Moon-Man Chronicle Two; Electric Boogaloo.

Part Five: Hunting in the Dark.

Ross felt her junior slap her thigh with every hesitant step.

In one hand she had her phone set to the brightest possible setting, and in the other, Catherine's hand kept them tethered together. They had both had kept each other from tumbling down further into the dark chasm they were exploring.

Catherine had suggested they use their cellular devices as improvised flash lights, and it had proved to be of little effect until they had hit the first of the many tiers of dirt. She had hoped that would be the end of the descent, but soon realized she was on just the first of three more layers.

They took great care to support each other on the downward slopes, and Ross couldn't help but think of the pyramids she had seen from her general history lessons.

Supposedly, early squids had gigantic stone structures built from the earth, to get them closer to the sky or away from the sea. Now Ross felt like she was traveling down one, instead of stone block however, was dirt, and more dirt.

Their quick descent ended shortly however, as they reached what Ross had to assume was the last floor. They searched around, but they couldn't find a way to go farther down, so they split up, looking for any signs of Moon-Man.

The search did not take long.

Ross had felt bogged down, and realized her shoes stuck to the dirt slightly. When she had pointed her phone downwards, illuminating the ground, she saw large swathes of dirt clumped up in a pink liquid. Catherine apparently seeing the same thing where she was standing, called Ross over, and made her illuminate the areas she pointed out.

She could see small traces of blue ink that had remained untouched since it had been put down. There were very few blotches where the blue stained the earth, and in comparison to the pink it had been very one sided, Ross realized. Catherine had been careful not to disturb the trail, and followed with it, trying to find the origination of the blue, eventually leading them towards a large pink circle that glistened in the phone's pale light. A few feet away, was a large circle of blue, as if to copy this pink one.

"Catherine, what does this mean?" Ross whispered, questions on her mind. If Moon-Man was the blue ink, who had made the pink? Who did her fellow apartment dweller fight?

"This is days old," Catherine responded hesitantly. She then went down to her hands and knees, staring at the drying ink with intensity.

Ross tried to copy her movements and look at where she was staring at, but only saw dirt and more mud. She eventually asked what it was that Catherine was looking for.

"There are different foot prints, see?" Catherine said, carefully putting her hand into a small dip in the loose earth.

"I guess?" Ross responded, not really seeing it.

"Trust me, Moon-Man got splatted in that pink circle." Catherine said, the black atmosphere hiding her expression.

"Then what about the blue one?"

"Moon-Man splatted someone there."

"Which means?"

"Which means, they took each other down, or she hit someone, and then that someone's back up got her." Catherine said, raising herself to a crouched position, and prowled around past the large swathes of dirt encrusted ink. Ross felt inclined to follow, and eventually Catherine stopped her.

Ross's companion pointed down, pointing out the first signs of Moon-Man's being there. Very carefully, Catherine raised the Gal.96 off the ground, disturbing the dirt that had been the weapon's bed. She handed the weapon to Ross, and kept moving forward, looking for other possessions of Moon-Man.

The weapon felt much heavier than what Ross had been used to. The junior had a simple plastic shell, but she could feel the metal weigh this weapon down, from the barrel, to the small ink rotatory system near its trigger. Ross had seen Moon-Man use one hand to fire this weapon accurately during the three games they had played together, enforcing the image of the strong warrior that Ross had pegged Moon-Man for.

Which made Ross worry even more at the thought of Moon-Man being without her weapon.

Ross quickly chased after Catherine, weighed down by this artefact. Catherine had passed the ink canister that had been matched with the Gal.96, standing over a phone that had been cracked in half.

"Catherine?" She found herself asking.

"This," Catherine almost shouted, before regaining her composure, "This means nothing." Seemingly speaking to convince herself rather than Ross.

Silence echoed in the valley they had entered. Their phones went dark due to inactivity, but even with only the small lights of the stars to illuminate the darkness they were engulfed in, Ross didn't dare to make a move towards her companion.

"They dragged her up," Catherine said eventually, reactivating her impromptu flash light, and leading Ross further into the dark. They soon hit a dirt incline. Ross presumed it was like the earth ramp they had gone down. "If they had to drag her, they wouldn't go that far."

Ross nodded, even though Catherine had her back to her. Something in Catherine's tone made Ross want to be as small as possible, and make as little noise as could be. The exhaustion in Catherine's tone had apparently vanished, replaced by a silent rage that was felt, rather than heard.

So the two made their way up, finding it quite the challenge due to Ross carrying a second set of weaponry. She was still too scared to complain though, as she realized even if she wanted to flee, she wouldn't know how to return to the train station.

It took time, but they eventually made their way up to street level. The night still being young, and the lack of street lamps, made their endeavor quite difficult, until they heard almost a whisper on the wind.

Catherine perked up at the sound, not sure what to make of it, before leading Ross onwards past many streets, before stopping once again. Ross didn't know why her company was rushing all of a sudden, before they heard something Ross hadn't heard in many years.

When Ross was a child, she and her sister had played with other kids who had lived close to them before they had moved to the empty country.

She couldn't remember their names or how long they had known each other, due to her brain not being fully formed yet, but she remembered one event where one of their friends had gotten themselves stuck in a fence. The call it had made was the first and only time Ross had heard it, until this moment.

The noise was a terrible bellow of agony, and the inability to save itself. She remembered her friend having shifted from their squid form before they had gone through the fence, and had more or less fused with it. The pre-inkling's life wasn't in any danger, but being trapped without understanding made the fearful creature produce a tone that sent a primordial sense of urgency into her spine.

The call of a dying creature.

Catherine took off once again, with a speed Ross had yet to see in an inkling. Ross desperately tried to follow, burdened with gear that wasn't hers. She eventually caught up to Catherine, who had done a last check on her weapon to make sure it worked. Ross watched as Catherine jimmied the safety switch that would normally stop the weapon from being used, save for in a turf war.

Ross put down Moon-Man's gear, and tried to do the same, eventually figuring it out. Catherine had barely waited for her, entering the building as the third bellow started, then was cut off instantly.

They rushed their way up the half-finished building, clearing floor by floor. Each room they peeked into, Ross hoped they would find the missing Moon-Man. They checked every single one, until they had reached the fifth and final floor. Both Ross and Catherine could see light pouring from the room's entrance way, illuminating the hall.

She could hear whispered conversation coming from the room, and followed Catherine's lead, as they quietly snuck up on the doorway. Ross could make out words that were heavily accented. The whispering had roared into a lesser yell, but from what she could hear, it was almost only threats.

"I'm bored of this game. My sister is hungry, and you're keeping us from going back home to enjoy the fun. So…" The distinctly feminine voice said after a pause. "You talk, or I cut you up, and let my sister eat you."

"The fire's perfect Bepa." Said a much another distinctly feminine voice, this one much closer to the doorway. Ross could feel the dramatic change of temperature the closer she had gotten to the doorway. Had they started a fire in a concrete box? That's a safety hazard!

The first voice had apparently not gotten a response, and turned to face the door way.

"Have it your way squid-girl." The first voice said, Ross feeling Catherine touch her arm.

Their eyes met, and Catherine nodded at her. They were going in.

"Sis, get the knives from…" was all it said before Ross and Catherine had entered the room with weapons drawn, aimed at the two strange looking inklings.

Ross was pointing her shooter at the girl sitting beside a fire, burning what looked like scrap wood. The more she looked at it, the more she realized what she was looking at wasn't an inkling at all, but something alien. She followed its black clothing all the way down to what it was resting on, seeing a familiar brown coat.

Catherine, apparently seeing something before Ross, shot the one Ross had been aiming at. The resulting explosion of orange ink strangely didn't extinguish the fire quick enough, as she saw what appeared to be a faceless monster of flesh and metal rise from the floor, and with fangs bared, sunk its teeth into the sister's throat, and then pull the pale flesh from its neck.

It took long seconds for her eyes to adjust back to the darkness, but the image still burned into her mind. Catherine continuously fired upon the small flopping form that Ross could see out of the corner of her eye, but that did nothing to distract her from the scene she had just witnessed.

The slouched form of the eyeless monster looked at her despite its impairment, and coughed. Ross blinked multiple times, seeing a set of four horns in the shadow. She was unable to move at the sight, and just stood frozen for several long seconds. The only sounds were Catherine's shooter, and the wheezing of the demon.

Ross wondered if this was all a dream, before being shoved roughly by Catherine.

"Ross, what are you doing?! Quit standing there and help her!" her temporary companion shouted at her.

"Why did you bring Ross?" a weak voice rasped in the darkness. "C'mon Catherine. You know…Better." Said, fading out with each word.

Ross, finally seeing straight for the first time, saw a crumbled Moon-Man, barely standing over an image Ross was desperately trying to block out. She soon realized that the image she saw wasn't horns, but Moon-Man's arms and long tentacles being hoisted to the ceiling by some sort of wire.

Then she saw the rest of the body of the person who had introduced her to this city, and dropped her weapon, feeling a terrible emotion grasp her heart.

"Moon-Man…What did they do to you?" Ross asked, tears streaming from her eyes.

.

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Editors notes: rip