Authors note: Still trying to work a large part of the story out... but I have enough for a short chapter, so I'll post this stuff at least.


Yuyu

Didn't want to let go of Yayaka's hand, but when arrived, Yayaka tugged herself loose and looked around. I copied.

Blue. Green. Teal. Cyan. Were underground, or in caverns. Surfaces gleamed. Could potentially blind if bright enough light shone in right areas. Walls appeared smooth, but showed hints of roughness with sparse imperfections in forms of cracks. If struck, could collapse tunnels. Few locations could provide that result. Looked at ground, wary of last world. Didn't appear to be weak floor. Glad about that... But unusual markings in the ground... Knelt down to investigate.

Tracks. As if stabbed and cut into ground, causing uneven surface. Slowly moved real hand over them. Sharp bumps. Travel without shoes would result in damaged feet.

Feet... Had opportunity to check injured leg. Did so. Pulled up trouser leg and removed shark-made bandages and saw wound. Teeth marks. Deep. Looked painful, but wasn't. Moved real hand next to it. Saw red marks on my fingernails...

Red, but not blood. Blood doesn't gleam like oil. Might be reverting to amorphous like Toto... Put real hand to necklace amorphous. If it gets worse, may have to retreat, but don't want to leave Yayaka...

Yayaka sniffed. "Does it smell like smoke to you?"

Stood up and inhaled. Faint smell of smoke. Nodded to answer Yayaka's question.

"Think there's a fire?" She asked. Sounded a little worried. I had another sniff of the air.

"Unsure. Would guess unlikel-" Stopped talking. Heard a crackle. Not like fire, though. Sounded like shoes kicking loose stones. Yayaka was alert instantly, head pointing towards source of the noise. Looked towards me and gestured with her hand for me to follow. We ducked behind a thick spike of rock. Would likely be out of sight of anything around.

Single crackle suddenly sounded numerous. Car tyres on a gravel road. Heard clicking too. Slight sound of squishing. Not alone here...

Seconds before dark shape rounded a corner. Couldn't entirely make out shape, but Yayaka seemed alarmed. Shoved down on my head, hard, keeping me out of sight. She crept around me, keeping track of enemy. Constant clacking of movement. Owner of noise sounded... long. Very long. Approximately sixty feet at an estimate. Became unsettled by continuous noises. Thought it wouldn't end... But eventually did.

Yayaka waited a while after it's departure before saying "I think it's gone..." She activated her headgear, trying to determine where to go next. Assume that was case, however she mumbled "Crapping hell..." to herself. Then seemed to become aware I was around again. She said to follow her afterwards.

Thought it was strange at first Yayaka didn't disable headgear, but soon realised would have been a bad idea. Could see weak points in the tunnels (could probably have closed off a few of them as we walked), but not the way through them. Would likely have gotten lost without Yayaka's visor to guide us. Walls were different shades of blues and greens. Cerulean, jade, sapphire... But easy to lose sense of direction. If alone, probably would have destroyed tunnels previously walked through to mark path. Could have resulted in trapping self in a tunnel, or attracted attention of giant creatures...

Probably best you can't get to Pure Illusion alone.

Heard wet chittering sounding from distant tunnel. Yayaka gave silent command with hand to stay still. Did so. Noise faded. Motioned to get going again.

Continued like that for a long time. Was getting bored. Swirls of colour in walls nice, but repetitive.

"I think this red dot's messing with us..." Yayaka mumbled. "I feel like we're going in circles..."

"Mark path?" I suggested. Had considered doing that previously after all, but didn't want to act without orders.

"I don't think that'd be a good idea." Yayaka said.

Confused. "Why?"

"Just trust me, if one of them works out what we've been doing and follows us..." She didn't finish the sentence.

SCREEEEEEEEEEE!

A loud screech nearby. Yayaka spun around and cursed. Quickly grabbed hold of my shoulders and shoved me forcefully to ground. She knelt over me, acting as a barrier.

Wasn't long before another creature was in the tunnels. Click-click-click-click… constant, fast. Like gunfire. Was hard to see from position on floor, but glance revealed lots of thick stabbing legs. Shifted head upwards, but Yayaka tried to block my eyes. Most of my vision was obscured, but could still see a little. Segmented, shining black body. Slimy. Winding. Wriggling, as hundreds of legs carried it along. Rattling, clicking…

Realised with horror what it was. Why Yayaka tried to cover my eyes.

Centipede. Giant centipede… Giant bug. Couldn't see head, but could imagine. Snapping pincers for mouth. Soulless eyes… Size of creature easily filled half the tunnel in height. Felt my skin begin to prickle. Could decapitate in a single bite… Began to shake despite warm tunnels and heated armour.

Giant centipede… Possible other insects too… Shining exoskeleton. Smooth. Alien… Spiders… Long hooked feet… Hairy legs… Injecting poison…

No. No no no…

Loud ear-splitting screech. Different to first centipede. A second?! Wanted to move. Get up. Run away. Couldn't move. Frozen. Shaking.

Terrified…


Yayaka

I noticed Yuyu had begun to tremble, and that was when I realised my attempt to try and keep the identity of the monsters a secret had failed. I wanted to try and reassure her somehow, but I felt that if I made a noise then I would have attracted the attention of the centipede, and I really didn't want to do that. It was smaller than the first one that walked by us, sure, but it was still pretty damn big. Hell, I wasn't scared of insects, but seeing something that big and up close, I could understand why Yuyu hated bugs. I wish my heart would stop thudding so hard in my chest. at the rate it was going, it would probably be seconds before the centipede could hear it and we'd be hunted.

REEEEEEEEE!

A nightmarish shriek ripped through the tunnels… And it was louder than the first one. It sounded a lot like it belonged to another centipede. And if either of them sees us…

SCREEEEE!

REEEEEE!

It sounded like they'd run into each other, and it wasn't longbefore I could hear them fighting. Their large bodies thrashing and slamming into the sides of the blue caverns. We should move. Now!

I didn't really want to get up, but if they're fighting, then in theory, they'd be far too busy to notice a couple of tiny black shapes trying to run away, right? I looked down at Yuyu and tried to whisper as quietly as I could to her, while being able to be heard over the noise, "Come on!" I took the wrist of her metal arm and tugged sharply, trying to get her to stand up, or at least kneel. There was no response.

Do you know how hard it is, not to shout at someone to give them a command, when they won't friggin' listen, and you're seconds away from being crushed? I know Yuyu's probably paralysed with fear, but for frags sake! "Get up, Yuyu, or we both die here!" I yanked her arm again, harshly this time, while trying to keep quiet and get her to move. She shouldn't have come with me. She's just gonna slow me down!

BOOM! Splinters of blue stone began to rain from above, as one of the centipede's bodies crashed into the wall overhead. I glanced upwards and saw the second centipede, towering over the first. Its cavernous maw was open, and ready to take a chunk out of the smaller one. We have to get out of here, NOW. In my desperation to get Yuyu out of here, I slapped her shoulder, which finally got a response from her. Wide, red eyes looked up at me, devoid of hope. But she moved.

"Come on, Yuyu!" I gave up trying to be quiet, and yelled as loud as I could, hoping both of the centipedes didn't think to look at us. Yuyu seemed to snap out of her fear a little bit, just enough to allow me to pull her to safety, as a writhing mass fell in the exact spot we were a couple of seconds ago.

It was hard to ignore the sounds of ripping and chomping, even though we were now making our escape. Of flesh being torn out of the thick shell. Squishing and crunching as one body was being ripped apart… It echoed behind us, and didn't seem to go away for a long time.

There was no real direction I had in mind as we ran, all I know is I wanted to get as far away from there as possible. Eventually, my legs started to feel like lead, with how hard I'd been running (that and dragging Yuyu behind me wasn't too easy either), and we had to stop for a second. I panted, trying to get my breath back.

"You know…" I said between gasps. "I think I can understand… why you hate bugs now…"

I tried to offer a reassuring smile, to her, but she didn't show any signs of seeing it. If anything, she looked just as haunted as Papika did when she returned to Flip Flap with me after the shadow's attack. Even though Yuyu willingly chose to come along with me, I felt guilty for not trying to force her back home anyway. Especially when the first damn world we went to had giant bugs in it…

"I'm sorry for slapping you," I said, feeling guilty for hitting her. "I shouldn't have done it, but I couldn't think of any other way to get you to snap out of it."

Yuyu continued to stare blankly at me, again, showing no signs of hearing me. First, I'm not there to defend Papika, now I've gotten Yuyu in the same sort of condition, and I physically struck her… I hung my head"I keep messing things up…"

I stood there, starting to get lost in my thoughts, when all of a sudden, I felt something tug the sleeve of my Flip Flap armour gently. A white and red metal arm. My gaze trailed along the arm to meet their owner's eyes. Amongst all that fear, was also a tiny hint of concern. I felt a little pull in the bond between us.

She can hear me… I guess she's just too scared to talk… It was only a small gesture, of her tugging my sleeve, but it reminded me of one of Cocona's parting messages for us. 'Please take care of each other.' I took a deep breath and stood up, straighter. I'm gonna try, Cocona.

"I'm fine, Yuyu," I said, which was a complete lie. But I need to be strong for her. I clicked my visor on to see if there were any signs of the red dot around. I spun around a little to locate it, and found it. "If it wasn't for the fact the thing we're chasing is still in this world, I'd order you to get us out of here, right away…"

I still had no idea what the red dot was, but I felt like it was calling me. Maybe taunting me, too. 'I'm in a world your companion hates, but you still have to follow me!' sorta thing. It definitely seemed like it was sentient, rather than just a stationary thing, and if it changed to another world which either of us would end up hating, it would confirm my suspicions that it did indeed have something to do with the shadow. But at least that means we're on the right track…

"This way," I said. I made sure to look behind me to make sure Yuyu was with me. She seemed scared still, but was taking tentative steps to follow me, which was an improvement. "I'll try and keep an eye out for more bugs so we won't get caught like that again, okay?"

Her head tilted downwards a fraction in a nod, and we continued on our way.


Although we heard distant chitters and clicking, we didn't run into another bug. Quite a few of them seemed to show up on my visor, so at least it was easy to try and guide the two of us through the least-infested tunnels. It didn't stop us from walking through an insect nest at one point. It was just a pile of albino, sightless bugs, all scrabbling and clambering on top of each other, but it made my skin crawl just to look at it. Thankfully none of them came towards us. It was a good thing I kept checking behind me for Yuyu, as I'd almost accidentally left her behind in that room. She didn't seem to register the fact I was walking off without her, her eyes were too busy being glued to the bugs. She was shaking on the spot with fear, her mind probably having a million thoughts at once, and going into overload. I took her hand, gently saying "It's just me," so she wouldn't freak out, and lead her away from the room.

After some time, there was a beam of light shining through one of the tunnels. It was damn bright, even though my visor screen was pretty dark anyway, I still felt the need to cover my eyes with my hands, because it hurt to look at. But it looked like an exit. Yuyu didn't seem bothered by the light at all. If anything, she seemed to like it, as she seemed to stand up a little straighter.

Well, I had good news for her, too, "According to my visor, if we go through here, it'll take us outside, and that's where the red dot is too."

Yuyu let go of my hand, and was off like a rocket. I wasn't sure I could blame her. I wasn't claustrophobic, hell I'd been crammed into the cockpit of a mecha where I barely had room to move, but being stuck in those tunnels for so long was starting to drive me friggin' nuts.

I was about to follow Yuyu out into the open, but she stopped, at what looked like the edge of a very big fall, which I'd just about managed to avoid going over myself... Honestly I didn't know whether to be happy about that or not, I mean I wasn't falling to my death, but still, when I saw all those bones...

Much like the insects in the caverns, they seemed impossibly large. Ribcages looked like bridges that could span the distance between islands, brown and fossilised with age. There were skulls of every shape and form you could think of, all hollowed out, with eye sockets that you could probably cram fifty elephants inside with no trouble, and still have room for more. In some places, there were... what I'd guess used to be hands at some point, sprouting upwards like tiny plant shoots, as if things had become trapped within the tides of bone and had attempted to escape, only to become another addition to the land itself... And I know that for a fact. My visor was still up, and it had outlined every single bone below us. Everything was bone. There wasn't a single patch of dirt or sand or rock anywhere to be seen...

The only mercy I could think of, was that none of the bones seemed to be burnt or charred. If that was the case, I probably would have shut down, right then and there, just like Yuyu had earlier. I wasn't sure if I should consider it lucky that it was only bad enough to make me tremble where I stood.

It took a little while for me to realise that it wasn't just skeletal hands jutting out from the ground, trying to reach the sky. I could see structures that looked like termite mounds crossed with cactuses, like strange trees, dotted all over jumbled landscape of bone. I tried to focus on those, rather than about the many corpses that littered the land below. I can't become one of them... And I can't let that happen to Yuyu either... I'm not going to let her die, especially not in a world of bugs...

I gulped, trying to force down a lump in my throat that was forming, trying not to think about how the bones were picked clean and in plain sight in the first place.

I could feel fear trying to build in me. I can't let it win... Without even thinking about it, I'd reached for Yuyu's hand and taken it. Her real one, going by the fact although it was cold, that it felt like skin, rather than metal. I gave it a light squeeze, to try and remind myself that I wasn't alone.

Yuyu can't be dealing with this too well either...

I glanced at her, and saw her red eyes wide open, unblinking at everything around us. She wasn't trembling, like I was, but the sheer terror she was experiencing was clear in her body langauge. She stood, rigid. Frozen. Anxiety spiked in me for a second, and I thought the dragon egg amorphous had failed, and she'd turned into a statue next to me, and I hadn't even noticed, so I tugged her hand. Her arm wobbled, which I was relieved to find. She hasn't frozen on me... But as I moved her hand, I noticed something red on her fingernails.

"Have you been bleeding?" I asked. Somehow, my voice didn't have any tremors in it, which was probably another weird miracle. I knew that anything this world made me feel would probably catch up to me later, but I took the fact I was still able to talk as a good sign... for now.

Yuyu blinked and her head whipped around quickly to our connected hands, which she stared at for a second, before wrenching hers away. "...fine..." was all I could hear her say, before her head turned back to the world below. She can still respond. That's something... But if she keeps looking down at that, it's not gonna do her any good.

Maybe it was a little harsh of me, but I grabbed her chin, and jerked her head towards me, so she had no choice but to look at me. Red eyes flicked to my purple, before looking away again. But I have her attention.

"Yuyu. I'm scared too, but we need to move. The red dot is above us. We'll have to get out of here and climb up to get to it. It'll be a Hole that'll take us out of here." That last part was a complete lie. I had no fraggin' clue what the hell the red dot was, or if it could get us out of here, but I had to say something to persuade Yuyu staying here wasn't a good idea.

Click-click-click-click-click-click-click-CLICK-CLICK...

I glanced back into the tunnels behind us and saw some souless eyes reflecting light back at us. I couldn't see a single leg or mandible, but it was enough to force me to get going.

"Sorry about this!" I said to Yuyu, before shoving her roughly out of the tunnel, into the open, and swiftly fired a grappling wire after, to catch her, and stepped out into the open myself, firing another wire to the outside structure of the... termite tree thing... we'd just been running around inside.

I felt a heavy weight catch and pull, and I knew Yuyu had been caught successfully, which made me feel relief for one sweet moment, before everything else I was feeling flooded back to me. My other wire had caught the side of the termite tree, and seemed to be holding.

The outer surface of the tree seemed to be knotted and gnarled in shape, so it seemed to have natural hand and foot holds, which was one positive. I looked down at Yuyu to see she'd managed to swing herself to the side of the tree too, and looked like she was ready to climb. Her eyes were still wide open, but I noticed at some point, that she'd taken her sword from her belt and had slammed it into the side of the tree, to act as a climbing aid. Her metal hand was clamped around the handle of it, tightly.

Okay... We can do this...

"We've just gotta climb up now, Yuyu, then we'll be out of here!" I called down to her, mostly to try and encourage her, but partly to try and talk myself into a state where I could function without wanting to explode.

My hand shook as I took it away from the surface and tried to pull the two of us upwards. Yuyu was heavy, which didn't quite help, and neither did that the surface of the rocks under my hands was pretty hot, having been out in the glaring daylight… I felt like a world like this should have been clouded over, or have some weird sky, to reflect the dismal state of everything beneath it… but nope. It was just a plain sunny day, with a sky as bright and crisp as one you'd find on a clear winter morning. In a way the fact the sky appeared so normal was kinda unsettling…

You're meant to be heading up, Yayaka, not admiring the scenery. I grit my teeth, mentally scolding myself for getting distracted and tried to continue climbing. The weight I felt as I tried going upwards seemed to have lessened, and I heard a rhythmic scraping and thumping as Yuyu withdrew her sword from the termite tree and slammed it back in.

Shing… THUNK! Shing… THUNK!

The tunnel that lead outside was in the trunk of the tree, so thankfully, we wouldn't really need to clamber around or over and of the 'branches.'

Shing… THUNK!

Just one nice, simple direction…

Shing… THUNK!

And then we're out of here…

Shing… THUNK! Click-click-click…

…That's not Yuyu's sword…

clickclickclickCLICKCLICKCLICK…

We're being followed!

"Keep going! Don't look down!" I shouted to Yuyu. I had no idea if that was a good command to give, but I thought I could hear Yuyu's rhythm slowing down, and I wanted to try and encourage her.

But could we outrun sixty-foot long centipedes? Probably not, but what else could we do? That red dot wasn't going anywhere, and something about it seemed to be calling to me…

"Yayaka…"

I flinched when I heard the voice, before I realised it was just Yuyu below me.

"Yeah, I can hear them too, Yuyu…" Hell, my visor showed quite a few little yellow arrows below me with numbers representing the distance between us and our attackers… And those numbers were getting smaller, fast.

"Yayaka…"

"Yuyu, if I could grapple both of us up there, I would have done so already," I growled, feeling frustrated, "but with the both of us together, we're far too heavy to do that…" My hand slipped, scraping against the tree's surface, leaving a patch of blood. Damn it! "This would be so much easier if Toto was here…" I grumbled, trying to force myself to keep going, and ignore the pain in my hand.

"Yayaka… Can't…"

For frag's sake! "Yuyu—"

Ignoring my own damn advice, I looked down, and immediately wished I hadn't. Not only because I swung my head, so fast around, that I almost gave myself vertigo, but because of the waves of thrashing, skittering giant insects... Numerous enough now for their cries to deafen us, screeching for our bones to join the endless expanse of them below...

But worse than that was Yuyu. I thought the fact she'd used her sword as a climbing aid was a smart idea… At least until I caught sight of the metal arm, she'd been holding her sword in. Normally, it was a bright, shining white, with red accents, but now it was covered in thick, amber sap, which bled from the tree. I could see Yuyu, trying to wrench her shoulder away from the tree, and she couldn't.

She was stuck.

And the bugs were coming closer.

What can we do?!

The first idea that came to mind was using a rocket lower down on the base of the tree, and hope I could blast it into oblivion, but I doubted just one rocket would be enough to do that. Hell, even if I used all of my remaining rockets it probably wouldn't be enough to take the tree down... Not without Toto's ability to target, these things... Well I say that, Yuyu could probably tell me where to aim exactly to destroy the tree if I wanted, but chances are that'd mean she'd have to be lowered down or be able to hover a fair distance away to get a good look, and neither of those were possible right now.

Maybe I should have told her to destroy the tunnels after all, then maybe we wouldn't be in this situation... I wasn't even sure if Yuyu's new smaller arm would be strong enough to do such a thing... Not that she can use it anyway, it's all gummed up from sap...

Neither of our weapons would be any good in this situation. That red dot wasn't getting any closer, either. I got the feeling, the only way out of this situation was to use a Hole to get out of here.

"Yuyu! Get a Hole ready, I'm gonna drop down next to you, and we'll escape through it!"

I didn't wait for any reply or confirmation, and retracted the wire I'd originally aimed upwards, to catch at the side of the tree. This time, I aimed it downwards, closer to Yuyu. I gave it a second before tugging it, to make sure it was secure...

And then I jumped off.

It wasn't the first time I was falling blindly through the air, but it didn't scare me any less doing it this time, than I did others. I mean, yeah, you could argue that this time there was actually a floor I could land on, rather than just an endless void (which I'd probably splatter against if I actually hit), but there were also quite a few bugs that could probably stretch out and reach me if I fell too far down.

It was pretty difficult to see as I was tumbling through the air, but I tried to try and find Yuyu, and was glad to see her fiddling around with a Hole device one-handed. It was hard to tell, but I think her hand was shaking. Don't drop it...

"Just get it working!" I shouted down to her. I looked away from Yuyu and back towards the bugs. Being able to see things from a different perspective revealed that they were a lot closer than I thought. At the rate I was falling, and the bugs were skittering towards us, it was hard to say who'd get to Yuyu first...

And if it was me, if any of the bugs would be able to follow us to Pure Illusion.

"Damn it..." I mumbled, as I put a hand to one of my rockets. I really didn't want to use one, but I didn't want anything following us to our next destination, and Yuyu couldn't use her noise grenade, if her only available hand was working on our only way out of here.

I fired one off, and tried aiming for a space between Yuyu and the writhing tide of bugs, hoping my rocket hold them up enough so they wouldn't follow us, just as I landed next to her.

BOOM!

The explosion shook the tree, and I could see whisps from the cloud of black smoke surround us. At the same time, Yuyu slammed the Hole device against the side of the tree, and a deep black portal appeared where we were clinging to the tree.

I wasn't too sure, but before we both fell through the Hole, I thought I saw the red dot fade away. It might have just been that way normally, but the timing struck me as too coincidental, and I began to wonder if it somehow knew we'd left this world behind...


Authors note: Fun fact! It's almost been a year (will have been a year on Monday, the 20th April) since I started writing my Flip Flappers fanfics! I wouldn't quite have expected to write at least 230k words total, but I won't complain, it's been kinda nice to write an all big story again. I hope people have been enjoying reading it. Feel free to comment if you have!