Rupert: ...truly, when do I see Dina again..?
Me: That is an excellent question. I may have already killed her behind the scenes.
Dino: .A. YOU'RE A BIG MEANIE -tackles me-
Me: xwx It's just an alternate corpse party story maannn
Dino: GIVE HER BACK. GIVE HER BACK.
Jkonna: Well diga-don't I feel loved TTwTT
Pauleen: BOYS -scoffs, turning away-
Torn: scowls -RUPERT-
Rupert: -sighs-
Pauleen: uhh
Rupert: Don't bother. Torn simply loathes me.
Chapter Fourteen: She was Already Finished
Scuffing feet loping freely at a run over chipped woods in the formation of boots melted unto the chiming sound of click-clacking high-heel shoes that glimmered like amethysts. A single pair of voices sucked for breath, neither the most athletic person you've seen, and each just capping close enough to adulthood that childish energy had all but abandoned. Reconnected over dusty decades stacked as books on shelves and tottering unevenly with the extent of falling—so long ago it had been, that one of the two had become a new person over time and change—neither could believe the other had been located again, that they stood here, hand-in-hand, as they had as blunt teenagers when they both had shorter hair-lengths and lives as well.
They must've been a century older now. One quite literally; the other to the vaguest of levels, as where she'd been whittling away time for the past one hundred or so years didn't emit these changes brightly, but stored them only within the confines of the soul, like a remarkably untouched closet. If she the closet, then he the old, sun-stained, unreasonably large, warmly brown cowboy hat atop that guarded the closet of her soul and wore out into the beating heat for a long time before reunification could occur.
Thick, black-and-brown jacket followed underneath by a soft sugar-brown shirt, bent at odd angles and gently polka-dotted in elder blood stains from when he awoke here, and the time he'd spent trying to figure the impossible puzzle piecing out: pressed-hard-to-shining black jeans majorly covered by a pridefully-exhausted mid-colored brown boots adorned with neat layers of strings down to the boot and heel, where the foot, like a king, resided at the cushioned bottom. A red-shaded foot, as his skin mimicked that particular hue. Orange curls bounded down his face, a few specks as random bangs, the others lying down near his shoulders but nowhere quite there.
His companion wore a thin, pale pink jacket, in harsh comparison to his casual western wear. She shed an official light that gave her promising touches: the amethyst high-heels, rose blouse beneath, tight but hard-pressed navy blue skirt cutting off to her reasonably pale thighs. Shaking irritably out of sidelong spikes of brown bangs, her own hair so close, inches but eons from reaching those very tips of her small shoulders, Yui spoke softly, her original shock and enrapture of emotion caught into the current of the blood that would run if they didn't hurry.
"Do you have a clue where to go?"
Sweet, inviting coffee orbs peered back into the violet and gleamed.
"Mebbe."
She puffed air into his gently-red face. "So you don't."
"Purdy much."
Shyly, her eyes lingered on the walls, on their feet tapping in close unison to stretched thin floors of putrid oak wood a painful brown, on the sounds just out of their range that made clatters and suggested pursuers, friend or foe, she didn't know, even poising her pinched nose into the air as if the stench of ammonia, always there, always there, would lead them to some magical pot of safety. "Do you know where we should start looking?"
He laughed; it was a little sun-stained, like him. Orange curls bounced casually. His thick, oversized hat threatened to fall, black spots of eyes and a big, stretching maw the trademark object claiming his head. "Not really. Ya got a better idea, Yui?"
She shivered slightly; the way his lips uttered her name, Yew-ee, sent her face into a clash of heat and feeling. "I had been searching for a girl when an earthquake occurred, I bumped my head, and woke. And after beginning my search for the ingredients that would end this—well, mostly keeping an eye out for survivors—I found the hemp bag, and I... found you..." Again, her eyes couldn't lift up to meet his. She wanted to curse herself; hadn't experienced this strange feeling for a long time and had no way of reacting right to it. She felt almost calculating, like she was trying to push him away of something.
"Hrmm..." He probably didn't notice. Tsukasa never noticed those things. His eye for detail pertained to moments of lighthearted joy, not frenzied things like problems, worries: those took their own path and eventually blew themselves out. She'd only ever seen that gently-reddened face pinch in concern for her once, and she'd been sobbing the hell out of herself, so that one had no right to count. Of course then he would.
Randomly, she mumbled, "Who else do you care this much about," and his hand burned hers where they held on.
"Hrmm? Who else do ah care about? Welp, there ain't much that can garner this heart's attention and mosey on in, I'll give ya that." A blunt Tsukasa response. Joe response... Something that only he would go and use. He'd never had that accent when they first met some lifetime ago; she somehow found it a little sweet. Tsukasa's first voice had been somewhat blunt, a little intruding. He now nearly spoke in metaphors and had this sun-grazed feel over him.
Somehow, still the same. "I care bout... well, I durno if she counts as a daughter or a li'l sister, but when I was in m'youth... well... yeah, I surpose it's round that time, I found this girl who's some two years old, and she was... interestin'. I durno how else to put it. I took care o' her though, before the accident happened a long time later."
"The accident..." It whistled through her lips like it would in an atrocious forest.
A shrug. "I durno what else to call it but the accident. It was... well, I didn't mean to do it, but then suddenly..." A hush fell upon him and the words frayed. "I guess it's somethin' ya wouldn't get. Ya don't know about them vivosaurs... they weren't part o' our... other life..? Would it be?"
"Aah..." Somewhat miffed—no, okay, she felt peeved at herself for not being able to understand something he did, Yui's gaze threatened to fall again and dig into soft wood flooring. It came back to her. "Oh!
"Aren't we running in circles—Tsuka—... Joe?"
What was she supposed to say to him?
Soon enough, the halls emptied of noise, all but their puttering of breath, hard and cold enough to let anyone see that running didn't suit this duo. Not at all. Proudly, Yui saw how much taller she'd come with adopting her high heels, and that the few inches she and Tsukasa had once rifted over had all but melted because she just so happened to have worn them and he never grew any taller.
"Oh. I rightly believe we have. Whoops."
Yui honestly couldn't tell if she found that cute or annoying. Should be a hindrance: real lives strung on a line being skewered by how much longer it took them to find and rescue the others as they began to recollect underneath the school building. But—but he—he—he was Tsukasa! She couldn't believe herself; couldn't believe she had actually found this boy again. Mumbling under her breath, she coordinated with, "We might want to...
"to..."
Her breath died on the edges of her throat as a puffy yellow cushion wedged into the floor caught her eye. Fingers instinctively bit down on the reddish hand she found so much comfort in, practically squeezing through him, stabbing at him. Yui found a strange comfort in feeling that he'd stay here, though Tsukasa might not share that since her cherry nails were squeezing into his essence, but somehow it gave her a closeness that wrapped over her shoulders and stayed.
Her firm tightness made it impossible to realize that he'd begun squeezing the same power into her own fingers. To spite her or humor her or just because he was like that would never be answered; he did like feeling that connection though. Deliberated that squeezing at her so tightly made her seem a little less dainty: more present and pressed into his mind. Real. Dina didn't happen to be rightly real now—though he knew she was there. Then, slowly, taking his sweet time, Joe's chocolate orbs rolled over and caught on the swatch of puffy yellow fabric sticking out of the bent floorboards.
"That doesn't belong there," he stated in that idiot way of is that caught in her throat and made her want to hug him or something.
"N-no..." One shaky breath at a time, she wore the barrier into his heart thin, her hand holding onto her every word unto his fingers. "It doesn't... belong there..."
One word rattled into the labyrinthine passages of all she had learned in her life, all of her lovely and unlovely experiences, the scary and the studying it took to net her into teaching, the bonding she had committed to unto those children—
One whose missing shoe stuck so unevenly right there, a broken foot in its own.
One word was all it took to furiously label that fluffy puff of fabric. One little girl's name, one whose icy blue eyes lit up under the shadow of warmth always with her who she never stopped clinging onto—big brother, big brother—whose teary face streamed and cried for him and never felt alright unless he'd show himself already. Yui had come in contact with the sadistically adorable face streaked in watercolors and paints of agony and need and love for that one single boy—and for the others too.
They all felt it.
How the hell was she supposed to react to that foot-like thing? Sitting—sitting right—right there? Was she dead?—was she nearby?—w-was she okay—? Was Satoshi with her..? Ahh—the thought shot bloodcurdling images of the tall figure frozen in place, bent into a triangular position, dark pants bent at the angle, brown-haired head bowed down in its usual disheveled mess: forever. Front of a rose white shirt stained like its red counterpart. Shaking her head fearsomely, gruesomely, willing away old memories that had yet to repeat and scolding herself for losing it so easily, Yui realized her eyes had closed and reopened purple lids.
Which planted straight upon that controversial slipper and nearly sent an upheaval of misery in her pathway again. Giving a sidelong stare that grazed past an icy, pallid cheek, brown orbs checked up and sidled, reddish hands pulling the stony figure away and raising an arm to unplug her gaze from what wouldn't stop staring back in frenzied, ripped glances that shouted horror at her face. "Geez, Yui," he muttered softly in that sun-bleached, rolling tone, "somethin's been stirrin' yer thoughts riiiiiigh' up. Don' let that straw mix up yer chocolate milk, girl. Don' let it. Don'. Don'." Petty, useless thoughts, somehow her eyes snapped and glazed over the just hardly taller boy in a thoughtful strike of pure wonder.
Trepidation and tension built unto each step leading back, back, back from what Yui continued to mutter under her lip as a horror scene, her cheeks worriedly painted white as if she'd seen a ghost—then again, they all had at some point. Icicles stuck through her bones, throttling shifts of ethereal coldness into the hand that guided her. Foggy, amethyst orbs peered on in a way that suggested she had seen far more than people should have been enabled to. Her body, hunkered down and shuddering freely, poked at its pink-and-blue outer shell like it made no difference. Sighing, tittering, Joe didn't durn know what to do with this pard of his. Pfft; more than a pard. Sorta. Yeah...
"EYYYAAAAAAGGGGCHHHHHH—"
Any handling he had on the frigid girl prior was naught but ashes. Thorns of swelling emotion rose up and stabbed at Joe's hands. He gripped because truly, out of everything in his sun-bright life, he had absolutely nothing better to do. Nothing that beat hoisting this life up from treacherous waters and therefore landing the dangers at bay, or at least not sucking at her neck-deep. An unconscious body writhed slightly, then shot forward, propelling Joe as well since he had considerable strength but this nail-biter had more than considerable strength and it tore through him and left metaphorical wounds spilling with the blood of ransom emptiness. Because he had nothing better to do, he jogged beside her; because he had nothing better to do, his hand gripped hers tightly even as it shirked and stabbed away; because there was nothing he would rather spend his life doing, his face bobbled real close until she was the sun and he the cloud tailing it, and their noses bumped once or twice like clumsy vivosaurs—Torn and Trikko, he smiled wistfully; their corpses, like shadowy tears in memory, shone like bloody day in his eye—and her breath fell hot and warm on his cheek. Which was pretty fantastic, in his point of view.
Guttural snorts and squeals became their new road, their new map to a sort of crowned victory where perchance the noises would enforce pattern, and pattern would produce sense, and maybe sense could reveal some special faces.
Whatever had happened when the black admixture collided with flesh and fed on him, whatever might of dissected his sense of self into corners of people until he could see everything, feel everything, be everywhere and experience it all, and know: whatever it did, it wasn't normal, and it was also gone. Finding a dusty shard of himself had solved a puzzle he had no ability to secure. And then, of course, there was this girl he had nasty holes in his heart for that only she'd fill, which felt weird and confusing and made him wonder what had happened to the corks that stopped those things up. A rueful shake of the head and the thoughts wouldn't nicely pack into the box in the back of his head, but it was a start. Joe wasn't very used to this; he loved every moment of it.
Flustered hands led the girl gently from smacking a porcelain head into pointy shreds of glass glued into strangely boarded-shut windows. Winds whistled eerie tunes that sung petty music, offered petty hope. Joe nearly stepped on top of a brown-haired corpse when it gave out a spasm and he realized no, he had nearly stepped on a very living body. Warily, brown orbs poked out from under his hat's massive brim and winked. "Howdy, pard."
Of course, it happened to have been stuffed inside of a chip in the ground, waves of blue dress in tatters about it and hair sticking wildly. Like an afterthought, this shining, plastic-pink headband had shattered to the side and sat there unmoving. Puling in the most adorably pathetic state, its icy blue orbs stared in a state of brokenness. "Saaatooshiiiii..." the tiny female squeaked. "Saaaaaaaaaaaatoooooosshhhiiiiii..."
The bounding panda face on Yui's necklace yanked as her body tumbled to the ground and caught the tiny female in an embrace, gently rubbing circles into her blue-cloaked back, whispering words to her that didn't quite catch in the pard's impaired hearing. He didn't focus on what shoved him out like an emotionally private conversation, with the females chattering about males and emotions and the color pink coating areas like one's cheeks or such. He swore he heard his old name once or twice; that bloodless nail poked in his general direction avidly and man, it unraveled untold emotions of embarrassment. Although Joe couldn't feel embarrassed about his current situation with the girl chattering all over him. More just scrunched by the whole thing about short brunette Yui mentioning him all this time. Felt a nip of pride, but mostly flustered and awkward.
Not really sure where his role was supposed to go, Joe gathered up that tiny plastic pink headband and plopped it on the little girl's head, patting a mystifying, choppy color of hair rather wondrously. His wide, warm orbs stared somewhat transfixed at the browning texture hinted with shades of violet. Felt like he'd seen it before—yes, he had. Seen a lot of these things before. A lot of these people before—
That tiny girl's frame, perched in front of a lubricant red mass. Her single shadow flecked out in this specific coil of shadow, the only thing metaphorically cutting Torn's body directly in half. The rest of the flayed-scales appearance was only halfway peeled. An apple, showing off its vitamins and minerals.
A hard swallow.
BOOMMmmmpf!
Frantic footsteps veered through Joe's blind spot and took him on a trip into the hallway's wall, where his hat crumpled into a floorboard drifting around to the side and his bones made the crunch of tired despair, allowing him to see that he was tired. Though he didn't need physical injury to show that tidbit off. Worried orbs, brown like his but cooler, softer, older chocolate chip cookies than Joe's, cascaded into his and stole the thick, ridiculously huge hat from its shelf, awkwardly patting it at his head. A red face peered into Joe's naturally tinted.
"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! Ahhh, God, I'm such a clutz, aren't I! I'm so sorry; ohhh my gosh I'm so, so sorry!" Frantically he batted for the brown face in the hat and nearly tore a hole through it; the face bloomed redder. Harsher. "Ahhhhhhh... ahh, ahhh, ahhh, I'm sorry!"
"Durn, pard," murmured the pard himself softly, "calm yer feathery soul. I ain't gonna tie up yer tail in a knot, boy." Again reminded in a grayed flash of that thing that had tried to take him over, where he had seen everything, this specimen came to mind.
A tunnel-like entrance, led away from the dark by a creaky door peeled outwards and portraying the light to hit his face.
Yeah, that thing. Nodding somewhat, recognizing the boy didn't have a heckova clue who his eyes punctured through, the pard did the honors. "M'name's Joe Wildwest."
Subdued, the teen bobbled his head harshly. "Y-Yeah. Mochida... Satoshi. Pleasure's m-mine." A cool tone lied underneath the heat of the moment, steering Satoshi's pressured voice into the shorter pard. He sighed at the presence of another male younger but taller than him. Supposed there wasn't much he could do about it. A new confidence led in the knee-length boots of Joe as his orange curls bounced and his jacket shivered around his body, leading this other teen with his eyes toward his other pals in the thought that they may register something.
"AH! YUKA! I'm so sorry—I looked everywhere for some way to f-free you..." Head hanging, cheeks blaring, the boy fell to his knees, which the red-toned pard soon saw to be radically crusted by ruby-like claws of torture. His forearms held similar markings. Giggling softly and releasing via the realization that a face he seemed to have been without for some time had found his—purple orbs, longer hair: all spelled out to Yui—his arms draped across the little female in the torn, blue dress and the less severe shivers, as both able bodies guided and maneuvered the dress and the bruised, pale legs up and outward.
Tossing her head back, Yui's eyes shone with a new layer of pride. "Tsukaaasaaaa!" she called, "I doubt we could fish her out on our own!"
So to the desires of someone he felt a tugging, tangible need to, the largest hands out of the three pairs sifted and dug into the trapped girl's warm body, twisting it gently through turns that the others pertained blind spots to, allowing himself an opening to watch and grin steadily to the sight of two more souls Yui apparently recognized and held dear to herself being rescued from the tumulus terror feeding into their veins.
Quietly, the sunny man coughed, and a cloud of darkness streamed through his lips.
...Still there, was it...
With the bottomless black came a flash, a bright hook of memory pecking at his skull. Wincing softly, Joe rolled his clenched orbs and struggled to ignore the thing for now. Tics in his head had to subside until this li'l girlie—Yuka, wasn't it—had she and her rainbow-bruised legs and her tatters of a dress snagged and safely pulled out of the unseen clutches of sharp entities below. Seemed lucky not a single pale toe had been lopped off by the gleaming mechanism down below in the sea of blackness. The further Yuka disentangled from coils of darkening demise, the more she resembled taffy being pulled apart at the seams. Only these seams durn well knew how to release themselves, sought out and recognized a gleam of defeat, like a lone star twinkling in the night sky.
Curiously, warm orbs flickered out past a sheet of icy glass and into the murky shadows of forests and branches swabbed out like weapons. Above lazily sat smoky clouds that entwined and snared so layered and crisscrossed that not a spark of light drew through. How funky. And disappointing. A funky disappointment; some freak of nature. A disappointing freak of nature.
When angular bones dressed in graying skin coated his eyes, he looked away and quickly hoisted the tiny, weightless girl unto his shoulder, her dress spilling and whistling around his upper-body and knotting over his purposely huge black-and-brown jacket. "Paard," he moaned softly.
Little Yuka, still shoeless, rescued in the arms of the strongest one there; Yui's amethyst gaze trickled out and touched with her brunette friend she'd known for a long time. In the most sensible of ways, not as long as the orange-haired male fidgeting over tears of dress that slapped and shrouded upon him, muttering sounds of regret or assistance needed every minute or so. Not so long as she has known Tsukasa.
"Satoshi..." she called in some sort of unwrapped greeting, when catching his cooler brown gaze reflected her to the sight of Yuka and she deliberated there wouldn't be much of a way she could get him to look away. Arms stretched out in some form of how much he wanted to yank her away, Yui's sunny-pale face brightened at the sight of that silly boy. Relief washed warm and bubbly upon her that he still had found his little sister, still had managed to keep enough of an eye on her that she hadn't been lost again. Curiously... she wondered... if he, too, had found help in a peculiar individual he'd never seen prior. Like the others. Tsukasa had been muttering about others, too... she'd heard it especially when she first saw him and that explosion of darkness and a blonde male in black trim—Yoshiki, whom else cursed that much about his life being saved?—and the silence that pursued.
Seeing him... recognizing him... searching, searching, searching for a way to reunite with him, in the vain artificial flicker of hope that perhaps he was who he ought to be.
It was... funny... As quick-minded and selfless, she sacrificed her life to these dear people accordingly and as soon as she might need to in order for their own lives to be preserved. Sending her into a lifeless pulp but preventing anyone else from taking her place had been a necessity in her soul, a throbbing in her heart to commit. And it always happened. So she had never seen a diverse set of the once-students of the school she once taught because she always ended up crumpled on the floor, dead. And yet, through her plights of rescue and safety and enforcing any and all plans she could to preserve life, she never found herself so prime to actually try continuing her own life prior. Never plugged into the calls of the children, never listened, just acted and saved, never let them die for her—no, no. This was... her own job. A sort of distraction.
It brought back memories of her as a student herself inside of her own school late after the final bell had sung, and the spirits of those left behind grew restless, dreary, until she could hear them as clear as another classmate and see through their ghastly figures. Orange-haired and young Tsukasa had, no charm in hand, gone to idiotic lengths to protect her that time. Peering indefinitely toward the now-grown man, his face shadowed by his ridiculously gigantic hat, furry-brown with darker cuts that could make eyes and perhaps a jagged mouth, even, although it somehow looked cuddly all the same, she could catch sight of a male she hadn't seen in well over a century glancing back at her, still mottled by the incredulous task of Yuka's dress.
Satoshi's hands had already pressed in and untangled a majority of the knots, quickly patting down any remaining tears and yanking out any problematic strands, plucking Yuka like a flower and hugging the tiny girl close to him as soon as humanely possible and whispering about how unsure he felt over letting go again.
Joe snorted softly, his gentler though raspy, sunny tone pressing outward. "Ya remind me... of Rupert, a li'l. And Dina'd be Yuka... Hah..." His eyes glazed somewhat, a light texture unsettling the warmth of the consistent brown. "I trust they're hangin' in tight. 'n together, like we'll are here..." Subdued, slightly anxious, huggable and lonely, like a discarded teddy, Joe's orbs gently rolled from one side of the stretched halls to the other, every last speck of light from the semi-darkness setting upon him. He coughed and a hand instinctively covered, balling up a fist as if it'd collected something and furling both hands behind his back. His reddish face lifted upward and peered at the floorboards in the ceiling, particularly a scratchy hole or two.
She couldn't help it; her body collapsed and she squeezed her pale arms tight around his figure. Her amethyst shoes pinched and nearly tottered as she leaned into Joe and sighed softly. Didn't like seeing him look so patched, so defeated.
"Er... Yui... I think ah need t'go lookin' round... jus' a stroll, jus' in case... I c'n look fer yer kid-friends too, as I look for mine, jus' in case..." His hands, warm on her spine, asked to let him go for a little while and check things out. "Ya... watch o'er Satoshi 'n li'l Yuka... poor dolls look ready t'snap. Prolly should figure a safe place ter go soon er somethin'...
"And I need to find 'em meself. Er at least try."
Of course. Of course he had to do this to her. He was still Tsukasa. He still needed his moments to go searching out on his own for those things of his—though... she supposed it made sense. Loathed the thought down to the end of her tired emotions, but she supposed it made sense. How would she feel, had Satoshi and Yuka actually been these... Dina and Rupert fellows, and she struggled to make sense of the turmoil surmounting her that she'd never seen before in her life, as well as realizing she had been someone before Shishido Yui and she had been in love with someone she had only just remembered because they had been trapped in this damn school for how long—
Oh, oh, oh... Go easy on Joe, she decided quickly.
Eyes drawn level with the window outdoors, knock-knock-knocked by ghostly hands filled of raindrops and made by moisture and icy chills that somehow hadn't turned the droplets to blooming and pacifying snow. Always rain. Always thunder and lightning, and always the losing-texture numbing sense that gave cold an altogether new meaning, and never, never snow.
As she tentatively stepped back and flourished her hands, drawing herself parallel with Satoshi and the sniveling girl in his loving arms, her own grasp now devoid of such warmth, she watched as Tsukasa gave a small tip of his cowboy hat and sauntered on, his boots going clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp as he grew further distant and further swallowed up by the school. He coughed sometimes; then she couldn't hear him any longer.
"Come on," she murmured in her airy tone lanced with purpose, plucking fingers over Satoshi's forearm and dragging his strangely marred limb forward with her, further ensuing the boy who owned the arm and the girl held by the other arm, "we... have a problem to figure out."
In her free arm, squeezed regularly in some failing form to relieve stress, laid a small cloth sack just larger than her palm, stained with the old tang of blood and filled with a thing that squished and squished.
Perhaps the others knew where to go, too. And if not, they would find them.
Each footprint confined into the wood of the school sent his headache pecking harder and harder, at first via the bill of some small toe-biter of a vivosaur like a purple and thin nasaur, though that had far bypassed a mere snitch like that and had evolved into the length and prowess of yellow feathers and a thick maw of a beak that must've been layered in waves of callous. More a ptera than a nasaur. Much more a ptera. Durn, pteras hurt.
Jacket giving a blank shuffling sound as he moved and the stray breezes of Heavenly Host tore holes though his pecks, tossing his eyes over the various rubbish dressing rotted and wooden floorboards heavy in the amount of footsteps that had smacked over them for the past century or so. Like an ingenious rascal that ducked out of the sight of authority, flicking semi-darkness and untold stenches of that putrid, metallic ammonia crawled up his skull's interior and mingled there, just minglin' there. Didn't help much that he'd gone and coughed his throat raw as he went on his half-unlit way. Not half full, half empty: half gone. Just—just gone. Disturbin', sure, and disappointin', too, but mostly delirious with the thought.
Alone. Joe'd gotten himself hankered down in a corner on the dusty ruts of fate, and whatever felt like snippin' his head off could come round and do so any moment it felt like durn doin' it. Gave mortality this glossy new shine and flecked at him, built up in him. Anxious worry gnawed up and down a muscle or two, and the knocking sensation of peck, peck, pecking returned in a new volley of disgust and rotting pain. He squinted and caught flashes of black and white and mist that brandished slowly off his lips and disappeared into the agony ahead and behind. Even as the worst of it stamped pain where it stamped pain in a luscious sort of sebum, Joe screwed up coffee orbs filled with the steam of warmth they always had, and he understood that he had important business to take care of, and now that this possessive sorta mist—darkenin' in the midst of it, drowning in shadows and bedazzled in poisonous rubies like blood—this mixture stopped minglin' with his body, it started to feel better.
In the cause of a long chase scene of a tale, the pard himself had been once subjected to possession, for multiple, disgusting years, knowin' that something was inside of his body and that it had absolutely taken 'im over, and he had had no hope. Somehow, this sorta possession was different—didn't disconnect him with his flesh, just rotted in this angst of catharsis and felt purdy filthy on its own—but at the same time it had its own central point and had taken over, and had seen it all. So much power: creepy power, bad power, yucky power that took away his right as the living too. Made him feel violated.
Each breath tore out another hunk of black scum. Least, felt like that. Because possessive black scum'd been a part of him at some moment. Freakin' messed up creepy. Gritting his teeth gently, so as not to disturb his suddenly tender body, the semi-authoritative adult stared through the brim of his lucky and huge hat, past any stray orange curls of bangs playfully smacking against reddish forehead, and peered, through the shadows his life had become, at a golden orb. Small—almost impossibly miniscule. His foremost thought of golden had reverberated into the red-scaled sight of Torn, and enough red surrounded it, but no scales, and that eye happened to be way smaller than it looked at first.
A premonition like no other chilled into Joe's bones as he gently placed one boot in front of the other, a whole new purpose arranged for each foot and its conquest to whatever sort of gain he'd achieve by examining this thing he didn't want to be true furthermore, but he did, and peering up through the creaky hallway, having lost sight of the infirmary it had once been shelled into, like a nut, now its innards gleamed almost cheerfully red through cobwebs of strings of red, red, red. Pieces of white, even fleshy pale colors and those thoroughly dissected eyeballs shimmered all over and procured an eerie amount of light.
He stood there beneath the shower of color and fluid and a mystifying lightness that made him nearly feel safe under the arcing arms of this creature's death. The word selfish sprouted on his lips before he knew what was going on, and it dawned on him.
That smudge thing in the infirmary.
Ohhh, right, that thing...
Only furthered the pain that severed through Joe's new clean-cut punch into his heart's shell, a new rock that bowled into his barrier and threatened to lop it right off. The man he was, it didn't have to do with the Rupert himself that caused this newfangled pain: the result it would have on the one closest to him, that was what's gonna wreck his life. Joe had few people truly close to him, but that little doll... Gently pressing his head side to side to side, the pard moved onward in his methodical motion, continually on alert for other things he had to search for and recover, was it possible, and as well figure why the school had lost its original composure, and why its floor had gone so bloodstained red on its own, why it rumbled as it about to twist apart, why it felt like the cogs had dramatically shifted and everything was about to seriously mess up.
Worriedly his hand fished through a pocket and softly patted the head of the disemboweled plush kitty, its innards of fluff severely torn out like Torn himself had used it as some freakin' chew toy, that messed up vivosaur, him. Tossing back his head and catching a glimpse of fangs just beside his cheek, the man rather garnered he'd found what he'd been searching for. Just on the crook of a rewashed stairwell stinking some foul odor like no tomorrow, resting on his twisted legs like a sleeping corpse, lay the remains of the dimetro himself. His sail, drenched in a liquid the pard refused to name, flapped piteously in the wind. Did corpses allow pity upon their creepy-lookin' selves? Well, too bad, Torn. He got some.
In the gentle gait under the steps and past rickety openings, the whole of the school looked like it'd been tipsy-turvy gone inside-out. Splatters of random red and black didn't help matters all that much. Nor the insightful glimpses of translucent cyan entities clutching to hold their fallen body parts in singular unison that suggested they had something they had not had earlier, and no way of replenishing its pieces without either looking stupid or realizing they had no way of patching themselves up in the first place. A tuckered sigh, and, poor tots. Somehow managed to withhold a light in their eyes. Didn't right now how, but they did. Looked pleasant enough.
Maybe the deceased of his own had solved this little dilemma, too. Joe could downright imagine white-haired regal—dead—Rupert sifting with the monsters that caused the cogs of the nexus to spin and sittin' down with them, serving some spots of tea, and gettin' their unholy bums to give up on the act as they could potentially harm Dina, and anything potentially harming li'l Dina was Rupert's worst enemy. So that made sense.
Or maybe some of the poor suckers killed by the spirits themselves decided hey, might as well calm them down so that other friends still alive don't suffer our fates too. He could see Torn doing that. Also ridiculously overprotective of the orange-haired girl, he'd do that to his own murderers. Yeah he would. Unless some other entity had caused this pain of his. Ergh, creepy. The pard shuddered somewhat, then moved on accordingly. A long strand of fiery hair fell tattered from the ceiling and brushed over him, but he had no time to look up. Anyway, didn't really have anyone to associate that had this kinda hair. He discarded and went on, untimely squishing a poor pinky corpse as he did, but he didn't stop for that either.
Suddenly, his single worry had all bloomed into one blooming flower of life, and it had to do with that doll of a girl, Dina, about whether or not she was okay. Well, of course she had problems. Rupert was dead—maybe she didn't know, and she felt absolutely fantastic as it could get? Okay, that was a yellow-bellied lie and Joe knew it.
After some time of bumbling and moving, he began to tire and the corpses only blurred. Movement had sorta ended up a failure and his head ached like a rock was splitting it wide open. Or maybe the intense worry about his li'l Dina had done that. Yeah, maybe. Shrugging deftly, he couldn't help but worry morosely and think up on it. Pledge that she hadn't been harmed in any way, someone looked out for her, somewhere, even with both Rupert and Torn dead—hey! Trikko!—and he'd well and soon find that pard and be done with it.
Purpose soon derailed to delirium and no matter how hard Joe scrounged or how many times he bumped his head or how long it'd been since he'd felt anything but dead body squishing underfoot, darkness had permeated his vision, one that wouldn't scratch out of his eyes or anything similar to that, and he had no way of finding her, whether Dina stood near or not. Fruitless. Fruitless, they'd all say, and drag him away, if he could even manage to see that.
Eventually he would stumble like a mindless creature that had been fully taken over by the darkening and look fully in control of the school, no matter how mindless or not his brain actually stood and nodded for, and other eyes would see his deadened ones and stagger back. A pair of females, one cloaked in the same jacket the man had pressed round his body, would fumble for excuses and quickly totter for a door just out of his sleepy reach that would take them underground into the bowels of the nexus and chill their hearts if it tried mercilessly enough. Another pair, one male and the other female, would peer at him incredulously as he appeared out of nowhere by the stairs, and the girl would shriek as Joe stepped on top of an old corpse of this other boy who was tall and psychotic and all of that girl's screaming would send the sightless boy down a hole and he would land, with a fump, underground, on top of a hundredsomethinglong corpse of brown that technically saved his life, and she would follow. A little girl and an older boy would, strung tight and close, find their own way away when their adult leader pushed them out and said she had some searching of her own to quickly complete, hemp bag in hand. And finally, only catching minor glimpses as they chased the girl in red, another girl and boy would eventually meet this man, and perhaps they would understand what he was going through.
No one could save this wandering man they hardly knew. They wished for him but they were all too focused on their own impending tasks that would plunge them beneath the earth and let them recognize other faces, and allow for missing holes to be re-patched. It would be okay. Somewhere unconsciously the man would smile.
Not until the calling of one of the cyan ones would he be stirred, a tiny one in pigtails whose eye had once been missing until refilled by maybe the cyan boy beside her, who stared in dead golden orbs at a man still very alive. He would leave, but she would stay, and her mismatched, centuries-patched friends would join her, and they would lead him somewhere safe, because they wanted to help as much as they could, now that their eyes had been fixed all over again.
If Joe had searched a little harder, he may have found what he was looking for.
Although that entire ordeal would still be just off the chip of impossible as she had found herself into an altogether new space entirely, one that was not red but very cold, and very dark.
Instead, someone else found her.
It started in an explosion of gray movement and voice, this kid all yell and no bite chasing himself around and around the same lonely corridors, slate orbs overflowing in the presence of black color chipped down to his core that pretended to rot. A single word floated and shoved out of his lips, and he flailed through the sky like a wounded bird in search of the one he so desperately needed to reclaim as his own, would she just find him already. "DIIIIINAAAA! H-hEY! DINAAAA!" All yell; no bite. Bruises scattered down olive skin and spikes of gray hair shadowed random sections of an angular face. Frantic movements and agonized screeching suggested how important the boy felt this might be. "DINAAAA," he called, hand sticking through a shot of glass in the wall that rung and sliced through him, just about to slide off a finger or two but ultimately failing for now.
He muttered about a sister of his under his breath, about how much he missed her, how much he needed to reclaim her, how much he needed to drag her back into reality so they could reunite and go home together. Personally, they hadn't actually been reunited for years, so it might come out as a little shock, but she'd be happy, he knew it. Dina would be happy, the sister of his he kept running for. A sister that he knew would be so, so happy to see him and feel so, so blessed to be by his side once more, and it would be so great. Oh yeah it would. See, unlike some pitiful and weirdo siblings, he and she super got along. Well, again, it'd been awhile—okay, a really long while—as in seventeen years a long while—since they'd actually met again, but hey, twin siblings were twin siblings, and he'd always love Dina. Plus, they hadn't separated because they wanted to. Long embarrassing story. But they loved like the best siblings ever and it was so great and they were so close to being together again and the boy planned it would happen.
Wishing in his heart of all hearts that this was gonna actually happen instead of any other crummy idea he had stored there, the boy raised his slate orbs and cried: "IT'S ME, DINO!" waiting, trusting, pleading that she'd answer and she'd be so, so super happy like him, and they could hug and stuff, and again, it'd be great. Because Dino knew these things. He might've fretted about his best friend, but heck, she could take care of herself, right, and Dina was of all significance. Dina had taken the stage—no, she hadn't, she'd burned it down so bad because he had to find that orange-haired girl with the silver highlights and the really pale face of hers. Just enough memories to coil around his head and draw him nearer through the corridors, until it became evident that he was running through uncharted territory.
Turn a bend, round a corner, and in all of its beauty and effulgence plus the dyes of the school, or whatever the reason it was so old and freakin' red and black and almost dead-looking but that was crazy: rows of creaky chairs with a literal, gilded stage at the end sat. Auditorium, that was the word. On a nearby sign, written in what Dino considered to be perfect calligraphy, there his not-so-lexicographer gaze spat upon the writing of Auditorium again and again and again. Like some pretty princess at the end of the rose bushes, here the brother would find the sister and sweep her off her feet and take her away from this messy landscape.
Shadows jutted out in strange angles. Beneath specific chairs the stench and given texture of burnt velvet, if his eyes only looked a little closer and stopped their stubborn rebuttal, they would find polished-white, unnaturally white bones scattered about. The current row he labored past, if he only stopped staring aimlessly and actually looked, had multiple dried skulls stabbed into the armrests of the first chairs. Right there, and Dino saw nothing. Nothing at all. Just the envisioning of what his baby twin sister looked like now that she had grown up just as much as he, trying to guess if she'd gotten as tall as him or was adorably tiny. Prolly the latter. She seemed like a short kinda person.
The blue and red flickering flames of ghosts hoarded along the sidelines in retrospect of what sort of horror might overcome the innocence of this poor pure boy, as morale as the bones beneath the seats were white. Some crowded along the booth of a bench provided in front of the stationary sleek-black piano spotted with red hand-prints, always the red hand-prints, and began to gently poke and prod the keys into a soft, mournful tune. It had become almost a show for them, and the hollering creatures of fire on each side spurted and heatedly slammed against each other, the walls, and the seats at the end of each row.
So blind that he didn't even see it, Dino steadily pushed to the front of the stage and then climbed the three, sanded-wooden steps.
TONK. A bell-like silence resonated in the chamber devoid of life.
TONK. The piano, crammed of talented, dead musicians, forced all of their deathly essence into a final key that flew out the door.
TONK. An unearthly creature nosed its bleached-red nose and front of its—her—face past an expired curtain.
Bare feet softly scuffed over dust and grime, buildup over decades almost completely wiped clean off before the boy had arrived. Stalled by the school until the perfect moment to enter. Now, as she lumbered in a slow, timely manner, thin body thoroughly coated in a sheen of soft, shimmery, slimy red, but otherwise come as clean as she could, she left a slithering line of the liquid following behind her from the downpour of where she had started. Her fingerprints matched with those along the thick curtain now, somehow held together and made as wavy and luscious as it could with its fray entirety.
And he was blind to all of this, as the piano rose and rose with the gaining trepidation and the foot-stepping of the girl coming toward him and piercing via orbs that had been scarred in a scarlet red that still, to him, looked delicate and brown. A sweet, soft smile gently spread across his face, and his body swooned with a warmth that only he would know, as she had lost all feeling some time ago in the dark of night. She had lost all that she was in that time ago in the swaths of night. The piano rose as her eyes did, up and up until they connected and pierced through her brother.
Not her brother; she saw none of it: her latest victim.
Not that she even knew what she was doing anymore.
One tiny finger rose one at a time in excruciatingly slow, slumbering silence, numb and swift and soon resting just below the neck of the boy, playing with his collarbone, twisting and touching it. The lubricant twist of sweat and sebum gathered among her blood-dyed pads and she giggled very softly, and Dino couldn't help but grin wider and giggle back.
He just saw his sister. His sweet little sister.
How he loved his sister.
His own hand rose in taking of the intention to gently embrace his dear sister. Her own hand rose and cut off half of his fingers. Five little digits swung in a red-spewing arc and plopped pathetically on the sanded floor, five little stains of red that few ghosts swooped in and swarmed, tossing their faces into the recoiling stench and struggling to touch the stemmed bit of life. None succeeded, but none stopped trying. Blue and red mingled by the touches of purple in their knotted toiling.
The boy let his hand sink to his side, his eyes choking with tears. Happy tears. Beautiful tears. Incredulous tears, that he had found his sweet sister again, all memories of whatever that hand of his was supposed to do ditched.
Slamming, practically exploding against the piano, purple fingers entwined and in sync performed the symphony in earsplitting volume that everyone but the living would hear, because the living was blinded by all sides for the overwhelming love he contained for that sister of his, a love she may have shared if she even knew who she was. Her fingers, resting against his collarbone, squirmed about slightly, gently using primed and perfected nails to scoop into a single hole at the tip, as if searching for something. Scarred eyes scrutinized him. Dino could feel their glow cast upon his figure, not the dripping fluid that secreted because of what he didn't see. Which, unfortunately, was everything.
Any chills that should have splashed down his spine were nonexistent. The welling of blood and sickening, slick red down his arm and missing fingertips was nonexistent, and so was the quickly, exponentially expanding hole that had started in his collarbone and now peeled down near his belly button. Apparently bored of that specific area, his sister slammed her other hand into the roots of his forehead and crossed in gentle X marks here and there, incredibly specific about where to cut into his brain. Her other hand quickly rose and snapped off the first digits in his other hand because he looked uneven and it felt wrong.
She liked that idea. Ending her current task, leaving a red dot of blood to well in a nail as she dug just the slightest into the perfect X, cutting little lines through wherever she found flawed, impeccable speed wriggled and snared her fingers into bits of pieces betwixt muscle and bone where they rubbed against one another giddily, she cut and hollowed the little parts out and sliced through them, going from arm to arm and lowering down to the very edges of his thighs, and severing just to bone where his legs should pop off. She was a whole new level of serial measurements. It had to be perfect; this was a show orchestrated for the dead to see, and it had to all be perfect. Puppet-like, hollow eyes sought for the approval that lapped at her in overflowing sync and she nodded gently at that, and she continued with her cutting.
The mottling glob of ghosts raising hands and fingers in tossed motions, mostly entwined by the permeating purple presence, pressed gentler on the keys into a winding staircase of motions that speared cold rushes into the flesh of the dead who could feel the sense of loss tangled deep within the groves of the music. Deaf to the world but of the silence his sister gave off that he mistook for happy, priceless laughter, the boy didn't feel the pressure building up inside of him or the tears that interconnected in a series of fault lines and earthquakes splitting across his olive-colored body and saturating his gray shirt in a stench of metallic life going stale. He was iron left out in the sun and wind for too long, and rust overtook the edges as did the breath of the mindless female coursing the life out of him. She was still alive, as far as anyone could tell. She could breathe. She had moving flesh in an uncountable series of layers over her soul.
The music reached into the clutches of the climax as the girl took a dodge back and scrutinized her work. It had to be perfect. It had to be beautiful. His remains would paint these walls, this room that furthermore had nigh never been used, and they would welcome those who would be spirited away in future installments, as it always went. Music thundered all around and lightning zapped betwixt her sightless orbs as a fingernail lifted, speed all forgotten in her dance of a kill, and she gently moved forward in a slithering fashion that spent more time than her taking aback did.
All around them the sanded flooring of precious wood was rotting already by the leaky pools of blood each sibling let off. One had never bled on their own for a long time; the other, reduced to pieces, now. Soon only one would remain, the other recycled into decorations to adorn the walls and welcome lost souls into the filthy rue of the auditorium, where they would each meet their marred end and others would watch the show, and feel the fire in their eyes, the dance that captivated them, the music roaring, the crowd of the dead cheering and locking their gaze upon hers and almost staring with a tense of control, a strange and powerful connection existing between them:
and it all rose in the glory of that single red-dyed finger, like a whitewashed sunset about to approach and enlist the end upon the one in front of her. With no much as a mock twisting her cheeks, body blank of emotion but for that jutting finger, filled with the thoughts and the vileness and the pain—the loss of one single thing that had taken her this far and completely annihilated all that had once been a shy, little girl by the name of Dina, the finger inched closer.
And when everyone thought it would take another eon to end it:
Swoooooosh~
It dipped right into the boy and should have silenced the entire gruesome chamber as a gentle hush sucked all life from what should have been a dying male.
Only until the permeating presence of cyan swooped and snagged at the female, gently caressing the mutilated eyes with his own and softly showering her bloodied face in kisses.
The piano fell with a cacophonous SHRRRUUKK—sending spirits of all kinds howling, shrieking, sobbing, traipsing and flooding for every possible exit imaginable, the scene of purple and death lost as the boy stood upright and stared at his unmarked body, and at the red and blue in front of his own eyes.
"A-aah..." He fell back limply, gray feet and bottom smacking against the sanded wood as Dina's body shook in a massive array of convulsions and sprouted thick lines of red that crumpled up over her temple down to the dip in where her belly button should have been and her limbs tore apart, all beneath a pristine red coat lined in navy blue that had once dominated her body.
A shower of her body flung to cover and swoon upon all surfaces, thoroughly coating what had been her brother in shock and an extreme amount of red fluid as only the cyan soul was left behind, collapsed in a tiny fold, sobbing into the arms of the other, who continued to caress and kiss her through the silent, ghostly tears.
Dino, overtook in the clutch of emotion, fell backward and stared at the ceiling, his spine crested over a filthy carpet, entire front of his body caked in a sort of red, and his entire life wreaked to shambles in front of him. Because it was all he had left, he silently wondered what had become of himself, and if that one man he had seen—Joe—was okay. He lost sight of himself under the gentle coating of his lovely sister and the one she most loved in their dead, dead embrace, and he also wondered if that would be him soon, if he would be dead as well.
Rupert: ah...
Droplet: -...-
Me: Yeah I know.
Rupert: D-Dina...
Droplet: -H-holy t-turd... D-di...no...-
Me: Both had their eyes full of tears.
Both: -currently crying-
And then they had a big hug and shared for their loss—
Rupert: not quite
Droplet: -nope-
(The next chapter is the finale! Wow, almost there! Random afterthought, it'll take a liiittle longer than just one week (two) because my next weekend is crazy, but... it's coming. Oh boy. I have chills. Woop.)