PeterN: Thanks for the reviews again. I know this has taken ages to get out, I've been playing through Final Fantasy VIII, and lost enough times to Ultimecia (Word thinks Ultimecia is a typo for Multimedia, anyone actually see a similarity anywhere?) to memorise her speech…. I'm sure this talking bit is going to look stupid when in the new chaptering system… oh well, who cares?
Theo 'Blitz' Leung – Yes be afraid, be very afraid. BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Emma/Ems – Don't worry, didn't take it as a flame (hard to considering the contents of this fic and the number of reviews you've given me ^_^). Yeah, three dead, one possibly dying, and one turned evil. Only leaves two of them to save the world, and one of those is hospitalised! I think I have an idea of how long you waited for that part, but you can say if you want.
Space
Dragon – Did you really think that I'd kill off three of the
main characters in the fic? Nice idea with the Cerebral Torturer, although I
think it's better if Kari is real and being tortured as well, I am trying to
stick very vaguely to the anime after all, in other words Kari will be a
Digidestined… assuming she lives that long. And I have no idea when Digimon is
returning to the UK on terrestrial television, they have upped the number of
random order Pokémon
episodes though… -_-.
Immaterium (Part 18)
A man turned towards two beds in the centre of a brilliantly illuminated room. He stared at the two young corpses, compassion absent from his eyes as he methodically went about what he was doing. He looked at the injuries on the smaller one's head; a huge gash surrounded by burn marks. "How did this not puncture the skull?" He mused as he turned to look at the remnants of what was probably a hat, but was now a small circle of blood coated material with some blond hair stuck to it, glued on by the dried blood.
A faint beep alerted their attention to someone coming in the room. The door clicked behind her as she stepped in, the door locking itself automatically. "How long?"
"Eleven minutes and… thirty five seconds." A voice piped up from the far side of the room as someone checked the digital clock on one side of the room.
"Thank you doctor. We're well within the record, anyone care to explain what caused this. I haven't seen injuries like this before. Not without the brain and skull being destroyed as well."
"Lightning is the best we can guess at the moment, I'm sure the military guys will use that as the explanation if they ever need to give one."
She looked around at the brilliantly lit and almost spotlessly white room. Here and there where some red splotches where blood had fallen on the previously sterile floor. Next to each bed was what looked like standard blood infusion equipment. On closer inspection though the tubes carrying the blood ran through several large machines, their purpose completely indecipherable to an outsider.
"Well, what are we waiting for people? Let's plug these two in and light them up."
A bleak, dingy light slowly filtered its way into his consciousness as his eyelids fluttered. He opened his eyes and lay there, silent in the cloud of sleepiness that still sheltered him. Joe slowly sat up, leaning against the cold metal door for a few moments before stumbling to his feet, one hand on his head where there was a fairly large scab matting his hair together. He walked to the elevator buttons and pressed the alarm button. Nothing. He sighed and thumped it a few times before a voice piped through the intercom in the elevator.
"Please do not panic. A repair crew will be dispatched to this elevator. Thank you for listening to the Sifer Safety System."
Joe looked at the circular holes where the voice had come from. "A recording? No one's listening?" he slumped down to the floor even further and waited for the repair crew to come and rescue him. Wish I'd eaten before coming here. He thought. I'm starved.
Sora floated in the corrosive substance that surrounded her. Long ago she'd given up trying to get away from it. She couldn't move her limbs anymore. Had their been light, and her eyes had still been intact, she would have seen a slowly spreading red mist in the apparent void she occupied. It had seemed an eternity she had been in there, even if it was only a few seconds it would still have seemed as long. Sensory depravation of everything but pain.
The worst had passed already though; once the substance had destroyed her clothes and skin the nerve endings were quickly destroyed. One burst of indescribable pain wracked her system, paralysing her quickly dissolving body and slowing her already unfocused mind.
It watched her from outside the substance, its daemonic eyes easily capable of seeing in the total darkness it had used to scare the human. It watched the torn, shattered, still conscious, remains bob in the slight currents she had created. A lung fell out of her body as the diaphragm, the last thing keeping her torso in one piece, disintegrated under the relentless assault of agony.
It glanced towards the storage crystal, checking yet again that it was recording the scenes of agony. There would be ways to improve the torture; mistakes were always made, with the recordings the method could be improved, the ultimate torture discovered. The thing's eyes glazed over as it thought about the myriad millions of tortures it had used. "It will be improved."
It turned its attention back towards the girl, or more accurately the head of the girl. It swirled about in the now blood coloured poison. A gruesome masterpiece of the daemon's art. Eternal seeming seconds passed as Sora's head was finally destroyed in a panorama of pain. The poison that had been so lovingly created having fulfilled its task once again.
Tai woke up abruptly, a distraught Kari shaking him by the shoulders to get him up. He crashed off the couch and fell on the floor. "Kari…?"
"Look!" The tone of fear in her voice snapped Tai out of all the confusion of sleep. His gaze followed where she was pointing, the television. Their was someone talking on it, but no one listened to that. Everyone merely saw the pictures, stunned into silence or panic from the horrific pictures.
What was presumably once a town was being filmed. Flames danced everywhere, not a thing remained standing no matter where the camera moved. Here and there charred skeletons could be seen through the inferno. A flurry of voices sounded from the television, frantic voices, voices belonging to people who had seen their own death.
The cameraman looked in the sky as everyone else still alive in the God-forsaken place did. Unblinking eyes stared up the flying monstrosity, the harbinger of destruction. Feet unconsciously shuffled backwards, all too scarred to stay rooted to the spot, all too hopeless to flee from the place.
The thing swooped down from its flight, a giant swinging arc of its axe cleaving a lorry and its driver in two. Faces blanched white as the thing turned to face them. Across millions of television screens worldwide a single sentence roared through the speakers. A single sentence sending fear into the very souls of all who were present.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"
A stream of fire engulfed the axe as it swung down one last time, an area the size of a skyscraper vaporised in the single hit.
The static disappeared from the screens and was replaced with the familiar scene of the news studio. The announcer's face was pure white; no sound escaped his barely moving lips. Eventually the screen went blank as the television company cut the transmission.
Tai slowly stood up, his mind reeling from the shock of the pictures on the screen. His face went blank as he tried to think about the past.
Blocking out the sun was a giant creature of enormous proportions. Covered in luminous black armour, painted in the blood of fallen warriors it flew overhead, its axe swinging from side to side with practise blows in time with the flaps of its black, leathery wings.
He gasped as he became more certain of it. One of the Greater Daemon's was on Earth.
TK walked forward. Another step towards the always-distant horizon. He stopped and looked around again. The cracked and barren land surrounded him as far as he could see. From horizon to horizon the only life he could see was himself. Always alone, always craving someone else to be there, anyone else. He trudged forward, each step forced so that he could find out what was beyond the barren expanse. "Where are you Matt? Why won't you help me?"
Sora's eyes snapped open once again, she quickly checked everything was there, her mind remembering dying yet again.
"You're fine. Although you'll wish to die very soon if you haven't already." The sweet melodic voice started up again. It sounded vile and disgusting to Sora's ears now she knew what manner of beast the voice belonged to, even if she couldn't see it.
"What are you?" Sora spat in an insane moment of defiance.
"You've got some guts, I'll give you that. Or you might just be insane; you wouldn't be the quickest human I've broken before. Watch this little scene, all this happened around the time of your death."
TK shakily got to his feet as he looked at the mess that
used to be him. He reached up to his hair and tried to run his hand through it.
The gooey mass didn't budge much and he brought his hand back down. He looked
at the red stains that covered his hand in shock and blanched. Gravity hit him
with a vengeance and he collapsed, limbs feeling like lead before he slipped
into unconsciousness once more.
Matt woke with a sharp pain as something crashed into his stomach. He shoved the thing away before opening his eyes. He froze. Panic stricken thoughts blurred through his brain faster than he could act on them. He slowly looked at the bloody mess that was his brother; TK. He looked at his hair, matted dark red with oozing blood. He fought down a feeling of nausea and picked TK up, panic still clouding his thoughts. He went off in a random direction, help might be there.
He never noticed the trail of fresh blood he was leaving on the previously green grass. Thoughts concentrated on helping TK, until, one by one, they disappeared along with his consciousness. They collapsed. Two brothers, bleeding to death in each other's arms.
Sora stared at the horrific scene in shock. "TK…. Matt…. Why…?"
The laugh resounded through the room again. "It doesn't matter, but you're going to convince them to come here. Once here… well, you know what happens here."
PeterN: Will Matt and TK get dragged into the same tortures as Sora? Would've made Sora's death a bit more graphic but I didn't have the time, and I really needed to start on this part and get it done. Looks like all hell has been let loose in this fic now though. Let the slaughter commence! Please leave a review.