Night 47: Main Hallway, 2-Center
[from here]It was times like this he had to wonder if he was the only damn person in this place who still cared about finding the fastest way home possible. Which probably wasn't true, but hell. Seeing as the only people he'd worked with so far had 'stealing books' as a goal or were setting up training nights, it was no damn wonder he was feeling
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"Witch," they hissed again, jostling about the bloodied girl. She should have been dead, but Anthy merely bled and twitched in place -- her eyes widened almost imperceptibly when a familiar face appeared and called out her name. Everything froze as an eerie quiet replaced the rustle of movement from the swords flying about.
More blades repositioned to point at the pair of patients. The strange red glow suddenly dimmed in intensity and spread about all four halls; when four swords zipped directly at the human targets, two for each, their rapid movements were a bit shrouded by a decrease in visibility, but they glimmered in the dim light and could be heard whipping through the air.
They aimed to stab at any part of the patients that could be reached, flying over the rails. Anthy swayed in the background and whimpered softly, her shadow stretching out of sync with her actual form. It crept around the back by the Chapel and then disentangled from the wall as a tangible being, impossible as it seemed, gurgling into existence like a living ink-spot. On hands and knees it crawled up the hallway to the left, still vaguely person-shaped and moving slowly.
It appeared to move towards Utena.
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She broke away from the man's grip, but not before the swords had chosen their targets. Slowed by her struggle with the dark-haired man, she didn't see the first blade until it was too close to dodge. It was aiming for her left breast, where a rose might normally sit in a duel. "Hhuh!" Utena twisted her body away as far as she could, pulling her chest out of the blade's path. Still hungry for blood, the sword sliced across the underside of her upper arm instead. Utena grunted in pain and gritted her teeth. The cut wasn't deep, but a thin line of blood did appear, dripping out of the fresh tear in her jacket sleeve.
The second blade was coming up behind its twin fast, headed for her ribcage. Utena raised her sword instinctively and shone her flashlight straight ahead, revealing the weapon's path more clearly. "Haah!" With a strong, practiced swipe, she parried downward, sending the sword flying toward the lower wall behind her. She watched for the other blades and made another swipe quickly, hoping to catch at least one of the ones headed the stranger's way.
With her flashlight and attention pointed elsewhere, the shadow would have an easy time of it getting closer to Utena.
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It also meant that his vision was shot to hell until his eyes readjusted and he stopped seeing huge spots over everything, which might not have been so much of a problem if it weren't for the swords flying towards them.
Great. Just freakin' perfect luck he was having, momentarily blinded while impending doom flew towards him and he was only armed with a couple of broken chair legs and not much else. He'd dropped his pillow case when the girl had dashed in as well, so he couldn't even try and use that to deflect the blades either.
Focus! For once in your damn life try and do that! You've been like this before and done okay, and we did all those stupid blindfolded training sessions for a reason. Time to prove you can use that!
There was a hiss of air to his right and a flicker of something rushing towards him, which was all Raphael needed to throw himself into a neat flip to his left and hopefully clear of the blade. He sure hoped they didn't come back from behind though. The clang of metal on metal and the girl's yell distracted him for a moment as he automatically tried to check if she was doing okay despite his blurry vision, which meant he missed noticing the second sword (or maybe it was the same from before? It was hard to tell) slipping under his guard to nick the outside of his thigh.
The pain brought him back to what was important right now, and Raphael jumped back, blinking in an effort to help his eyes clear faster and so he didn't end up making any more mistakes that might cost him a little more than some minor pain.
"Where the hell are these things coming from?" he shouted in frustration.
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The blades were quick and zipped forward in straight lines, and as such, the ones which managed to nick their targets (and the single one that did not manage) flew on instead of veering around and lodged into the wall with distinct thuds. Utena parried the last sword low and it veered towards the ground, clanging across the floor and falling lifeless.
Once bested or dodged, they appeared to cease moving. Of course, there were many left that floated overhead, swirling around Anthy's frame and whispering endlessly, furiously. The continued presence of Raphael and Utena seemed to annoy them further; forcing patients to turn back without killing them was the goal of the evening. Stubborn patients.
Anthy's shadow left a trail of black sludge in its wake, its limbs drawing back and forth with spastic motions as it drew closer. It stood when it reached the intersection of the two hallways and it flickered in and out of vision just once.
There was a short pause before spikes, inky and vague as an extension of the shadow, burst from its frame with a sickening, loud squelch that resounded through the halls. Spikes that stuck out at every angle but did not impede movement, so the shadow flickered over to a sword in the back wall and drew it out by the hilt, still human-like in form.
It skulked closer to the pair. Anthy watched soundlessly.
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Utena shook her head after the man spoke, watching for any more attacks. "I have no idea. I've never . . ." She had been about to say that she had never seen anything like this before. Again, however, something flickered in her mind. She saw the same sight, the same red glow, only the victim was smaller, perhaps. The image was blurred in her mind, but the agony was even more clear than it was now. A young, male voice spoke in her mind, as though she were hearing it through muffled behind a thick, heavy door. Or a coffin lid.
It is her punishment . . . She can no longer be saved.
And just as before, the moment Utena tried to focus harder on the faint memory, it dissipated into darkness once more. The macabre reality in front of her snatched her focus away, as did her refusal to leave her friend to her fate. "Anyway, I don't know. But I'm not going to let these things keep hurting Himemiya!"
It was then that the movement of the shadows near the intersection between the center hall and the left balcony caught her eye. In the dim light of the red glow, she could make out a human-like shape creeping their way. It looked like Himemiya. That was, at least until the thing squeezed out spikes with the sound of bursting flesh and squelching tar. Even Utena, a supposed brave prince, had to force her legs to stop shaking. She raised her sword again when the thing took one of the fallen swords, and moved her flashlight to keep the thing (or at least the space around it) illuminated. "I don't know what you are, but you won't stop me from getting over to her," she told the shadow, her tone rough and steely. After staring at it for another silent moment, she charged forward, aiming a thrust for the shadow's left shoulder.
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...well. He probably couldn't be that hard on her, since he knew if it had been Leo or Mikey or Don up there, Raph would have been just as bad, maybe worse. But before he could say anything about how unlikely it was that they could do anything for her even if they did, by some miracle, manage to save her, there was a sort of bursting, squelching noise and he noticed the approaching shadow thing.
"Great, looks like we got somethin' else to worry about," he said, glancing around. The weapons he had now, if they could be called that, weren't going to cut it here, but it looked like he was lucky in that the swords from earlier were dead or something now. Moving quickly, Raph ditched the chair legs and swept up the discarded sword on the ground before tugging a second from the wall. Twin blades were more Leo's thing than his, but he'd trained with them just as much as any other weapon, so he wouldn't have to worry about it slowing him down that much.
Which was probably for the best since the pink-haired girl (seriously, two of them? What was up with that?) charged straight in to the fight a moment later. Hah, his kind of fighter then. Raph was right behind her in a heartbeat, dropping low to the ground and using one sword to hack at the spikes closest to him while the second stabbed forward in an effort to strike the main body.
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Its left hand snaked forward to try and grasp onto Utena's waist and snare her in the same trap. Meanwhile, Raphael had nicked two swords that belonged to Anthy; unlike Utena, he managed to hack away at a low group of spikes. They fell to the floor and slithered around his ankles, emitting low screeches.
The other sword pierced, but appeared to have no impact other than sloshing through the inky muck and sticking there. In another moment both blades groaned and trembled in his grip, their shapes washing over in black and then piecing apart to become a horde of large spiders. They skittered up his arms and sank their fangs into flesh, edging past the sleeves of his shirt.
It appeared this was the wrong target to attack. The suspended swords in the center of the Sun Room halls started again, but they kept their focus on Anthy as long as both patients were distracted. Her low cries of pain were almost like haunting background music.
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It's sickening . . . Why does everyone go on living knowing they'll end up dying anyway?
I wonder why I never realized that until today.
Utena shuddered deeply as the darkness came closer before her. That was, until out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Himemiya again. She forced her head to turn away from the void. She could hear the girl moaning, see her writhing as though in slow motion. No, all there was wasn't emptiness, she reminded herself. There was friendship - the people she held close to her. That was worth fighting to stay alive for. She called out to her friend again as she struggled, then tried pulling on her sword. Her body twisted partly away from the creature and she leaned back with the hilt in hand; she hoped that the sheer force of gravity combined with her pulling would be enough to free her from the trap.
From the new angle, she could see the stranger's swords turning to spiders. "Ahh! Get off of him!" she shouted in surprise, swatting with her free hand at any of the spectral insects she could reach from where she was. How many more tricks could this thing have?
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He didn't have much more than a few seconds to check that much, however, as while his second sword plunged into the body of the weird shadow thing, it didn't seem to do any damage at all or even slow it down. Worse, it had managed to grab onto the other girl, her sword apparently doing even less than his own was.
"Hang on and I'll--" Raph began, but his swords shook in his hands of their own accord, making a strange groaning noise all the while. Then suddenly they broke apart into tens of--
"SPIDERS?!" Raphael yelped. Automatically he let go of whatever was left in his hands - spiders or sword - and leapt backwards, flailing madly in an attempt to dislodge the things from his skin, yelling "Get 'em off! Get 'em off!" the entire time.
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With the both of them distracted by the spiders, most of which ended up swept away by their combined, flailing efforts, the shadow raised the sword still clasped in its right hand. Poised in a threatening position, it froze before attacking.
A jaw suddenly formed out of the bottom half of its featureless face. It cracked into place with a series of sickening pops, baring rows of sharp fangs that ought to belong to a beast.
"Go back," it hissed, as if speaking through a mouthful of blood. Black streams of liquid pushed past the cracks of its fangs and dripped to the floor. The shadow served well as a distraction, as a frightening deterrent -- it had yet to attack either Utena or Raphael very seriously.
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She kept her flashlight beam trained as steadily as she could on the being as it raised its sword, watching for any more sudden movements. She didn't have to wait long. While she couldn't call what the thing did next "sudden," it was definitely unexpected. Utena felt the pit of her stomach twist along with the sickeningly twisting and cracking jaw, and listened to its warning hiss. The menace in its voice sent further chills down her back.
With a look and a nod to the stranger, who she hoped had gotten all the spiders off him by this point, she started to take a few steps back. "All right, we're going. Come on, we can't fight this thing." It looked for a few moments as though she really was going to do the sensible thing and retreat. Indeed, that's what she was hoping the stranger would do if he followed her lead.
Of course, there was no way Utena was going to stoop to being sensible.
When she had enough distance between herself and the shadow, she charged forward again suddenly with loud cry. Only this time, she didn't go in for an attack. A few feet in front of the creature, she pushed off the ground and into a flip above its head, a trick she had used a few times in her duels at this point. She was aiming for the left-hand hallway the shadow stood in front of, hoping that she could bypass the thing entirely and just go straight for Himemiya. Whether the stranger followed her or not was his choice.
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"I hate bugs!" he yelled as the last was thrown off. Then he turned his attention back to the black shadow creature. The weird jaw and the sickening noises that accompanied it before it spoke might have bothered Raph before, but now he was too angry to care about its threats or the girl's insistence that they leave.
"You just pissed off the wrong turtle, sludge-face! And I ain't done with you yet!" Completely ignoring the pink-haired girl in his rage, Raphael paused only long enough to wrench another sword free from the wall before he launched himself back at the thing with a yell that was mirrored by the girl.
But where she flipped over their opponent, Raphael charged right in. The sword had done damage before, so he was willing to bet it would do the same again. See how much the damn thing liked having all its spikes chopped off and scattered about the place to start with. "Eat this you piece of shit!"
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The other patient proved to be sufficiently Utena-like in his indignant determination, and also he apparently quite disliked insects. Having its own sword raised preemptively, it dealt with the head-on charge by aiming a slash across the front of this patient's shirt as soon as he was in range.
Even if he hacked away all of the shadow, the threat would not be abated. More of its spikes fell to the ground and wriggled about as a result of his attacks, but it seemed unaffected by the loss.
"Turtle?" It wondered aloud, the barest trace of amusement in its gritty voice. This was definitely a man. Since it had proved effective, the tarred spikes all turned to spiders and variations of roaches as soon as he put his feet back on the ground -- hundreds this time, scuttling about on the floors and trying to inch up his pant legs.
As for Utena, the swords reacted to her drawing closer as a good dozen turned about and pointed at her in warning. Anthy's eyes followed her path in much the same way, some small amount of recognition flickering through.
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Thankfully, Utena landed on the other side of the creature on her feet. She had half been expecting the thing to try and trip her up on the landing. Instead, it seemed to be completely focused on the stranger now. Said stranger was even more riled up than before, and hadn't for a second even considered running away. In the back of her mind, Utena chalked up a respect point for him; he was tenacious and fiery, kind of like someone she knew very well. She also paused for a split-second at the way he had used the word "turtle," which struck her as bizarre wording even in the middle of the battle.
Those side thoughts did not hold Utena's attention for long. Some of the swords had broken away from the swarm, rearing up in warning with their tips pointed straight at her. Her own sword pointed straight back in defiance. Utena dropped into a defensive stance, eyes narrowed. "Get away from Himemiya!" she shouted out across the space, ready to battle off any blades that came at her. She didn't know exactly what she was going to do beyond that. All that mattered was getting those swords to focus on something that wasn't Himemiya.
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Raphael managed just barely to avoid getting himself disembowelled by the sword swipe, but it was a near thing and despite his efforts the blade opened up a gash in his shirt and a long, shallow cut across his chest that began bleeding immediately. He cursed both at the pain and his own forgetfulness. Normally his plastron would have been there to fend off the blade, and his subconscious reliance on it being there still had made him a little careless. He'd have to remember to be more careful; he no longer had as much protection after all.
Spikes fell away under his blade, but their transformation into so many spiders and roaches had him drawing back again, stomping on several as he did so. He was going to have to get more creative with his fighting, obviously.
"Turtle, you slimy whackjob! You got a problem with that, I got your answer right here!" And with that he darted back in, at the last moment mirroring the pink-haired girl's flip over the creature's head and bringing his sword around to slice at its back as he did so. If he could get behind it and clear enough of its back before it could turn around, he could definitely give it something to worry about.
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The other remained distracted by Anthy's creation (it remained useful for that reason). He confirmed that he was a turtle (curious statement that that was, the shadow cocked its head to the side) before charging back in, even after receiving a cut to the front. This time he flipped overheard and swiped off a wave of spikes down the creatures back. They fell to the ground yet again, but coiled around his ankles like tentacles this time, holding fast and strong to keep him in his place.
The shadow flickered in and out of vision, then appeared face-forward in front of Raphael without having to move an inch. It grinned.
Moving almost too fast to be seen, but not quite, it drew its arm out with the sword's hilt -- movement that shot out and rushed in, a strike that attempted to connect against the side of this man's head.
The swords around Anthy disappeared. She hung in space, her eyes narrowing on Utena just before her body ripped open at the gut and an unsightly hole appeared at her centre, inky tendrils curling out from her abdomen to wash her figure over with the same kind of shadowy paint. It was time to reveal her true role in this.
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