This is a Story-Only archive dump for a quest I'm running on Spacebattles. If you wish to participate, please go over there and contribute.
Butterfly Effect
(A Worm/Shin Megami Tensei: Persona Crossover Quest)
1.7 - Encroaching Darkness
-
Monday, January 3rd 2011
Time: ?
Weather: Overcast and Chilly
Moon: Waning, 1 Day to New Moon (1/4), 16 Days to Full Moon (1/20)
-Line Break-
[X] Search for something I can defend myself with. I didn't bring my pepper spray today with me and look what happened. I'm not going anywhere without a weapon ever again, and fuck anyone who says otherwise.
The best that I could come up with in the immediate area was a steel pipe about the length of my arm. I'd found it amid the collapsed ruins of what I remembered to be the janitor's closet. It was light enough for me to swing comfortably as a club without too much effort, but heavy enough to require both hands and a solid grip around its circumference. I tested it out against the broken lockers, and was satisfied with the loud THONK that it made.
You have acquired Steel Pipe.
With weapon in hand, I decided to explore a little further out of the initial area I had landed in. I tried to head out to the main exit, but was ultimately thwarted by the fact that the junction that brought three separate hallways together to the entrance was completely blocked off by rubble. No amount of shifting was going to get rocks of that size to move anytime soon without construction equipment. I was forced to backtrack and take an alternative route, all the while checking my surroundings for unstable ceilings and fragile ground. Enbringer attacks were always earth-shattering events, and finding buildings that had collapsed from weakened foundations were commonplace.
The silence was unnerving. All I could hear was the sound of my nervous breaths and the echoing footsteps left by my trek. I couldn't explain how, but I could definitely feel that there was something inherently wrong about the environment. Tranquility this profound wasn't natural, in any way, shape or form. The absence of noise is normally a peaceful and soothing sensation, but all that I got was the chill feeling of trepidation, a deep anxiety that something was watching. I couldn't shake it, the constant buzzing feeling...
I grimaced and gripped the pipe tighter.
After a series of detours and u-turns, I finally reached the exit I was aiming for, a side door that lead to the dilapidated patch of dirt that somehow passed as our school's track. Oddly enough, windows had been boarded over and upon trying to force the door, I met a slight resistance. Whatever was on the other side wasn't too heavy, as I could slightly move it without too much effort.
With that said, moving it any further wasn't going to be easy. I'm not exactly what you would call "fit". I eat healthily enough, but I don't exercise and I have a slight paunch. The amount of things I could carry in both hands probably didn't exceed over at least fifteen or twenty pounds.
However, I was able to force the door open wide enough to slide the pipe into the opening it provided. I'd seen enough movies to get the gist of how the principle of a crowbar works, and the pipe was thick enough to remain rigid and unaltered despite repeated abuse (within human limits). I like to say that my intellect makes up for my lack of strength. Using a fulcrum would allow me to double what paltry amount of force I was able to generate. Hopefully it should be enough to pry the door open.
I took a deep breath, grabbed the pipe, and pushed as hard as I could. The door opened further, revealing a familiar graffiti-stained brick wall, but closed as my strength ran out. Gasping for breath, I evaluated my actions. I had managed at least a good three inches with what I believed to be my all.
I positioned myself against a nearby wall, setting one leg against it. With a final grunt, I pushed into the pipe as hard as I could, using the wall as a counter-force to amplify my output. The door opened wider, and wider, until I heard something snap, and the resistance finally gave way. The door violently burst outward, and I fell, surprised and yelping as I fell outside of the building-
To stumble upon a ruin.
Miles and miles of desolation stretched out as far as the eye could see, a never-ending wasteland that continued far into the horizon. The skeletons of the highest skyscrapers were the only things that had survived the calamity, and even they bore the scars of terrible calamities and tribulations. There was nothing that could grow here, not even in the craters that carved out deep trenches in the earth. Nothing had remained intact or whole, survived unscathed.
But worst of all? I was the only one to bear witness to it. There were no signs of life to show that other people were here. Not even the dead bodies to accompany a disaster could be seen. I thought had I known what it meant to be alone. But now...this was true isolation, true solitude in a land where I did not belong.
I was only dimly aware of the pipe slipping from my numb fingers as I stared up into a crimson twilight, with broiling clouds that rumbled and murmured with barely-restrained ferocity. What hell? I heard a splash, and felt something splatter my jeans.
I looked down to find the pipe laying in the epicenter of a pool of crimson liquid.
The sharp scent of iron came thick and pungent from the blood.
Before I could even scream, everything that had felt wrong about my surroundings finally decided to happen.
"…ugliest girl in the school."
"…if she isn't going to even try in class, then why does she bother showing up?"
"…oh my god, is she seriously crying?"
"...wow, what a loser!"
Their voices came from everywhere and nowhere, scathing whispers and mocking falsettos that left me able to identify the speakers. Madison, Sophia, Emma, all the other students at Winslow, and a teacher that berated me for not being able to replace vandalized materials. I felt every one of them dig into me, assaulting me, hurting me. Every insult, every malignant word I'd ever heard came at me simultaneously.
My hands started shaking, and I think my body followed suit. I already thought I was done crying back in the locker, so this sudden wave of torment hit me when I was least expecting it, leaving me without any tears to shed. But what the hell...what the hell...what hell was happening? This...this was too fucked up. Was I hallucinating? I felt my horror grow as I slowly processed it. I could very well still be in the locker, passed out among that filth and refuse. I reflexively gagged, and found nothing to heave.
"Aw...look at you...we've suffered through so much at the hands of those sadistic bitches...and continue to do so because you're too fucking weak to grow a spine!"
What separated the distorted voice from the whispers was the fact that it wasn't an unknown whisper. It actually came from someone that was in the general area, and had a definitive substance that the others lacked. It actually made me shriek. I grabbed the pipe, doing my best to ignore the blood that dripped around its circumference, and brought it around to bear at the source of the voice.
It was like looking into a mirror. She wore the same juice-stained hoodie, had the familiar curly hair that tumbled en mass down to my shoulders, sitting on a ruined bench with gangling limbs spread out without a care in the world. Familiar traits stared back at me, the wide mouth curled into a smile that was beautiful in all the wrong places. All and all, the girl standing in front of me could have passed as my twin, save for one critical feature that stood out among the others.
Sickly red eyes that matched the shade of the blood at my feet.
[ ] "W-who are you?"
[ ] "...where am I?"
[ ] "W..what do you mean by that?!"
