.
The fact that she wasn't alone in her apparent sickness brought no comfort to her. Everybody else in their group, besides the despondent Elise, had been feeling increasingly under the weather the last few days, and they could no longer dress it up as allergies or a mass cold. Their constant shivering, the sense that somebody was watching them at all times, and the sickness that was so imbedded that it felt spiritual couldn't be ignored any longer.
On top of that, her nightmare from only two days prior was still burning a fresh image in her mind.
In it, a deranged Armin had cornered her outside her room, and in the horror of the moment, Kayla was once again unable to realize that she was only dreaming, not truly facing the reality that Armin had apparently come back to hunt her down like he had promised in the other nightmare she had seen.
"So, you think that I have AIDS, eh?" he had coldly asked her with a horrific sneer. "You think that my blood is just riddled with disease?"
To her alarm, Armin withdrew from his pocket the same knife that had been used to strike down Mina Carolina two years ago, slashed his palm open, and made his horrid red flow spurt all over her.
"Then share my disease, you c—t!" Armin had screamed maniacally. "Share my pain!"
Kayla had woken up screaming at the top of her lungs "Stop it!", and still feeling that Armin could suddenly appear outside her door, ready to assault her once more.
"Blood, blood everywhere!" she thought, continuing to shudder violently.
Next to her, Clair rolled her eyes and told her "Stop fidgeting over that stupid dream already, you're embarrassing yourself. You know that Armin isn't really gonna come back here at all."
"Shut it!" Kayla snapped back. "You're feeling just as ill as the rest of us!"
"So?" Clair asked snidely. "You can argue that it's something 'supernatural', but it's mid-March, and you've all been blowing this out of proportion."
"Yeah? Well maybe if you'd take a look at that door, you'd understand why I'm so freaked out!"
"Oh, please. I have no reason to glance at that door, and I'm sure that both you and Shane are hallucinating. Your paranoia is going to drive you insane at this point."
Kayla gritted her teeth, having to fight the rising urge to scream at her best friend.
Clair sneered at her and said "Not to mention, it's a shame that you aren't taking the reins on hunting down Armin anymore like you told me you would. You've been so caught up in your dreams and illusions that I've had to pick up your slack. Your mother would be so disappointed in you."
"My mother would first beat me, then disown me!" Kayla thought.
"Look, if all you're going to do is get hung up on this crap, then just let me and Shane handle the rest. I'm heading to Armin's bookstore to freak him out like you originally intended. After that, I'll help Shane plot when and where to sneak up on the fag and wipe him from the face of the earth!"
"Don't do it!" Kayla begged her, remembering again her first nightmare. "You have no idea what could happen to you if you-"
"Just shut the fuck up, Kayla," Clair interrupted. "All that's going to happen is Armin will be terrified so much that he'll lose his cool, making Shane's job much easier. Watch me do what you've been daydreaming about these last few weeks, while you sit on your scared ass."
"Fine!" Kayla snapped, and she got up from her chair abruptly. "But don't you dare blame me if something like my nightmare happens to you as a result!"
As she stormed away, she heard Clair yell back "I don't count on it."