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Partner Or Lover Chapter 16: The Room on the 3rd Floor
"Zero? I'm sure it's fine… it's near the teacher's rooms, it can't be that horrible," Kizna said, trying to go up to the third floor, but Zero was blocking her way.
"Kizna, I can't let you do this, you don't understand!" Zero said fiercely.
"Well then, explain it to me Zero!" Kizna said loudly. At that moment, the elevator decided to shake violently, sending them both over to the other side, hitting the frame of the elevator with a thud.
Kizna groaned from underneath Zero's body and slowly opened her eyes.
"What happened?" she asked as she and Zero untangled themselves and stood up once again.
"I'm not sure…" Zero said, a tone of uncertainty creeping into his voice. Frowning, Zero then took a quick look around the small elevator and then glanced back at Kizna.
Kizna now took this chance, when Zero was looking around the elevator, to swoop out from underneath his hold on her waist and push the button with a "3" on it. The elevator groaned and hummed to life and slowly lifted them up into the air. Zero was caught by surprise and glared at Kizna, slightly surprised at what she did. When the elevator finally stopped moving, the doors swung open with a slight grown and the two teens ran out of the unstable elevator.
"Remind me to take the stairs or another elevator down, instead of this one," Kizna told Zero as she stared at this elevator with suspicious eyes. Turning around, her pink hair whipping Zero in the cheek, she took off down the corridor in front of her, her curious eyes taking it all in.
"Wow! So this must be where all the staff resides. Interesting…." Turning to Zero with a mischievous look in her big orbs, she asked, "do you want to take a look at the teacher's rooms later?" Sighing while shaking his head, he followed the very hyper girl with his head low to the ground.
'I hope this doesn't turn out the way I think it will…' Zero thought as he scanned the halls for any wandering souls.
"Aha! This looks interesting," Kizna shouted down the hallway. Zero's head shot up at the sound of her voice.
'What in the world is she doing all the way down there so quickly?' he thought, frowning. He jogged up towards her and saw her staring at something. Craning his neck to take a look at what she was looking at, he stared at the great oak door in front of him with fearful eyes. 'No! This can't be it!' he thought fearfully, his blue orbs wide in surprise.
"Interesting… very interesting," Kizna muttered as she leaned down and examined every part of the door that she could get her hands on. Zero turned to look at the lock, which was placed on the wall on the side of the door.
Feeling something pulling at him, he walked towards the keypad as if something took a hold of his body and maneuvered him as they would a puppet. Zero lifted his hand and felt his eyes unfocused and focus back in a few seconds, but in those few seconds, his hands took over and quickly typed in an access code, which would open the great oak doors that stood in front of them. Turning to Kizna with a blank stare, he watched her expressions as she finally laid her eyes on the inside of the room.
"How'd you open the door?" the pink haired repairer asked her boyfriend with suspicious eyes.
"Uhh… well… I'm not sure," he said with a sheepish look on his face as he rubbed the back of his head. 'Of course I know how the door opened but I don't think I'll be telling her anytime soon… I want to figure this out myself before dragging everyone else in.'
"You know you can tell me anything… right?" she asked as she walked closer to him and gripped him by the shoulders. She looked straight into his baby blue orbs, staring him down, right to his soul.
Zero gulped and tried to stare back but broke it off quickly by saying, "of course," with a smile after it.
Giving a small smile, Kizna turned around and walked into the room, Zero following her close behind. Glancing around the room for the cursed window, he turned his head to the right, left, up… but found no window. Confused, he turned around and took a look at the doors that lead to the room once again. 'Yes, this is the room… so where is the window?' he thought. He looked around the room once again, making sure not to over look one spot, but once again, he could not find a window.
'What does this mean? Does this mean my dreams are not real? But Kizna led me here and used the same elevator just like in my dream…' Zero thought as he placed his hand under his chin, his eyebrows creasing together. He took a seat on the floor and closed his eyes as his brain tried to figure out this mystery.
'Ok, well, apparently something's in my dreams are real, something's I guess are yet to happen? And other things do not happen at all. Let's see… in my latest…. Nightmare,' he thought, carefully choosing his words, 'Kizna and the elevator scenario happened pretty much exactly the same. The corridor and the window parts have changed now… perhaps…' Zero held onto that chain of thought as his eyes snapped open and glanced at the opposite wall. He saw a small piece of paper stuck to the wall ahead of him. He ran across the wide, white colored room and went over to the other side. Glancing at Kizna, to see if she was still in the room, he took his time and examined the paper in front of him quietly.
Surprisingly, he was able to read the words on the paper just like in his dream. Apparently, or so his dream told him, that Kizna could not. To test it out, he called Kizna over.
"Hey Kizna! Come over here for a second. Take a look at this, I found something," he exclaimed. As his girlfriend walked over to him, Zero took a closer look at the paper in front of him and realized he could read what was written on it. 'So I guess this part of my dream is true too…' "Well now I can find out what really should have happened in my dream," Zero muttered under his breath.
"What dream?" Kizna asked. Zero jumped and turned around. He found that Kizna was standing right behind him when he muttered that out loud.
"Uhh…" he started as he rubbed the back of his head. "Nothing… never mind, I found something more interesting than my dreams…" he stated as he laughed nervously. Kizna shot him a weird glance and looked at the wall in front of them.
"Interesting," she said as she peered into the wall in front of her. "What is it?" she asked, looking slightly confused at the words written onto the paper posted on the wall. "I guess we can't figure it out since probably no one can read this…" she sighed.
"Um, Kizna, don't freak out, but I can read what it says…" Zero said as he took a quick glance at Kizna to see her reaction.
She turned to face him with wide eyes, shocked at first, but then her cat like curiosity settled in and she asked, "What does it say then?"
"Well, I think it's an old language of some sort, but somehow I am able to read it… Maybe we can show Clay this room and he can figure out what kind of language it is…"
"Maybe it's an old language from your old home, so that's how you know what it says?" Kizna asked shrugging.
"Well, it gives a list of numbers and words follow them. Like, the first number on it says ' 1: Mansion,' the second one says '2: Amusement Park,' the third one, '3: Coral Reefs.'" Zero then looked at the number pad next to the plastic covered paper. "Do we have to punch these numbers into the pad or something?" he asked Kizna.
Kizna looked just as confused as Zero, maybe even more. "I have no clue…" she said, shrugging once again.
"Well, I guess there's only one way to find out," Zero said as he lifted a finger up, preparing to push a button on the keypad. He pushed the button with a number 1 on it and waited for something to happen. "Huh?" he muttered, staring at the keypad, slightly confused. He tried again. Nothing happened.
"Maybe if you try pressing the green button?" Kizna offered. "What does that button say?"
"It says 'enter'." Zero read. "Ok, maybe your right," he submitted. Once again, he pushed the button reading 1 and then pushed the enter button. A whooshing sound filled their ears and echoed through the room. The two teenagers turned around to look at the room and saw that it started to change right before their every eyes.
"What's going on?" Kizna asked with wide eyes glued to the various walls of the room.
"I have no clue!" Zero shouted back as he too continued to stare at the mutating room. Colors began flooding the walls, images began to come up from the floor, trees came into view… and finally, the noises suddenly stopped and the two teens took another look around. Instead of the previously empty room, this room was now full of new items for their eager eyes to feast upon.
"What is this place?" Kizna asked as she took a tentative step forward.
The words on the paper came back to his mind as Zero muttered "Mansion," under his breath. "It's a mansion Kizna," he told her. "Amazing…" The chocolate haired boy took a few steps forward and approached the looming stone building trying to hold onto the last of his nerves. He placed a hand on the outer wall of the mansion only to feel a tingling feeling as his arm passed right through the wall. "What happened?" he asked out loud, trying to regain his balance.
"I think it's a hologram," Kizna said behind him. Zero jumped and then reprimanded her.
"Don't keep scaring me like that!" he said as he grabbed his chest, trying to ease his heart. After his heart had finally calmed down a bit, he turned to the pink haired repairer and asked, "How do you know it is a hologram?"
"Well, when you tried to touch the stone wall," she imitated his earlier movements and placed a hand on the wall, but it went through instead. "You know it's a hologram if you don't feel anything solid there. A hologram is basically a bunch of lights and images that are projected from a certain place to create bigger images like this. So it's not real. I guess it's showing how a 'mansion' would look like…" she said as she took another look around the place.
Nodding, Zero took in all that she said. Glancing around, he spotted an entrance and then said, "hey look, there's a door over there… let's go check it out!" he finished as he pulled Kizna along behind him. The grand door that led into the mansion opened with a 'creaking noise as Zero twisted the big brass doorknob and pushed the door open. Both candidate and repairer stared with wide eyes as the inside of the mansion was revealed to their eager eyes.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Zero asked as he stepped inside. Both teenagers then started to explore the mansion together. They took on the grand staircase up; it led them up to the first floor from the foyer of the mansion. The weird thing was, as they placed their feet on the first step of the staircase, the whole hologram shifted downwards just a bit, into the ground, yet revealed more of the first floor to them. As they climbed, or more like stomped on the floor, the hologram kept moving down into the ground and revealed more and more of the upper floors of the mansion.
"That's weird, but then again it's a hologram, we can't physically climb the stairs I guess. But to create such a thing that could react to a person's needs is amazing," Kizna said. "The hologram moves down as we go up the stairs to reveal more of the upper floors to us, as if we were really climbing the stairs. I wonder if it does the same thing if we took the stairs down to the basement or something," she said as she looked around the upper floors. They explored some more, basically until they had covered the mansion from head to toe.
Walking out of the mansion, Zero exclaimed, "That was amazing! Wish I had one of those houses for myself!"
"Maybe we can make one," Kizna said slyly, as she hugged Zero's arm to her chest. She turned her head to the side to get a better look at him. Zero's eyes widened at her remark and he started to blush a bit.
"We'll see," he mumbled under his breath as he kept his eyes glued to the ground. Kizna just snickered at his reaction.
"Let's go see what's next on that board," said Kizna as she dragged her boyfriend over to the wall again.
"Ok, well, number two is an amusement park," Zero read.
"An amusement park? What is that? A place that keeps you amused all the time?" Kizna said laughing. Zero shrugged.
"Guess we'll find out!" As Zero got ready to push the button with a 2 on it, Kizna stopped him.
"Wait… I think I hear someone out in the hallway."
"I don't hear a thing. How can you?" Zero asked, his eyebrow raised. Kizna just pointed to her cat ears. Zero smiled sheepishly and then said, "maybe we'd better get out of here then."
"How do you turn it off?" Kizna asked.
"Well, let's see…" Zero skimmed the board that was in front of him for any hints. At the bottom of the page, it read, 'to view any of these places, press the number followed by the enter key. To turn it off, press the exit key.'
Zero pushed the exit key and the room went back to normal; the walls were covered with white once again, and the room was empty.
"Let's get out of here," Zero whispered as both of them dashed towards the door. Kizna placed an ear to the door to see where the person she had heard earlier was. She heard the footsteps once again, but this time a little closer than before.
Zero pushed a button on the wall, on the side of the door, and the doors swooshed open once again. Sticking his head out, he looked both ways and saw someone approaching from the left. That person walked into a near by room and Zero took this chance to get away.
"Let's go, the person who was coming went into a room just now. We can make it to the elevator before he comes back I think," he told Kizna as he grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the room. They ran down the hallway until the elevator came back into their view.
"I am not getting back onto that…thing…" Kizna uttered as she looked around for another way down. Zero sighed and glanced back behind him. The stranger was no where to be seen so Zero then started looking for another staircase or an elevator. Running down an adjacent hallway, he spotted a small stairwell that led right down to the second floor.
"Kizna, I found a stairwell. Come on," Zero panted as he ran back to the pink haired girl. Both of them took the stairs and went back down to the second floor, eager to tell their friends what they had found.
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A/N: I was surprised at that amount of reviews I received for the last chapter… 1 review! And surprisingly, I now have over 550 hits for this story…
My friend has informed me that now has this new rule that you can't thank your reviewers in your story, but have to email them separately, and because of that, many people have stopped reviewing… Or maybe it's just that I didn't update in so long and people are mad at me? Whatever the reason may be, I would really appreciate the reviews and even if I have to respond to people by email, if you leave me your email address, I'll be glad to talk to you over email.
I know this was a very short chapter compared to the last one, but I did not have much time to write this. I will probably get the next chapter out in a week or two so look for it then.
Reviews would be appreciated!