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The Goddess appeared before Zauus, high and mighty. She bowed her head and knelt on one knee in the presence of the being. This is one of the few times that Zauus was face to face with a Goddess. It was the first she had been given a physical item, that is if her little yellow heart did not count as an item.

The bag was plain, simple and empty. She looked back at the Goddess and nodded her head slowly after receiving her first job.



She stepped inside without hesitation.

---

Inside there were three doors. The first, calming. The second, unnerving. The last however, was another level of horror, sending cold chills through her grey body. The third was out of the question. Zauus was too scared to even approach the door let alone go through it. Cautiously, she headed towards the second door. It still scared her, but for the Goddess, she would do anything.

She passed through the second door.

Feeling successful, Zauus starts to walk faster with a little cheer in her step. The floor feels weak and kind of slippery. She walks straight into a wall and is stopped in her tracks. She feels around for some kind of hidden door.

Breathing. Zauus heard breathing coming from behind her.

"Please give it back..." A small, frail voice calls out but there was nobody there. She continues on her way. The water gets deeper and deeper as she treads further from the dead end. It's cold, but she gets used to it. The water rose to her collarbone and she decides to head back. Zauus turns around, her head tilted back to keep her mouth above the water.

"Please give me BACK MY-"

The sweet, innocent voice returns but changes to a raspy desperate one mid-sentence. Two hands push her into the water. Everything is in slow motion.

"Keikoooo. Where are you?" A young girl calls. She is clad in a blue yukata that goes down to her ankles. She wears no shoes outdoors.

"Up here." Another girl calls. She is slightly different. Older and dressed up like a boy. She is sitting on a branch in a bare tree. Apparently, she is Keiko.

"How did you get up there?" The first girl calls. She attempts to climb up the trunk but fails.

"Not telling." Keiko teases. The young girl must not see the difference between her body and the older girl's features. Keiko had wings where the young girl only had two hands and two feet.

In her futile attempt to climb the tree, the bark scraped the bottom of her feet. She fell back and sat on the ground, inspecting the wound as Keiko watched from above and chuckled at the younger girl's misfortune.

Zauus snaps out of the memory, not realizing how deep she is being pushed. She can't breathe. Her yellow heart grows fainter.

Zauus' head pounded. She opened her eyes a little bit, but shut them immediately after the lights pierced her eyes. She slowly opened them again and looked around. She was laid down on a metal bed in an empty room. Beside her, a dagger lay. She picked it up and carried it with her. There was something unnerving about the room, but she tried to ignore it. She sat up and rubbed her head. It still throbbed, but slightly less now. She slid her legs off the side of the bed and let them dangle. They were about a foot off the ground. She jumped off, wobbling as she landed.

There was a door. There was nothing better to do here, so she headed towards the door. To her surprise, it was unlocked. She placed a hand on the door and pushed it open. A lit hallway appeared in front of her. After taking a step, the door slammed shut behind her. Panicking, she pulled the door back open. In her past experience with unfamiliar things, doors locking behind her were the norm. This door was different. It remained unlocked. She opened it again and looked inside. Empty.

Zauus closes the door and begins to head down the hall. Anything to get out of this terrible light. She turns around. The door is now quite far behind her, but she could see that it had blown open. 'I swear I closed it when I walked off...' She thought to herself. She continued to walk but a distant thud pulls her attention back to the door. She looks back and a black figure is in her line of view. In it's hand a rusted pair of scissors. Her scissors.

Zauus immediately begins to run down the hall.

Zauus desperately tries to push at the doors, the figure gets closer. Its scissors make a screeching cry as it snips them in the air.

"You can't be better than Keiko." It taunts. "Let's face it, you'll never be better. You're always going tO Be SECoNd BEsT...." It's voice gets distorted near the end and it continues to laugh maniacally. It made little sense to Zauus. Who was Keiko? Why was it saying this? This was no time to be contemplating. She slammed the doors again.

Zauus' memory doesn't fade. The voice of the figure gets louder and louder, now ringing in her ears. The memory continues to play. The younger girl begins to cry, but the older girl does nothing but laugh. The laugh in the memory becomes an uncomfortable, horrid laugh coming from the figure.

The memory plays again. This time, a taller man comes and plucks the toy from the older girl's hands. He hands it to the younger girl and begins to scold the older one, but Zauus could not make out any of his words. The younger girl looks satisfied but the older seems displeased and vengeful.

"How could you do that to me?? I was such a good fRIEnDDD" It continued to talk as if it were about to cry. The figure wasn't sorry. It really wasn't.

Zauus began to punch in different numbers into the keypad, but it kept denying her access. "Why doesn't this stupid thing OPEN?!" She shouted. She froze on the spot. She could feel breathing down her neck and cold metal slid across her neck. She turned around and the figure's face was only mere inches from her own face.

"Why are yoU RUNnING??" It questioned as it continued to slide the cold metal blades along Zauus' neck down to her glowing yellow heart.