Hello again :)
I'm sorry the last chapter was so short, but I'm making up for it with this longer one.
So it's happening again. Heavenly Host has taken in its newest victims. Damn Sachiko can't take the hint that killing is wrong, I guess. This was a very fun chapter to write for me and I hope you guys like it! Leave your comments in your reviews. I take into account every word you guys have to say. Thanks!
Arrivederci,
x-LiveFantasy-x
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Mariko and Raiden were still laughing, the sound echoing through the large tiled bathroom in his house. The fancy floors were littered with the peel-off portions of Band-Aids and towels that were soaked with water. While Raiden's mother went downstairs to get them some peroxide for the cuts, they both took turns sticking Band-Aids on themselves and the other in all the places where they didn't need them just because they could.
"I can't believe it held up that long!" she giggled.
"Yeah, I didn't even think the wagon could fit both of us, let alone ride down the hill without falling over!"
"Well, not until the end."
"Where we fell right into the creek!" Raiden snickered. "It was awesome!"
"It's winter though. The water was so cold!" Mariko squealed.
The door clicked and pushed open. Raiden's mom walked in with new towels, a big brown bottle of peroxide, and some cotton balls. She had just returned home from work and wasn't even able to sit down and take her shoes off before Mariko and Raiden showed up at the door, covered in cuts and scratches and soaked to their bones. She still had her tight bun in and her heels on as she sat on the edge of the tub with them.
"I don't even know what possessed you two to do that," she shook her head. "Raiden's wagon is battered and so are you two!"
"Eh, it was old anyways," he snuck a sideways smile at Mariko and she giggled again in spite of herself.
"Mariko, sweetie, could you take off your coat for me? It's soaked and that's not good for you," Raiden's mom asked.
"Sure," she unbuttoned her coat. "Thanks for taking care of us, Mrs. Nakamura."
"It's never a problem, Mariko... Oh!" Mrs. Nakamura sounded shocked at the end because when Mariko took off her coat, she was covered in huge bruises. They were puffy and angry and most were the size of oranges.
Mariko looked down at herself and whimpered. "What happened to me?"
"Sweetie, we should call your mom," Raiden's mom said frantically as she blotted all her open cuts with peroxide. They stung a little, but what worried Mariko the most was that the bleeding wasn't stopping. "You might be anemic. This looks like a sure sign."
"No," Mariko said. "It's fine, really."
"Mom's right," Raiden said, his eyebrows knitting together. "You don't look so good."
"I don't want her to worry. It's really no big deal. I'll just stick a few more bandages on and I should be fine."
"If you're sure," Raiden muttered, sticking another Band-Aid on her face.
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When Raiden opened his eyes, he immediately knew something was wrong.
His head was pounding and he felt like someone just decked him in the jaw. His ribs felt like they were made of barbed wire and as he sat up he felt a jabbing pain in his side. Did he break one? Maybe. He never felt the pain of breaking a rib before, so he didn't know what to think of it. He coughed, but no blood came up. He figured that was a good sign.
Suddenly, his memory came rushing back to him. The ritual, the black hole…
Mariko, he thought, his blood turning to ice in his veins. He stood up with difficulty and looked around for his best friend. Is she okay?
As he searched the room for her, pushing broken desks away, he realized that the decrepit classroom he was standing in was not his homeroom. The walls were a sickly green color and there were holes dappling the floor all around his feet. He had to watch his step just to make sure he didn't fall in or make a new gap. Everything about the room felt unstable as he noticed how rotted the desks and podium looked. There were ripped pieces of paper with notices stamped on them that were so faded that Raiden couldn't read most of them. Dust twirled in the air, like something in the room had been disturbed, and there was a cracked portion in the floor that had only half broken through. Could that have been from when he and Mariko fell in? He was glad they didn't fall all the way through. He noticed in that moment that his black jacket was ripped and blood was dribbling down the side of his arm, staining his jeans. He clutched his upper arm to quell the flow of red, but it offered little help.
Out of the corner of his eye, Raiden spotted something. There was a figure resting on the platform the podium was standing on. Squinting in the poor light, he recognized the silhouette immediately.
Mariko! He rushed over to her, ignoring the pains in his side and arm. He flipped her over so she was facing up and saw she wasn't moving. Was she unconscious... or worse? A huge bruise had blossomed on her forehead. Her sun-blonde hair was caked with dust and little specks of blood that were coming from a gash on her shoulder. No matter what he did, he couldn't stop the bleeding. Please, please don't let her be dead…
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Yuji woke with a start to a huge clattering sound. He shot bolt upright so quickly his head spun and his heart was beating so fast he expected to either faint or have his chest explode, whichever came first.
What the hell just happened? He looked around confusedly. I'm dreaming, right? I must have passed out or something. What is this place?
He was in the middle of… a library? Yeah, a library. He was surrounded by shelves full of books and the smell of rotting paper permeated the air around him. As he stood up, brushing himself off, he noticed that there were bugs crawling all over the books and they were so dilapidated that their titles and covers were barely legible. He shook out his ruby-streaked dark hair and dust fell out of it like snow. His back was killing him, probably from the fall he took when he was sucked in. Where were the others?
Forget that, he thought. Where am I?
Yuji looked around, but saw no one else around him. He felt something strange, though, like a presence of some sort. He couldn't quite explain it, but the room gave him chills. He began to walk towards the southern end of the library, taking in the scene. Doors came into view at the end. When he came up to them, he saw that they were really, really old. He reached out and took the large metal handle in his hands. He pushed, but nothing happened. He pulled; no dice either. After a few seconds of violently tugging on the handle, he found that it wouldn't budge an inch.
He stepped back, examining the door in a frustrated manner before kicking it hard with his heel. He immediately regretted that decision because the doors didn't move at all. In fact, he felt like he'd just kicked a brick wall. Pain shot through his ankle and shin and he lost his balance, falling back onto the hard floor again. He looked incredulously at the doors-that-were-not-really-doors standing unmoved in front of him. He was looking around, trying to scope out another exit, when a scream echoed through the huge space.
Yuji's head snapped around to try to figure out where the sound came from, but only silence met his ears. He scrambled up and held his head like he had a migraine. I must have hit my head when I fell…
But that was no hallucination. Another scream rang out, this time coming from the right of him. His gut lurched and he found himself running towards the sound, rounding corners and twining through aisles full of rotting books stacked in cracked, stately shelves. I've heard that scream before… He thought as he came into the center area of the library.
What Yuji saw, he could barely comprehend. Lying on the floor, propped up only on her elbows, was Tsukiko. Her eyes were like huge discs of platinum, frozen in a look of sheer terror. Looming over her, feet planted on either side of her knees, was a strange blue figure that glowed with an ominous light. The figure was of a child – no, not a child. A pre-teen girl. She was petite but not particularly short, with the build of a seventh grader. She was dressed in a school uniform, but Yuji couldn't recognize the school it belonged to at all. Her hair was choppy and uneven, long in some parts and nearly scalped in others, like a preschooler had taken a weed whacker to her thick locks. Blood stained the front of her shirt and to Yuji's horror he saw the liquid was originating from a gigantic, artery-severing slash to her throat. Gore hung from her neck, her severed vocal cords swinging about as if they were torn from her neck deliberately.
As the girl inched closer to Tsukiko, she tried to squirm away, but the girl fell forwards, throwing her full weight onto Tsukiko's chest, pinning her forearms to the ground. Tsukiko tried to kick away from her, but there was a huge gash on her leg that prevented her from doing so. The girl opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a disgusting gurgling sound, followed by a swath of blood pouring from her mouth and the gash in her throat. Though it stained the girl's skirt, not a drop got on Tsukiko. That's when Yuji knew this girl couldn't have been human.
In a split second, Yuji assessed his options. He could run, but that would mean that creature would kill Tsukiko. He could go find help, but by then the creature might be done with Tsukiko and come for him. And there was no exit save the doors that really weren't doors.
Feeling like a moron, he yelled out, "Hey!" and threw one of the miniature screwdrivers in his back pocket at the girl's head.
The little metal object soared right through the girl's cranium and clattered on the floor, skittering to the other side of the room and under a shelf. Her head snapped up and her dead, soulless eyes met his as she gurgled once more and rose up from on top of Tsukiko. Tsukiko scrambled out, limping on her left leg, as the girl began to clamber towards Yuji. He tried to run, but his legs wouldn't cooperate. Was this what shock felt like?
Tsukiko hurried over to him as fast as she could with her bad leg and screamed, "RUN!"
Despite fear running through his system like poison, he didn't think twice. They both took off towards the doors on the other end of the library, the creature hot on their tail.
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"Kiko!" Hiroshi called out desperately into the hallway. "Tsukiko! Answer me!"
The sound of his voice echoed through the dark hall until it disappeared completely, eliciting no response. He ran out from the doorway and called out again, louder this time, but nobody answered him. The walls around him almost seemed to drink in every sound he made.
"Come on, sis, talk to me!" He yelled, but he knew that she wasn't there to hear him.
It's no use, Hiroshi, a piteous voice inside him whispered. She's not there.
"She has to be! Someone has to be!" He cried out in response to his own conscience, his tone growing more and more frustrated with each passing moment.
His heart was pounding, adrenaline surging through his system, fueling his anger. He knew that sooner or later he was going to pop, just like he usually did. Figuring that it was better to get it out sooner rather than later, he turned around and slammed his fist into the cracking wall. Pain shot through his ligaments, setting his nerves on fire as the raw skin began to bleed on his knuckles. The wallpaper cracked, but the wall itself wasn't damaged at all. He turned around and slid down the wall, pushing his hands into his hair, anger slowly ebbing out of him.
That's when he noticed a pair of big, honey colored eyes watching him from around the corner, belonging to a pale, shocked face. The girl was watching him nervously the whole time and he hadn't known she was there. Hell, he didn't even see her collapsed in the room with him.
"I'm… sorry you had to see that," he said after a moment of silence.
"It's okay," she said, taking a deep breath to – Hiroshi assumed – suppress her fear. "You have a right to be worried about her. It's fine."
Great, he thought to himself. Someone else who's afraid of me.
"You look familiar," he said. "Have we met before?"
"You're Tsukiko's brother. Hiroshi, yeah?" she said. "We share a homeroom."
Looking at her closer in the light now, Hiroshi recognized her. This was the new girl at their school – Aya was her name, wasn't it? He recognized her from that morning; how could he have not known who she was? Hiroshi had missed a lot of school in the short time Aya was there, so their paths didn't cross a lot. Thinking back, Hiroshi had seen her a lot in homeroom, but she was often by herself or talking to Mariko, who was their resident welcome-wagon for new kids. But something else seemed oddly familiar.
"Never mind," he brushed it off, even though he was still curious. "Do you know where my sister went after that hole swallowed us up? Actually, scratch that – do you know where anyone went?"
"I can't remember anything from the moment I fell in to the time I woke up in that classroom back there," she gestured behind her. "Can you?"
"No, I can't remember anything either," he admitted. As he stood up and brushed the excess dust off his pants, he discovered that he towered over Aya. He was at least seven or eight inches taller than her, give or take. He didn't ever notice how short she was; she couldn't have been taller than 5'2" or 5'3". It painfully reminded him of Tsukiko, who was small as well, even though Aya had a more athletic build and Tsukiko was thin and petite. He would find her, wherever she was.
Seeing the worried look fall across his face, she spoke up, "We'll find her. Everyone else, too. We just have to keep moving," Hiroshi could almost see the gears in her head start to turn as she strategized, looking around them for a lead. "There has to be an exit somewhere here… wherever 'here' is. All we have to do is find it"
"And maybe find out where we actually are," Hiroshi habitually ran his fingers through his hair – something he always did when he was thinking.
"That too," she peered down to the end of the hallway then gestured for him to follow her. "Come on. I think I see something down the end."