Joe: Feller, do go on. I'm feeling outright uneasy, sittin' round in all this anticipation... -sighs-
Me: You stabbed your eye out, bruh. And it was like ICE. OR GLASS. What does that mean?
Joe: It means I done messed up.
Dino: WHY DON'T I GET TO STAB OUT MY OWN EYE? WHY DOES EVERYONE ELSE GET TO DO ALL THE COOL STUFF?
Yoshiki: -harshly takes his shoulders- You don't want to be in that situation.
Me: Heh. Anyone who's played Corpse Party knows how much turd he's gone through.
Dino: Can I please be in your place I want your lif—
Yoshiki: -slaps him away, steering him by his face-
Chapter Seven: He was Mistaken
This place gave him some mean heebie-jeebies. Forking his gaze over each of the rows of cabinets—three in total, two jammed to his left of the sink and one leaning to the wall by the right of it—he could tell that some of the shelves, musty as they were, had smaller rows embedded in them, of bottles. And those bottles all mostly had the same texture of dust, but two: one in the left cabinet, which he easily creaked open with a crook of his arm, slashing out to the left as an opening, gleamed brightly. Peering at it, Joe found speckled bubbles gently popping about in it, and the cool, crisp look of water swirled around inside the petite, relatively clean bottle. Joe quickly pocketed this one in his jacket, then turned to that third cabinet on his right of the sink, which happened to be colored a putrid gray made to look like a container taped to some pipe works. Didn't smell all that fine, either.
Like vivosaur dung. Fresh vivosaur dung. Only worse and had hints of something like ammonia. Ugh, ammonia. He gagged a little.
"...ungh..."
A sudden yawn seized through Joe's jaws, and he blinked through what felt like dusty eyes that had retired from life for a moment. Everything pounded down on him in a wave of angst, a bath of summery sickness, and it took a few moments to gain his bearings. Joe brushed at his head and found it barren of a certain hat, and he pouted toward himself and the cabinets on the walls he lost focus of, wondering why his curls had been left so barren as of now. He shook them out slowly and sighed, confuzzled beyond the usual. "What... Darn-tootin', what just happened..?" Betwixt another yawn sawing past his teeth he blinked and felt a shadow behind his eyes. "Where... am I... again?" Western voice receding as he spilled back, a word hissed by his ear—
Ss—ss-sssss-ss—sss-selfish.
"Gak!"
He stumbled forward, spurs dangling precariously over cut wood with an arsenal of splinters the faint hue of azure: anything to get away from that. It seemed to neatly fold his bearings back into place, creasing his breeches and returning them nicely to the sound dresser of his mind. Joe then recalled he was in that weird infirmary and there were bottles and glancing strangely, warped around the room in a dazed orbit, the cool glass of a swanky bottle in his hand returned as did feeling. A pale-then-fair hand set up the assumed bottle of somewhat-musty holy water, his palm a stage, and the pard nodded to himself decidedly. "Mmmkay. Looks like we're done here."
His sweet western slang patrolled the lines of his sight and this room in general, snapping nowhere and thoroughly coating a silent and freaky chamber with a very fine and dandy substance called peace. Another puff of breath removed from his jaw held just to the hinges of agape, and with no such tallyho, the dazed adult stepped over cracks in the floor and the stains lurking over the ground, curls bouncing all shiny and orange in his face as he maneuvered left of the aligned white cots and exited that strange place. It became noticeably easier to breathe in the adjacent hallway, which Joe found particularly pleasant. He nodded to the boy who still had his eyes closed and head rested against the wall, which somehow felt assuring to the pard that something was sound and swell with the nexus he was apparently stuck in.
Somehow, this whole hoedown amounted to a sort of safety. Fine and dandy. His chocolate orbs surveyed the halls and came up empty of sore sights. "Nice," he murmured, which evidently caused the blonde delinquent kid-friend to stir. Dark orbs glinted back at the shorter adult and he mumbled, "You're weird, Joe," in a more croaky, more tired slang. As usual; as he always did. The pard smirked softly to himself in his fair-colored skin with the gentle pink hues and the curly orange length of hair idly bouncing about his head. It still felt weird to see that brown boulder donning his special and floppy hat, but did it help him...
"Well, c'mon, now. Stop standing and staring at your beloved hat or you'll scare the... the... goddammit. What was he again?"
Another smirk curled up Joe's lip. "A seismo. Shrunken, fer his size. He's not usually so li'l 'n cuddly, lemme say."
The boy smirked back. His dark-watery orbs flashed. "Then what's unshrunken look like?"
"Ya better hope the first time ya see it it's in a wide, open area, pardner." Gently accepting the shaken, silent seismo still grappling onto that bright candle via Yoshiki via his girlfriend, Joe nodded affirmatively. "It ain't fun, gettin' stepped on by a hundred-somethin' long seismo, and who-counts-it something high."
"You don't say, Joe," timidly went the blonde back. His eyes burned a little at the thought of how impeccably humungous this tiny, vulnerable chap could go to, and how that whole stretching thing even worked, and why something pocket-sized could change shape so easily. Heck, everyone didn't really know.
Joe shared with this silent curiosity. "Beats me, boy. It's just what they do. Like us; we've got our traits, 'n they have theirs. Good enough?"
"Not really." But Yoshiki shrugged and caught the silvery, glassy bottle from the cusp of Joe's rapidly-deteriorating grip now lost to the brown flesh that made up Pippy the chap whose shuddering form didn't give much wiggle room. Puffing out a sad breath, Joe felt somewhat perturbed to see that sorrowful face and doll-like orbs. He called the girl he considered his daughter "doll," but he never actually considered her to be so frozen with emotion. Just cute, like, well, the child toy. Not cold and stiff and this glazed, this sadistically disconnected with the world of the living, or whatever nexus this had to be considered. Still... so fragile: a flower popping out in the middle of winter had nothing on this plush-sized sauropod. This pard didn't find it all that pathetic—he'd grown older in experience making him all wise and stuff—but... a sad thing, simply. Like this flower had lost its beautifully blooming buds to the cold darkness approaching, a bitter, bitter cold, in favor to that than the sweet heat that should have made it big and pretty, swollen with beauty. If it ever once had a golden heart supplying it on the inside—golden stem, golden whatever those flowers had in the middle of their rough spots—that had gone black.
A sad thing.
Gently shaking out the curls framing his face, the sad thing stayed and swirled in Joe's mind idly. He technically didn't do much about it, not quite lifting the broom and sweeping out the corners of his head where it stuck, but let it simmer, and he sighed softly. Like it'd always been this way, the blonde pummeled his way past the pard and the seismo, the minute bottle of holy water tinkling in his combined palms and himself leading his way back down the coil of stairs. Joe dunked the hat down over Pippy's amethyst eyes to be perfectly certain those five corpses wouldn't have to be seen, or heard, if that little scenario played out again—gee, thanks Yoshiki. Down and around that brown, wooden stair where the floorboards eeked creepily like they had voices and opinions, too, until that neatly-sitting quintuplet of a tea party with the four girls and the boy that looked like a girl, including that Yuzuki with the dress, Joe lumbered on.
His thick, brown boots with the long rows of fringe made thicker clomping noises with each shuffle of a foot that he made. His identity felt particularly imprinted upon those creepy wooden halls. A chill cleanly knit into him and squirmed around for a shiver, its search eventually fruitless. Joe, unlike Pippy, didn't work like that. Emotions couldn't control him like that, and they rendered, on their own, unable to strike him down and make him, too, look like a life-size doll with freaky eyeballs.
More casual loping; soon it would be over with. Round a bend. Step away from the hole punched in wood. Straight to the left. Get lost: follow Yoshiki's black-clad figure with white-hot blonde hair. Hey, he was practically like a candle himself. Eying the notion, the pard glimpsed about and allowed his gaze to simmer on that white stick of warmth a pair of brown paws held close to, nigh squishing the tepid creation in areas, causing a waxy ssquirrrt. He didn't hear much of anything from the hollow chap, and this was as close as anything else. Placated with him, Joe satisfactorily patted the brown-scaled head and swiped his hat back onto his own. Man, he liked that hat.
It felt righteous to crown that mess of orange curls. Curlier than Dina's, he mused; hers looked more like thick, silvery-orange waves. Then the adult shook his head gruffly and reprimanded to himself that no, Dina wasn't here, and thus it didn't matter all that much. What mattered here happened to be a ragtag gang of two other boys: the broken vivosaur and the delinquent kid. For all he knew, his technical-daughter had nothing to worry about as she and all of her buddies like her boyfriend and her vivosaurs had safe, untouched souls. Even an adult could hope and dream.
That single word from the stain in the infirmary flecked in his brain like black polka-dots trying to eat him: s—sssss-s-ss—ss—sss-sss-s—sss-selfish. And again. Selfish. Again. Selfish; selfish; selfish. It meant something: it had to mean something. That stain felt like living, breathing flesh for a moment there, but whatever the cause, it... meant... something. Real emotions and feelings pumped through that single word and warmed him like a strong cuppa joe: it meant something.
But he had other problems to face right now. Didn't matter. Didn't have much of anything to do with the current situation. Loping along casually behind the kid who really knew his way around this warped junk depot, Joe felt as casual as he'd ever gotten since the sleepiness wore off and the first roadblock set in: that, being, the cabinet. And the little girl's face—
the smaller shadow began to shake and squeak with a frightful amount of excitement she sounded possessed with all the joy she was eking out of
Blinking furiously, the images swimming before his very own chocolate-coated orbs died back down, like the open flames in a spit of fire, and they didn't seem keen on leaping back up at him again. Sighing, plucking uncomfortably at the boulder-like creature billowing cold in his arms, he suddenly felt grateful that that little girl, whatever she might be, hadn't taken his beloved jacket. It durn helped when you held a dwindling soul in your arms.
Not that Joe liked the experience or expected it or anything: it'd just happened. But he felt all the more alert and prepared with that thick, gigantic black fabric cut up, sizing him much-too-largely—perfectly—coating upon him. Kinda matched good ol' Yoshiki, though his was shorter and in no way blocked any view of his black, lined pants. Joe felt a tiny bit more fond of his jeans: what could he say? Jeans were cool.
It was with a flurry of movement and action that Joe managed to catch up with Yoshiki. He needed to get his head out of the clouds and focused on the overall mission again; usually distraction didn't pop up so easily, but man, this place was some twisted pile of squikwash—quite the emotional and physical sty. Joe gave a small shake of his head, scattering curls and bouncing bits of hat alike, and deemed himself keen for this time, in the least. Placing an authoritative, fair hand on the other kid's shoulder, scooting closer to him and his annoyingly just-barely taller status, Joe and Yoshiki glared into the oncoming door hovering just in front of their faces. If they breathed hard enough, they could fog up the paper-like residue covering the top half like a window screen. Perhaps fog up the window too, was it not busted like the line of glass just to the side of the room. "Damn, this place is giving me some serious creeps."
Curiously, the pard cocked his head to the side and faced slightly-tan kid-friend. "I dunno what's wrong with it," he muttered in his usual, throaty—accented—brim, and snorted, "but there's something wrong with it." Joe shrugged; as helpful as this place got. "I swear, as creepy as it is..." A worn-out, patched-thin sigh connected these next few, tired words. "Goddammit... I've been here before... I've been here before a lot more times than I wanted to... and I don't understand why..." Angrily shaking his head, he voiced his opinion like he always did: "I don't understand why, goddammit!"
Joe stifled a snicker as the realization sprung upon him that he used that curse word a lot. It suddenly struck him as funny, he didn't know. Pulling together his supposedly authoritative presence and working up his more serious self, Joe replied softly. "I don't understand why, either. A lot of whys. Durn, there's too many ta keep track of. So many reasons and questions this place jus' keeps dumpin' down on us." He tittered gently to a boy who—taller—gave off such childish flair now. "I feel it too, boy. I feel it too. This place is crazy, and... ya just feel like ya haven't been outta here for a long time. What is it... repeat? Are you stuck here on loop er somethin'?"
That little girl's face flashed into his eye like lightning. Striking a bone, perhaps? Heck, he didn't know. He was pretty lost too, though Yoshiki at least knew his way around this crazy place. That was nice. And... supposedly the reason had to do with this as well. "I just feel like this room has been visited by me and my friends a lot more times than we'd like; hell, this entire hole has been visited by us more times than we'd like! Well, they mean a lot to me... so it drives me insane they have to be in here too, but I guess it's also good. It means I'm not very alone." And Joe nodded to that: "Hard to be alone when ye got eight other souls with ya." They both nodded softly.
"It is." Tuckered, Joe let out a small puff of breath and released one hand on Pippy to rub at his eyes. It is. He agreed quietly.
He'd heard Yoshiki call them—like... some family of sorts? It could get bad betwixt them but in the end... a lot connected them. Apparently that included the school. And... however long these poor kids'd been there. Wait, not just kids. The teacher lady. She was on their side, too. Snorting, he saw her kinda like him. Kid friends; all that business.
Was Joe here because he and these guys like Pippy just somehow happened to be connected, too? Did that... even work out right? Tittering, Joe clasped the doorknob and, glancing over to his buddy, whipped it open. Before that red, fiery soul could say ember, she was out. That tiny bottle of holy water cascaded upon her like a small but mighty waterfall and completely got the thing reeling, smoking, all of that good stuff that happened to poor ghosts who stood in the way of the mighty Joe Wildwest and his scary, delinquent-looking kid friend, and the seismo shared betwixt them. Okay, maybe he had some crazy connection, but right now, that... didn't matter. Gulping down a spare breath or two, his fair cheeks puffed with air as he gently placed Pippy on the floor after pacing over and around that poor girl's smudged corpse collapsed there on the wood so... disdainfully. Shame, it was. Shame. Tittering to some swollen encore for all his dead ghost friends, his head rocked as he planted the seismo firmly and locked eyes with him, the candle shadowing over each of their faces.
"Pippy, can ya wait here while we check this place out?"
For some tedious, elongated seconds: no response. In the long run, sweat beaded at his lips where the flame on the white pillar of hope flickered closely to him and kept giving off waxy hues smelling faintly of petals on flowers with a capture of perfume on belay, and then: O-ok...kay... He could hardly believe it. The air in his lungs came punched out a messy puzzle, and Joe simply looked at that kid for a moment.
He whispered gently: "Okay," and turned to his left to actually face this creepy chamber.
First thought: this classroom didn't look like the other classrooms. Second thought: long, like a sauropod's neck—really long. Really long. Third thought: why was Yoshiki moving so quickly away from the foot of the room in such strong stride? Some names peeled off of his lips as quick, bolstering steps pedaled him onward. Screeching beyond hope they wouldn't be someone he knew. Apparently they weren't, because his gait slowed and relaxation molded him into a softer, gentler complex. So focused on his kid-friend, right there in the flesh, that mattered, that stood too close to the edge, just like him, just like Pippy: Joe didn't even realize someone stood just by his shoulder. Took him a few moments to recognize a faint warmth of a glittering, red hand on him.
"Hey," he grunted, attempted to shrug back, do something. That didn't cause any significant movement: only the obvious notion that this thing despised the idea of releasing him, of even allowing him a hinged momentum. For Joe took a step in his knee-high boots and tugged, and his shoulder stayed glued, and so the rest of his body followed suit. "Oyyy," he grumbled a bit louder, like that blonde delinquent of his might. Not one with a fuse to burn, he shrugged and grunted, gentler: "Hello?"
"Don't you realize how rude it is to pour holy water all over a poor, traumatized girl?" Oh. Weird. That ghost apparition, like a bad show, hadn't gone off and, like... what would it do? Oh, good point.
Joe had no idea. "Uh... sorry?" He blinked sharply in the direction of the teenager further away who was poking at a corpse and not paying attention to this situation at hand. It was like the feeling in his left shoulder, tingly at best, had come to ebb away. That girl had a durn killer grip that'd sack him was he not careful. "What was I... supposed to do?" he proposed. Again, soft. This was a female. Maybe it'd help.
"Like... I dunno, weirdo..." She had this peppy, spicy tone that curdled at him wildly, something Joe could easily brush off but still would pick at, examine, and find intriguing. She sounded nothing like Dina, for sure; that girl held a quiet virtue, and a wicked stutter. "Like, you'd, like... Appease me? Duh? Ever heard of that? Appeasing ghosts?" His cheeks itched somewhat, but the adult didn't feel all that pinned and prodded by her questions. He bet Yoshiki would. He looked like the short-tempered, touchy type. Not this pard, though. Ain't gonna wrangle him up in his spurs.
So, with a loping grin, he responded dutifully. "Well, sorry, ma'am. I don't know much'a this occult stuff, or this place, really. I durno if I belong here. I durno what a school is, by golly. I didn't until I was lassoed on into this dangerous two-step."
"Uh... what?" Another grin squirmed on his face, and Joe's eyes gleamed somewhat.
"See, lass..." No other way to put it. "I'm not from anywhere round here. Whatever the doo-hickery ya came from, I ain't from anywhere near that. Not unless you've seen a vivosaur." The curious tugging at said shoulder, releasing a small break of feeling in the cusp of arm and torso, egged him on. What was a vivosaur? "Oh, like the little feller over there." A nod toward Pippy. "See... neither of us are from anywhere round here. Ain't... never been in a strange place like this. Sure, it's prolly really freaky and strange for you, but at least you had... and have... friends by your side, and you faintly recognize this place. Me? None'a that. None."
"Like... you're not from anywhere around here?" Yeah, basically; a fair head embedded with crisp curls nodded. "At all... hmm... that's really, really, really creepy, you know. Like... ugk. If you're not... from somewhere normal like home... then... like... are you with... with... w-with them?" He snorted.
Chocolate orbs flashing, the trapped adult added airily, "Watch what yer callin' normal 'ere." His own tone, much more calm and trustworthy-enough in the situation, palled in comparison to this flustered, confused, and loud girl. She sounded around Yoshiki's age, now that he thought of it: perhaps some younger, but a precise area. "And... whaddaya mean... 'them?' 'r they some kinda voodoo hex whatsit, too?"
That girl just started spurting out questions all over again. "Like, what? Aren't you an adult? Are you... actually, like, with them? Adults never ever come around here except for that stubborn one in that stupid loop, it's really annoying, you know? Like that boy back there"—a hand waggled aimlessly toward a certain blonde someone—"like what's up with them? Why won't they die already? It's, like, stupid. I'm a newer victim, but they, and all of the idiots who died in their time when they didn't, they're, like... they keep dying. We just watch. It's freaking creepy and awkward—as—heck!"
Anyone else lost? Joe was lost. He idly wondered, was someone else in his position, that they'd be lost too. That would make him feel a little better. The questioning and simple rambles began tacking into one another like a sort of pattern, and eventually, Joe felt more secure in the thought that she was finishing up and would hurry up and end her prophecy of confusing words soon. And then, perhaps, he'd be able to get some sense with her, and maybe understand this place a little more. He had no hope to figuring out why he and Pippy—and those people with Pippy—and whoever else may have showed up via the world where their people reigned—had ever been brought into this mess in the first place, but he could at least try to get out of here with Yoshiki and those eight friends of his he sounded obsolete in saving. And... those people of Pippy's, too. And himself.
Hearing those groups of those knowing one another sent a throbbing ache shot through his soul. It felt like someone he knew dearly—no, multiple someones—had been in danger, perhaps was at that very pinpoint of an instant... or perhaps the danger had... ended... them. It flashed before his mind a claw of lightning in a messy, stuffed burl of thunder: death. Killed. Did someone die... when someone died... these ghosts, yeah, they hung around, but it was beside the point: did someone DIE...
They didn't come back.
Ever.
Joe didn't know how much he liked that idea.
To imagine that people he had strong, mutual feelings attached to—his technical daughter; his kid-friends; vivosaurs, even—that their rotting bodies of flesh could be mucking around here, their souls now outside of them and their lives over... Oh. Oh no. No, he didn't know how much he didn't like that idea, but it curled something strong up in his throat. Stank like early mildew hanging in the air. Those thoughts, and others, all the same and sparky and stabbing at him, coursed into his body from that point where his shoulder was capped. As the girl's own fiery tone died down, for a moment, Joe didn't rightly know what to say.
Until... "Ah... This place's weirder'n I thought... I'm rightly tuckered by this." He didn't have much a clue what to use for his words, but that happened, and it felt okay. Not too rusty or rude, he hoped. But just an idle hope. It'd be alright if the girl was offended somehow; some girls did that. They got offended. Easily. "Hrrmm... I'm guessin'... so Yoshiki an' his buddies're special'r somethin'? They're... gifted, er somethin', in this place..? Different than you and I?" It... sounded right. That sounded right.
"Well, like, I dunno. They just keep redoing this place and coming back, which is really tiring for all of us that came after them; the ones before don't really mind helping them all over again, but, ugh, we do! I don't like having to deal with this a lot, it's stupid!" Joe determined he wasn't going to find some useful and conceptual information from this girl. He'd gotten some tangled knot adding to Yoshiki's problems, and apparently had a tidbit over appeasement and that you did that with ghosts, or something. So he didn't have nothing, but...
Plucking the leftover bottle of holy water from the ground, not really sure what else to do about it, he flicked the shard of glass still gently coated in the substance as it flung through the dead female. He mumbled something about appeasement and placation as her body shrank back from him and gave a few vivosaur-like hisses as it retreated, then left him in the retrospecting peace of a room filled with males.
"So, uh, kid? 'dya find anythin' worth it over in the corner of the room?"
A blonde head stuck out around said corner. Joe examined that walkway further; pretty much a regular hallway of wood but accompanied, on the wooden wall, by an elongated—and he meant elongated—chalkboard, the same crusty greenish texture as the normal-looking ones from the other classrooms in the school. Past that was the corner Yoshiki'd turned, alongside a small cube of space where he found that dead body. "I just found some corpse! Nothing all that serious!" he hollered back.
"Oh? Great!"
It sounded weird to appease toward "some corpse" as "great," but hey, he had to take in account what he found... then again... "Oy, what's it look like?"
"Nn?! Oh, right, you might recognize it!" Still shouting, of course. His heavy accent and grinding speech reverberated throughout the stretched hallway of a class. Blinking, the adult in back with their silent vivosaur caught a few islands of desks and smirked to himself when he saw representations that resembled the isles on the world he came from. "Uhh... red jacket!" Oh. Oh almighty Lassie. "And... a dark face!" All worries cascaded out the window. "The jacket's got some real gaudy flowers on it, and, damn, that's a lot of blonde hair. Bah! She could be my sister, practically!" Yep; Joe had nothing to worry about. He smirked at himself for the sudden seize in his chest. Wow. Wow, boy, wow. Calm yourself in the saddle, he reprimanded softly with a titter, scooping up a seismo and meeting up with the black-clad kid-friend close enough to the middle. "Anything else?"
The pard offered one of his trademark shrugs. "Nothin' much. There's desks everywhere, but that don't mean anything. Aah... you didn't see anythin' worth our time over there..." His slur of western speech paused for a moment, rewound. "Well, that red ghost came back and got all rowdy at me with her hand on my shoulder nice 'n hard so I was right stuck, told me that I should've appeased her instead of sprayed holy water all over her. Then she was downright blabbing about you and your buddies and it got confusing and I stopped listening. The end."
"That's kinda odd," he offered back.
"I didn't think you'd be so popular, boy."
"How so?" The air of a question: with a bite.
"Well, I mean, lookicha. How d'you expect everyone to be all daisies and sunshine on ya if ya got that kinda attitude? Face the sunrise: you look like a delinquent. And you... just.. try to walk me through this."
"Oh, shut up, Joe." He took a swipe at the hat.
"Ey, you don't touch my hat, kid!"
"That's the first adult-like thing you've said this entire time, you know!"
"I durno how to take that."
"Then don't."
Dual smirks hovering upon their faces, the relatively mature duo took back to their brisk walk and into the gelid air of the outside, or outside enough, in the nexus. As they explored further out into the depths, the curdling stench of hot, metallic blood erupted and splattered into the hallway. They saw no murderer, no murdered, just smelt it. All over. Coating the air like it was the air, so technically, with each breath he took, the pard's innards stunk more of somebody else's demise. How delicious; his face curled and he ambled on his toll of a walk beside the ever-moving blonde-haired boy who was annoyingly just that much taller than his elder.
Their group loped up a set of stairs after crawling up, simply up, that second floor hall without creeping into any doors—and passing a small number of the deceased, goodie—and around the bend, the ground went flying underneath in an inhuman shriek, crashing into itself and distancing, dancing amongst itself vaguely and tearing, roaring, into a quaking of the earth like no other. The school bashed and bashed and flogged itself like an insane, mindless human being would and added to the accumulation of scars already simmering on its wooden exterior, displaying all sorts of creepy innards below like more wood and spots of dark and the lining of wires or pipes for the uses of electricity and water: something so simple to find in this pit of burning yuck. From its ferocity, Joe and Yoshiki unceremoniously bonked into each other and suffered a mild unconsciousness, only quickly shaken back to life by a warbling seismo whose candle had splattered like ink on the floor, a waxy white stain arcing with heat and obviously not coming together soon. The white matched with the floor, now: the boards were tinted in white instead of azure. Lovely.
Once the episode ended and the stairs were thoroughly combed and climbed, Pippy became noticeably more active. He shuddered in place, purple orbs piercing where he stared and he would eke quite a squeak out of bitten, brown lips. Losing his little torch of hope had either taken a toll on him or wrought back some life, and Joe wanted the latter to be the truth, but he and his blonde buddy simply couldn't tell. In that aggravatingly inches-taller kid's hands laid the shivering bundle of cooling sauropod. And there he stayed for some time.
Rounding a bend, chocolate orbs, ahead of the group, caught a glimpse of the hallway beyond and tittered. "Ain't this a tiny little settlement jus' off the map," he muttered. Fair hands rose and clapped softly. "Wonder what's down there." He whistled.
"I dunno. Why don't you go find out?"
"Yeaaah, but I did that laast tiiime," he groaned, "with the infirmaryyy... uurrgh. Do I have to?"
Dark orbs cut at the back of Joe's crudely large hat with the horns and the face. "I've never seen an adult act so spoiled before." He was mild about it, more curious than anything, with his accent toned down a little, even. "Funny." Didn't even question the fact he was the one to explore classroom 4-A. Then it was sharp again. "Whatever. Fine. Take Pippy. I'll go if you wait here."
A miniature brown mountain whose heat only further proved this, well, lack of, grew roots in the pard's jacket-coated torso as he hugged the being toward him and a muttering teen sauntered past. He didn't step into either of the rooms he found, though he'd stop and peer at them shortly: he did that twice. Nothing much of interest zoomed by him, though really he didn't have an easy-to-catch attention span as it was. At the edge of the thick hallway, a small swatch of paper read a few carefully-whittled words, so he stopped and mumbled them aloud to himself: "'Heavenly Host Elementary School shut down due to loss of attendance and life.' Isn't that cheery? Ugh, I'm starting to sound like Joe... lessee... 'As the years passed by and more children's lives were lost from mysterious disappearances after school, even coming to entire groups of kids walking home together missing by night, the attendance and reputation of the school also dwindled, and thus left the school eventually dry of income and subject to closure.' Even more cheery—ugh, stop sounding like him, that's creepy." Shaking his head, he fell back and turned round.
"It's probably weird that I feel like I've read that a lot around this hellhole..." A short groan. "Whatever. Goddammit, I don't care... Just let us go...
A softer sigh. "We'll get over this eventually, I'm sure. Ugh, just gotta find a way out of here... which I'm sure I remember somewhere, just like everything else, and I'll get over this. Maybe has something to do with that appeasement thingy..." He stopped in place suddenly, contemplating.
"I hope Joe stays with us. I think Miss Yui'd like that a lot. Plus he's not that bad. My parents were that bad. Honestly, most adults are. Ayumi'd agree... but for some reason, he just isn't..."
Realizing his random stop in the hallway, Yoshiki shook his head of somewhat-spiky blonde hair and forcefully began to close the distance between himself and his group, when a voice sifted up through the floorboards below.
YUUUUUKKAAAAAAA! HOLY HELL, HANG ON! YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO FUCKING DIE! He recognized the person addressed and his heart caught, silence for a pure second.
Joe heard something else from his position. T-TOOORRRNNNNNNNNNNN! NOOOOOOO! DON'T YOUU DIIIEEEEEEE! DON'T LEAVE US HEREEE! WHAT ABOUT TRIKKO? Uuuuu-WAAHAAAAHHHHHHHHhhhhh... He didn't recognize the voice but he knew the name. Someone he knew was officially in this building and stuffed with danger. No, make that two. Torn. Trikko. Those were names. Important names. Names he could conceive all too well... and the way that female said it... it was like their lives were on the line.
The two reached each other and had a mutual agreement already planned. They didn't know that either had heard a different voice and different person, but the united significance ran like a hot spring and the pard sprung to his feet like the westerner he was and would have ran his heart out with Yoshiki did they not already have a reason to run:
that ball of a sanity-dropping vivosaur popped into life and sped down the stairs immediately.
Now there was two reasons. This was swallowed and silently accepted. PIPPY, COME BACK! first cried Joe, then, TOORRRRNNNNNNNN! TRIIKKOOOOOOO! WHERE ARE YOU!
Yoshiki followed suit as they bombarded those stairs like madmen and made their way down as fast as they possibly could, including accidents and bruises and tripping up. Carelessness and small wounds could be ignored at the sacrifice of this to a greater good: they had four souls to find now. "PIPPY, YOU GODDAMNED PIPSQUEAK! COME BACK!" Then, "YUUKAAAAAAAAA! OYYYYYYYYYY! I HEARD YOU! CALL AGAIN; CALL AGAIN!"
This was the first time Joe'd been ever confronted with this visual taste of death—the risk that someone he knew well was about to spin out of life, and he couldn't even do anything about it but run and the flimsy hope they'd make it somehow enabled to do something. They panted and sprinted their hearts out as predicted, blood and adrenaline mixing freely inside and even the sight of old, disfigured bodies along the way as well as the occasional hole spouted no worries but the combined need to run. Downstairs and fanned out. It'd sounded as if the voices came somewhere around that second floor... They had to be around here somewhere...
Such a frenzied, unannounced plight eventually led them into the crooked-open door of the infirmary where they spilled upon the cots and, struggling to reach back up again, found that their exit had been firmly shut. That one single word scissored through Joe's mind and shredded through memory, cutting gouges and points of resemblance that tried to puncture and collect a face but as soon as he battered into the door, twas done. He sucked in a breath and banged at it, his face smooth and without line. His emotion didn't eke out. They never did. But adrenaline, that fueled him thick and heavy.
First Yoshiki splattered against the cabinets and collected anything appearing even remotely useful like chipped-down keys and dusty alcohol bottles but as he sprung for the door where his friend pounded fruitlessly the ground snapped at them and shook a deadly mess that sent cracked bottles and sharp objects cascading like a waterfall of death. Yoshiki screeched at him and yowled and pounced, sending both of them spiraling down and a vast majority of harmful items from stabbing, but a few made their mark and Joe, scowling at the floor, didn't say much, though small explosions around his torso and hat splayed out what pain must've been going on inside.
The earthquake resembled the past one, only more swift on its feet but honestly softer, as, from ringing around this accursed chamber, voices began to cheer and giggle in a frightfully childlike demeanor. Sharp, high-pitched, baby-like, effortless, stumbling over some of the words carelessly and singing their grotesque hearts out, went the children. The pard and the kid-friend waited in their hunched and desperate positions. They had to get out; they had to get out; they had to find the owners of the voices and their runt of a seismo and they had to get out of this atrocity of a chamber. Hearts pounding between their teeth and caving in upon them wildly, messily, the boys flinched with each turn and each fall and crack of each instrument and Joe winced as the adrenaline left holes where his injuries burled in like quick, snapping teeth of pain.
He let out another pain-inflicted grunt, thick and hard and juicy and the children giggled harder and ruptured all sounds with those squeals that didn't end. Nothing else but the laughter could be heard and it drove the boys, driveled them up towards peaks, little peaks of madness then sent it all down in major headaches and anguish. Peeling back at them were the floorboards and the cutting objects and those horrendous giggles, surrounded soon by some childish faces, and as he stared at them, Yoshiki, and Joe, as they stared, another word from that girl hit them. That...
a-appease.
They couldn't do much about it as the word split in two...
please me. And again, it split...
please help us.
And it all ended as the doors popped open and just out of their clutches sat a round little vivosaur with stump-like paws and a long neck and tail, all the color of crumbly dirt. A fresh sort of dirt, cheery and peppery and welcoming, but still dirt. Royal-colored orbs pinched back, saw some dirtied faces and cut-up holes in skin for blood to seep through, and with an inhumane squeal, he was off. Groaning, the men lifted and trudged after him, weakly calling out his name through the entities of their minds, over and over and over again. Their hearts pounded dangerously over the edge as they slowly swooned in the effects of recovery, and they leaned at one another as they shuffled.
It was a slow, empty walk that took them after the seismo. Slow and empty and futile in their efforts, as the pleaded for him to stop and he didn't, and he grew slower, and slower, and slower, as his body grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger. And it wasn't a good thing, whispered a sunrise of realization after the stars in the dark. It wasn't a good thing.
Finally, energy returned and Joe split from his friend and trounced after that vivosaur. PIPPY, NO! He could only guess what lay below did his transformation to his regular size continue. STOP! PIPPY, STOP THIS! YOU'LL ONLY BE FURTHER HARMED! STOP WHILE YOU CAN!
Did he stop? No. He didn't hear much of anything.
Unlike how everyone else saw it, Pippy's mind was plagued with dancing shadows and what-ifs and fears that eked out of him with each jump of growth within. His mind had fallen far before anyone else knew it, and he couldn't take it: he couldn't take it here. He wanted one thing, and one thing only, and he couldn't even find it, and he knew all too well he never would because this place was cruel, and unlike how everyone else saw it, he knew all too well this place was cruel. It had eaten at him and consumed his weak little spirit as it bloomed, and without that one little thing, it easily took over him. He needed that love of others to swarm him—of a specific other—and it was missing, so that hole to darkness, always clogged, had become a doorway to death. And nothing could stop that.
Pippy didn't hear anything. He had one thought interconnecting within his body and one thought alone that coincided with everything within him, one universal stance that he understood: he was going to release himself from it all. It wasn't suicide; the madness had drove him to a breaking point, only he'd already cracked after he first entered this pit. He'd come in all alone and struggled around, squirmed, and it only took moments to find the blonde nearby and wake him, and in those moments, that was all it took.
Now here he stood, on the verge of his own extinction, not even taking it in, only seeing one thing and that it wasn't here and he needed it and he was gone. He was far, far gone.
It was so easy to die.
He never even realized how easy it was but there it was.
It was so, so easy to die.
Plain obviousness stared into his blind eyes that couldn't even see, much less tell, that it sat there like that. But it did. And Pippy felt nothing of it. Nothing at all. He didn't pant or trip up or any of that: he ran, and he grew, and he was already far too gone to care or even stop and think about his actions, about... what this release would cause him: forever. There was no escape; did he know that? Perhaps he did. But he found it an escape from his pain, a pain that never ended and couldn't end unless he found what he lacked but he couldn't do that—it wouldn't happen, it wouldn't happen, he knew it wouldn't—and this place was cruel.
Soon he swooned ever further, his spine arcing across the ceiling and rendering the entire hallway above impassable. Chunks of rotting wood, piece by piece, fell through and slew against the air and thun-thun—thunkkkkkkkked against the ground like bombs that exploded in noise and tripped up anyone who wanted to save him: he couldn't be saved. No. One hundred feet; one hundred and one; one hundred and two; one hundred and—five. Higher, higher, back stretching up and body swinging forward and back and winning size for the largest vivosaur out there. The ground beneath his toes unseeded itself and began to open up, like pages in a book, pattering out and out and calling for him in the whisper of cold wind. Still wind. Dead wind.
Somewhere in front of his sightless eyes, a figure of a biped stood and pranced and attempted to jump at him but was easily stopped by a splinter of wood charging up and out and leaving its insulation, popping into holes and trapping the person: a female figure, it was. Pippy couldn't tell, couldn't feel, didn't perceive any longer, but those following him saw the woman.
He stretched just moments longer, one hundred and twelve, one hundred and sixteen, one hundred and—CRAACCCCK.
He was no more. Just a big, ugly, empty gap in the rickety old school showed that there was something even that large standing there prior, that a soul had been there, riddled by the curse of the school and withered away into the SLAAAMmmmmmm...ammmm...mmmmmmmmmm... of rumbles and crisscrossing cracks that reverberated for moments, to minutes longer. And then it became more, much more than minutes.
On the other side of the sea of void, a male slunk to the ground. Sucking in plentiful breaths with a puffy, furiously reddened face much out of his fair, a pink, complexion, he removed his thick hat and mopped at the beads of sweat, like mist, tearing and jerking down his face. Puffing at his shirt, deliberately not removing his jacket, he sat there and gasped for breath, struggling to continue his life, until it stippled and it became evident he would live. Peering across that gap in chocolate brown slits, the male observed quietly as a female who looked equivalent to his age, younger adult, peered back at him. Purple eyes. Reminded him of back home; lots of people had 'em. One of Dina's vivosaurs had 'em. He found them a little mystifying.
Still, the shock of what just happened wore down on him somewhat stronger than the girl he'd accidentally trapped alongside his... loss of life... and so Joe sat there with his legs swinging over the edge, silently in wait of the pursing Yoshiki. He could hear those blue slippers go in the distance: pat pat pat patpatpatpatpatpatpat pat pat pat patpatpatpatpat pat patpatpat... Off in the distance, he was returning to his aide. Oh, sweet honey, hooo boy, yee-ha, all that celebration. Joe sat silently and stared off at the girl. She didn't look like a Yuka, and he wondered if Yoshiki would be upset by that. She had a pink long-sleeve shirt and this navy blue skirt cascading down to her knees, and a little, somewhat-stricken smile. Joe, not sure what to do, shrugged back his hat and waved it at her.
Those dark purple orbs, close to blue, sprang into a sudden submission. Her look gripped him, and he felt a little concerned... either for her or whatever she was staring at. The imprint of his kid-friend's slippers on scattered amounts of fraying wood assured she didn't just get weirded out by the look of some pard like him. Wait—did she... did she think something weird of him? Joe? Hesitantly, chewing at her lip, she looked like she had something pretty durn important to ask him. Something... real durn important. It was gnawing at her, as she chewed gentler on her lip.
He was about to say hi first for her when a cry sounded out from behind, outrageously loud and terrified: "JOEEEEEE! MOOOVEEE, GODDAMMIT! JUST GO BEFORE THEY HURT YOU!" All he could tell... feeling that emotion pumping in that voice, Yoshiki had to be in danger. That delinquent-looking kid-friend had danger breathing down his neck, snipping at his lifeline, and... well, he'll be durned, that ain't gonna happen to him.
"Stand tall!" he yelled, turning his head back and turning firm on his boots, plopping that hat on his head. "Stand tall, Yoshiki!"
What did he mean by that?
One thing in particular.
As the streak of black and blonde came dodging toward the hole, about to take himself and that thing out, Joe stepped and slammed past the boy who then toppled to his feet, unconscious, and stayed there: he'd be okay. The ledge, like a shoreline, gasped far enough away from that corner. Joe drove on and heard that girl screech out some wording or another, but whatever it was, it was three syllables, and it... didn't sound like "Yoshiki." Fact, it sounded a lot more like some other name. Started with a "Sue" sound for a name. He didn't outright get it so he ran and felt those cold tentacles suddenly pinching at him and turning sharp, warm, thick, coalescing him in the matter, and Joe's legs began to wear out. He'd be tuckered thin and driven around silly by these varmits, wouldn't he? Felt like it. Or something hairy like that.
His heart began to slow, and his brain shut down. Hallway after hallway slumbered by at a gentle, slurred pace. They were gonna stop moving, and they'd keep him caught up just like this, wouldn't they? Yeah, they were. He could hear that woman's voice somewhere, and Yoshiki's snoring that was unexpectedly loud, and somewhere far below him, the ending squeals of Pippy's life, already wrung out, echoed creepily. Everything slowed with him.
Joe's eyes twitched, and they began to roll closed with black stitching around them for what felt like the last time they'd ever close again, and a thick warmth seeped into him.
He could see something glowing, like a face, and a hand pinched over his cheek, and a whisper in that stagnant, twitching, none other than possessed tone:
pp-pp-p-pp—pp-p-p-ppp-please h-hh—help usssss
Me: ewe Was that the end of the chapter?
Yes.
It was.
End of... the arc? Hehehhhh, you'll have to wait and see~
Joe: You're just gonna leave it off there.
Me: Currently.
Joe: What... what durn right happened to me? .w.
Me: A lot of stuff.
Joe: …
Me: What? You'll have to read on to find out. x3
