This was originally a piece of English homework, but I have tried to keep everyone IC (in character). Stephen and Nia are my OCs, who, if you've read any of my other fanfics, you may recognise.
This is by far the goriest fanfic I've ever written, so please take care, it's rated T for a reason!
Another note, this is set after ToS, when Zelos is alive although it doesn't make too much difference.
And I DON'T own Tales of Symphonia, K?
"An axe murderer?" Lloyd asked in a hushed tone from the back of the class.
His teacher sighed. The only time he was awake during class was for exciting news like this. It really baffled her.
A hand went up timidly from the middle of the room.
"Colette?" The teacher, Professor Sage, asked.
"What is an axe murderer?"
The whole class sighed and Lloyd shouted, "It's a person who kills people with axes."
"Oh," Colette looked puzzled. "I thought it was someone who destroyed axes."
"Can we return back to the lesson? As I was saying…" Professor Sage stopped as she heard snores once again from the back row. It was going to be a long lesson…
Outside, after class, Lloyd, Colette and their friends Nia and Stephen were talking.
"I wonder if we'll have to stay at home tomorrow? They just can't force us to school with a contemptuous cretin like that on the lose." Nia argued.
"I wonder if we'd get an award for finding this person…" Lloyd wondered aloud.
"Please don't say you're thinking of going after him! Didn't you hear what old Sage said in class? He's dangerous!" Stephen said.
"Come on. What's the worst he could do?"
Nia and Stephen both had images of decapitated heads falling to the ground, with a bloodied axe resting on a nearby tree stump.
"I think I had one of those whatchamacallits again." Stephen groaned.
"Premonitions?" Nia asked.
"That's the one."
"Please?" Lloyd pleaded.
"I think it's a great idea, Lloyd!" Colette cheerfully chirped.
"I wonder whether it was the idea, or the one who said it." Nia whispered.
It was common knowledge that Colette felt strongly for Lloyd, even if Lloyd was too dense to realise it.
"I'll just go without you then." Lloyd said, confident that he could force Nia and Stephen into going.
"Fine, we need to look out for you. Besides, who's going to scream when we all die?"
"That's absurd, we aren't going to die." Lloyd said.
That weekend…
"We're going to die…we're all going to die…" Nia whimpered in fear.
They had wandered through the woods where the axe murderer was last sighted. Lloyd would have accused Nia of being an alarmist, however, he didn't know what the word meant.
Suddenly, the bushes rustled.
"Ah! We are going to die! Lloyd, I blame you!" Nia shouted.
But all that stumbled out of the bush was a cute squirrel, holding a cactus over its head.
"Now that's something you don't see every day." Colette remarked.
"Where is this axe murderer?" Lloyd muttered impatiently.
"Look, I'll buy us all a curry if we turn back right now." Nia tried to persuade Lloyd.
"No way, this is much more exciting!"
Nia and Stephen groaned. The small group continued through the forest.
"What if I withdraw some money from my account and we get some pizza?" Nia asked.
Lloyd stopped, contemplating the mouth-watering, cheesy goodness of a proper Italian pizza. With super-human strength, he declined.
They all carried onwards, through the dark, spooky forest. Colette tripped over a tree root, somehow landing on her backside. Being so used to falling over, she didn't make a sound. Nia, Stephen and Lloyd didn't notice and carried on walking. Colette pulled herself to her feet, brushed the dirt off her clothes and started walking. Unfortunately, she was walking in the opposite direction to the rest of her friends.
"Hey, where did Colette go?" Lloyd asked, looking round him. Lloyd wasn't looking where he was going and tripped over, impaling himself on a piece of metal that someone has dumped in the middle of the forest.
"Oh, my…Lloyd! Are you okay?" Nia was worried.
Lloyd's breaths came in short, sudden bursts. "I…think…I'll…live." He tried to move, then winced, sending shudders down his body.
The rusty piece of pipe had penetrated his shoulder, and the wound was bleeding freely.
Both of them knew that they'd need to get Lloyd medical treatment before he lost too much blood. Nia whipped out her mobile phone, before cursing.
"No signal." She growled angrily.
"We'll have to move him." Stephen stated.
Lloyd sounded like he was going to say something, then fainted.
"He must have lost a lot of blood. What do we do?" Nia asked, trying, and failing, not to panic.
"Um…we need to…move him…"
"I think I already figured that part out, Einstein." Nia snapped.
"We can't take the pipe out, it'll make him lose more blood."
"We can't move him with the pipe in his shoulder; it's buried in the ground!"
"One of us should run for help. The school is over in…" Stephen looked round him. "…that direction." He pointed to his right. "I think…"
"One of us has to stay here."
"I'll go, I'm faster." Stephen volunteered.
"But I'm better at distance running."
"We need every second." Without a further word, he ran into the gloom of the forest.
"Hurry back." Nia whispered.
Meanwhile, Colette was still wandering through the forest. She brushed a curl of hair out of her eyes. She crept into a clearing filled with axes, knives, guns and one bazooka. In the middle of the clearing stood a tall man dressed in black. The man reached for an axe…
Nia and Stephen both heard a blood-curdling scream, then, silence.
Stephen was still running. The trick was to start slow and get faster, but with Lloyd's life on the line, he'd started running pretty quickly. Not to mention that the scream got him scared, and he'd sped up, not wishing to stay in the forest a moment longer than necessary.
"One, two, three…" He counted off the steps in his mind.
Nia also heard the scream and almost panicked. She forced herself to remain calm, and to try and recall any first aid training she had heard of.
"Apply pressure to the wound." She murmured to herself. "Well, that's impossible. What else?"
She felt strangely calmer. "Raise the injury above the heart…that, I can do."
Carefully, she moved Lloyd to slow the pumping of blood.
"Stephen, please, get back soon." She implored mid-air.
Stephen finally saw the school building in his sights. He ran into the school, only pausing to open the door. Surprisingly, there were teachers in the school on a Saturday, marking work and performing other education related tasks. Stephen tried to find Professor Sage, the only healer in the school. Once he'd found her, and hastily explained what had happened, they ran for the forest again, after telling the receptionist to call the police.
Nia heard a rustle in the trees.
"Who's there?" Came her voice, shakily.
The only reply was the gunshot, which left a bullet in Nia's heart.
Stephen heard the gunshot and ran towards the sound. He found Lloyd exactly where he'd left him, but Nia was collapsed in a heap on the ground.
"I'm so sorry, Nia. This was all my fault. I should've let you go instead, you would've been faster…" Stephen started crying for his two dying friends.
"Take care of Lloyd and leave the murderer. Let the police handle it." Nia said through shallow breaths.
Professor Sage tried her best, but she'd never come across such a bad wound before. There was nothing she could do for Nia. She turned her attention to Lloyd. She did the best she could, but she admitted that without some better tools, she was fairly helpless. She explained that the wound needed to be cauterised, and she didn't have anything suitable. They decided to wait for help.
The killer lurked in the shadows and moved into a spot where the boy and his teacher were plainly visible. They were easy to aim at, first the teacher then this 'Stephen'. The gun was raised…but the finger didn't pull the trigger. A smile spread across the murderers face.
"I have a better idea."
"Something's wrong. I can feel it." Stephen said.
"You get that same feeling that something's amiss?" Raine asked.
Stephen nodded his head.
"I had a horrible thought. What if the person who killed Nia is still here, toying with us?"
Stephen shuddered. He tried to look for anything unusual in the gloom of the forest, but every shadow seemed like a ghostly figure, playing tricks on his mind.
A snigger came from the bushes.
"So, you suspect that I've stayed here. Well done." The voice was hard to place, but chimed with familiarity.
"Who are you? What do you want with us?"
"I want a little fun before you die. Obviously I've been looking in the wrong place." A figure stepped out of the bushes, with it's head concealed by a balaclava and clutching a gun in it's right hand.
"Wait, don't we have a right to know who you are?"
"Fine." The word was spat. The figure raised it's left hand with the grace of a ballerina and pulled at the balaclava masking it's head.
"Colette!" Stephen shouted. "No, this is wrong. You're our friend; you wouldn't do this. You can't have killed Nia."
"Believe it. I am not the idiotic blonde that you all took me for."
"The gunshot?.."
"Someone happened to find my tools. I just made sure he wouldn't tell anyone else." She smiled. "Like I can't let you tell anyone who I am."
"We promise we won't tell anyone." Even as he spoke the words, he knew it was too late. His heart was in his mouth, the beats irregular, sometimes doing a concerto, then doing the cancan.
Colette fired two shots. Stephen and Raine fell to the ground.
"I am the angel of death!" She proclaimed.
"No." Came a weak voice.
"Lloyd?" Her expression softened.
"I know you better than this." Lloyd had regained consciousness.
"You're still alive? I thought…you were dead."
"So, you'll kill me for knowing too much."
"No." She said absentmindedly.
"What if I went to the police? Would you just go to jail?"
"I can't kill you Lloyd…but I can't be found out by the police." Her fingers were reaching for something in her pocket.
"What are you going to do? What have you got?"
"Cyanide." Was the one word answer, before she put the pill into her mouth.
Colette collapsed onto the floor, motionless.
Silence fell across the forest, then…applause. Nia, Stephen, Raine and Colette all stood in a line and bowed.
"What's happening?" Lloyd asked.
"The end of the show. You were so into your part, you must have forgotten, Lloyd." Nia explained.
"So Colette isn't a murderer? But how come we have the same names in the show as in real life?"
"The producers were really lazy and couldn't think of any different names." Nia once again explained.
"Anyway, we were told to use a list of words and we haven't used them all. Like bawdy…" Raine said.
"Why didn't we just mention Zelos then?"
"We also didn't manage to get concession in there."
"Well, excuse us if we were too busy dying to go to a theme park!"
"And conniving."
"Um, I was rather conniving." Said Colette, timidly.
"And unfortunately, that's all we have time for. Just a reminder that the authoress only owns Nia and Stephen, and put them in this story as additives." An all powerful booming voice said.
"Wait we haven't said centrifugal…"Raine's voice was cut off by the end credits.
Please read and review people, I KNOW you're out there.