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 Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 4:45 pm
"Come with us, stay with us." The kids held Otto very tightly and closely. "You can save us all."
The footsteps were getting closer and so was the fog.
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Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 5:10 pm
"What the ******** do you want me to do?" He asked, since the kids didn't seem to let him go. The creature was getting closer, and Otto was fresh out of ideas. His heart beat rapidly in fear. He didn't know what was going on, or what he needed to do.
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Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 5:26 pm
"Time, we're out of time," one of the kids moaned, as Otto still looked perplexed. Some of them began to curl up to the building, scrunched over, "We'll never grow up and stay here forever."
They paused. And then, all of them, all ten of them, turned to look at Otto. "Unless we took his heart." All of them began to slowly advance on him, grab at his legs and arm, and pin him down. "We'll take it for ourselves."
A particularly taller kid, or perhaps once a kid, now mostly black shadows bared his hands into claws and tore into Otto's neck. Otto could feel the fingertips moving around, but there was no pain, instead a strange disconnect as he simply felt flesh move and part, saw blood, and could not feel pain. Some very fundamental part of him knew how wrong this all was. Another kid tore at his chest, and another at his abdomen. The emerged empty handed. They looked panicked and sick and scared.
"Cut him into pieces, cut him apart." The frenzied yells became louder and louder. There was tearing but there was still no pain.
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Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:54 pm
He hadn't let go of Otto's leg yet, but it didn't matter anyway, because in the next moment the children had moved and there was blood spattering across the floor and the ground. Gale gave a shout of horror, lunging towards Otto and trying to pry the clawed hands away, his fingers scrabbling wetly in the scarlet liquid.
"Stop it!" he yelled, but with only one leg, it was difficult to keep his balance. "Stop it, leave him alone!"
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Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 7:12 pm
No. The worst case scenario. Out of time. And now? He was at their mercy. No mercy. Otto was suddenly breathless, pinned to the floor. He felt himself being torn, but the pain wasn't there. Just the unnatural feeling of his parts being displaced. It made his stomach turn. Not there? Nothing there? Did he not.. have a heart? They were tearing him apart now. Everything was so surreal, he felt no fear. Just white noise filled his ears. He had to fight back. He would not end it all here. Otto still had the knife. With it, he thrust it at the tallest child.
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Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 5:28 pm
The knife buried itself firmly right into the kid's skill, right through the forehead. He looked shocked for a second, more shocked than Otto ever was-
- And then the kid shattered. It went silent and every single remaining child looked at Otto.
"What have you done?"
It was said in a series of murmurs, all repeating and echoing into each other. They looked lifeless, no longer strange incomplete puppets of children but just empty shells. They looked lost. They had given up.
The hand reached out from the sky again, and grabbed several children in one lunge. They simply dissolved without cries and protests, everything shaking, the sky swirling with deep, malevolent red as everything was consumed. The ground itself seemed to be dissolving upwards, the building losing shape and form, everything unraveling into the sky-
- Where the singular red moon remained so apparent-
- And finally, at last the hand reached down towards the remaining two, taking Gale and Otto in one fell swoop. They were that easily crushed. It didn't hurt at all.
Darkness.
And then the world around them exploded in colour. It was bright red first, but then it adjusted, rich hues of red, red trees, a gentle red sky, red birds and odd insect-like beetles flying past. In the distance hung a large darker red moon, oddly fragmented.
In the not so far distance were two children, easily younger than Gale and Otto. They were simple shirts and pants with bare feet, their faces smeared in red markings. Paint perhaps. Both of them were holding crude weapons, makeshift spears from red trees, leaves, strange glittering red jewels, and both of them froze and stared straight at the two Hunters, the two complete Hunters.
They didn't move. They just continued to stare at Gale and Otto, wary now, and extremely scared. kurotomato Gale's memory of Jinhai is still lost!
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Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 7:36 pm
"STOP!" Gale screamed, but the knife had buried itself in the child's skull and then he had exploded before their eyes, shattering into pieces on the floor of the building. His metaphorical heart pounding in his chest, Gale struggled to stand, gripping Otto's arm to haul himself vertically again, and he leaned back against the door.
"Stop," he said again, and held out his hand towards the children, as though this meager move would somehow prevent them from coming closer. "Leave us alone, we haven't done anything to you, stop - "
There was no stopping it, not really, and then the children were gone, and then the hand was swooping back down, crushing them into nothingness and everything around them was dark dark dark - black and more black -
The first color he saw again was red.
He was standing on his own - blessedly two feet again, and Gale took in great, shuddering gulps of air, trying to get his breath back into his lungs. He twisted his head sideways to stare at Otto in utter bewilderment before his eyes went towards the two young children standing just a short distance away.
His head felt strangely achey. Gale held very, very still.
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Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 7:45 pm
The darkness was gone. Otto blinked, as if the world had stopped. Or maybe that he had stopped. They were back at what he could only describe as the beginning. He looked to Gale, shaking his head with a frustrated expression. He tried hard not to lose hope. It was all he had at this point. Thinking was hard. He wasn't an ideas kind of guy. He was hardly even smart. Stabbing the kid had sent them back, or maybe they were just in a loop. Did they need to find what they were doing wrong? he didn't want to experience being torn apart again. What could he do? What should he do? The children seemed scared this time. They held red gems, which he assumed were important. Yellow was bad, apparently. Otto did the best he could to look intimidating, taking several strides forward, arm extended. "Hand over the gems, pipsqueaks!"
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Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2014 5:47 pm
The kids immediately took a few steps back, weapons bared. "No," they replied, "You'll kill us again. Give us your fragments. Do you even know what is going on?"
"They're too old," the younger kid tugged at the taller one's shirt. "That one is too old. They shouldn't be here."
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Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2014 9:08 pm
"Otto, wait," Gale hissed, reaching out to latch onto the other's wrist and tug him backwards. "Remember what happened the last time we tried talking to them? Be careful!"
He let go, but kept his gaze on the children anyway, his gaze wary. "We won't kill you," said Gale carefully. "We just want to get out of here and go back home."
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Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2014 5:05 am
"Finally!" Otto shouted, arms in the air. Finally someone realized they weren't children. He flinched backward a little as Gale reined him in, giving the shorter Death Hunter a mild glare. "What he said. So, enlighten us. What exactly is going on here?"
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Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2014 12:32 am
"Everyone wants to get out," snapped the older kid, "we've all been sleeping forever. As long as Peter Pan is alive, nobody goes home. We're lost kids and you too." Just as he said that there was a burst of noise, the kid looked nervous-
- but another kid in the distance simply made a run for the building on the hill, ignoring everything else. They made it about several good long steps in before a familiar monstrous hand came from the sky and crushed them in a single swoop.
The smaller of the two kids facing Gale and Otto cringed. "I don't want to do it again. Everyone goes to the house. There's nothing at the house."
"There's nothing anywhere," the taller kid sounded impatient, strained. Scared. "There's nothing for us, no way in or out. That house is everyone's only hope and it's a trap. There's nothing here. Peter Pan will get us. Our weapons don't hurt it at all." They shook their spear, a spear dangling a red and golden, rather familiar gemstone, the same one that had been torn from Gale's chest.
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Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 8:13 pm
"Who is this Peter Pan you keep speaking of?" Gale asked, mostly out of frustration. He slid a sideways glance at Otto, frowning a little before he looked back at the children. "And what do you mean by sleeping? What have you all been - "
There was a loud crash, a cacophony of sounds. Gale jumped, automatically tensing, and looked around for the source of the noise - though he didn't have far to look, as the hand descended once more, closing around a young child running in the distance and crushing them.
Gale flinched, unclenching and clenching his fingers. "What is this place for?" he asked, as something red flashed in the corner of his eye.
He stared for a moment at the gem on the end of the spear, his mouth slightly open; and then slowly Gale extended his hand out towards them, palm facing upwards, fingers curved slightly; they were shaking a little.
"That's mine," he said, pointing to the golden gem. "I'd like it back, please."
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Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 8:19 pm
Otto left this to Gale for now. While Otto may be a Death Hunter, somehow talking wasn't his specialty. Avoiding or running from danger seemed to be more his field. And even that didn't always pan out. Otto was assuming the hand in the sky, or the mess of limbs they'd seen might be 'Peter Pan', but it was only assumptions. This game was a complete mystery as to what purpose it served. Sleeping, he assumed, meant they were all in pods like the ones they'd seen. They were forced asleep to play this game. But why? Otto kept his mouth shut, watching the children and Gale, waiting for things to go wrong again.
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Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 12:18 am
"No," responded the kid almost immediately, withdrawing, "It's mine now. You have to trade it back, a fragment for a fragment. Give me something else in return." Despite his size, the child was vehement. "Besides, what are you gonna do with it, it's not like you guys can summon your-"
-"Aiden don't." The younger child suddenly grabbed a hold of the other's arm, a perfect unbroken arm, no longer dissolving like last time. "You can't tell them. I don't trust them, they're not like the others. They're not part of the project."
Aiden's eyes narrowed. He looked both scared and suspicious. "Is that true? You guys are outsiders?" He backed up a few more steps. "Where did you say you two were from again outside this game?"
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