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Aint Got Time to Bleed; [Chika, Aleph, Yuka, Akio]
Topic Started: Oct 12 2013, 06:31 PM (2,216 Views)
TheGameFreak
Upupupupu~!
Don't stop. Don't stop. Don't stop. Those two words were like a mantra in the Serizawas' heads, repeating over and over again. It was the only thing keeping them from falling behind. It was good that their healing magic stopped the bleeding, though not completely. Aleph and Yuka ran and ran with the group until they entered a hallway.

Aleph and Yuka concentrated their efforts into making sure they kept running. They couldn't stop, for if they did they would be dead. Even though they didn't know whether or not they were even close to the entrance, they had to at least try to find it. They kept running, never stopping for a second.
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GKG
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when ur team wipes but ur ult is at 15%
As he made his way towards the exit, something flashed before Akio - and the next instant, a part of wall right in front of him exploded into debris. He became aware of the flash of debris before the akmost inaudible whizz of the bullet that had just missed his head, in fact - he wouldn't actually dwell on the fact before he was out of this place, but he'd just missed death by a couple of inches, even if the bullet hadn't been aimed at him at first.

So he continued to run, a palor growing on his face as he went on.

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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
Maki's first instinct would have been to try and shield Chika with her own body. If it were a normal man with a normal gun, that might have worked. Against the thunderous shots of the Reaper, that would have only ensured two people died with a direct hit instead of one. Honestly, her own sense of self-preservation was too strong to allow such heroics. Not when death itself was chasing them. She could see to it any stragglers didn't fall behind but that was the most she could force herself to do.

The shrapnel from the first shot hit her near her right side, her eye closed reflexively as a shallow bloody gash was carved into her cheek dangerously close to her lower eyelid by a chip of concrete propelled to great speeds by the force of the shot. They were following Toru's route as quickly as possible, the tactical flaw was obvious at once, and it was still the best of all possible outcomes.

Chika wouldn't bleed out, and they'd all get of that in one piece…more or less. That is what she told herself. That was what kept her going despite a fire in her legs and a voice screaming in her mind. Stay calm, keep the route, they'll make it. That was the best she could have hoped to manage at the time.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
Toru saw the Serizawas reach that blessed final corner first: just before they did, he shouted: "LEFT! THE EXIT IS TO THE LEFT!" the entrance was in plain view out there, forty yards down the hall in the direction he'd indicated, looking more like the result of some blast or seismic activity than anything--the wall simply... opened up there, and that was a boon, because there was no door, no staircase, nothing barring their escape, and forty yards of hallway around which they could count on the walls to offer some cover from the Reaper's assault.

Perhaps the Reaper knew this. It pursued them, swooping after them up that passage, and in what might have appeared to be an act of last-minute desperation if any of them had bothered looking back at that moment, it jerked its right-hand revolver up and channeled a spell into it.

Darkness: pure, magical entropy. It erupted from the gun barrel and flooded the hallway, leaving rot and mold on every surface in its wake, causing the flooring to flake and crack, pouring after the group in a wave. Toru looked back and knew a single moment of pure terror. Chika, dim eyes blinked backward after the Reaper, saw it and breathed in a gasp of air.

The Serizawa siblings were already around the bend, in the clear; Akio and Maki would likewise escape the spell's range without a problem. Toru, if he--no, he would be too slow, it would rot him to the core and that would be it, and--

"--Let go--" he heard Chika breath. "Let go, I can--I can use--I can--"

Let go, I can use-- Use what? Toru couldn't make sense of this. All he knew was that if that darkness reached him, that was the end. The end of both of them, for all he knew, and it was better that one should live than none, and so...

...And so he let the girl in his arms tumble to the floor, pushed her aside as she fell, and pumped his legs as hard as he could to reach the corner before the dark magic swallowed them both.

Even then, he wasn't fast enough.

Looking back, if any of them did, what they would see was Toru emerging from around the corner alone. The girl in his arms was gone. In the next blink, the rush of blackness, thick with crackling purple lightning-like energy, crashed like a wave at the mouth of the corridor. Toru screamed, fell, landed in a heap on his side, clutching his right leg, where the clothing was even then shriveling to dust to reveal a foot that had decomposed to a point where it looked as if it may have belonged to a mummy hundreds of years dead.

And then, as the black magic cleared, Chika Nakadachi scrambled to her feet. The others would hear a strangled yell of pain from her, which she stifled with an act of will and probably enough adrenaline to fuel a fighter jet. Her clothes were withered, not nearly to the point of Toru's boot or pant-leg, falling apart but still there... and where there had been a bleeding stump before, something was forming. Bone, muscle, sinew, rapidly sprouting like a plant out of the ground in a fast-forward documentary recording. With her one good hand, Chika found her feet. With her one good hand, Chika reached down and wrenched Toru up, and then she yelled, "Yamada-san, help me!"

With both arms, she might have been able to do something, but her left arm had no intention of regenerating fully. It sped-up regrowth abruptly ceased, leaving behind a fresh, skinless arm that showed no sign of any damage at all... save that the skin wasn't there, and that none of the fingers on her hand had grown back more than a nub of bone.

As she tried in vain to pull Toru along, the handle of her enchanted sword began to fall apart, bits of it falling to the floor. But now was not the time to bother with that...
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TheGameFreak
Upupupupu~!
Aleph and Yuka ran along the hallway until they heard the other man shout at them, telling them to turn left, because that was where the exit was. They didn't have time to see if he was right, seeing as how Death was chasing them. So, they took a chance, and turned left and ran towards said entrance.

They were too focused on running for their lives to notice the destructive, 5-tier shit storm happening behind them and swallowing Chika. They were already ahead, so they had to keep running. It seemed like they were almost there. Almost there.

It seemed like they were going to make it after all.
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GKG
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when ur team wipes but ur ult is at 15%
Akio ran ahead I guess not like i have poems to write about the act of running guys

A scream behind him - that meant that danger and death was happening behind him, which in turn meant that stopping running was approximatively the worst idea he could have had. It would have also been the last idea he'd have ever had, too.

The entrance was just there - he was going to make it, he was going to make it...
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Nonsequitur
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Yellow Bubblegum
Maki wasn't even aware of when she'd passed Chika and the detective. It had been her intention to make sure that Chika made it, and remain behind her the whole way. But somehow, with escape in sight, she'd moved on by without even realizing it. Not until she felt the tremendous blast of the spell despite being out of the directed area there was a sudden rush of wind, chilling, stagnant and stale somehow.

She looked back in time to see Chika still in horrific condition but better than she had been previously. Toru Motou, however, had clearly seen better days, and was starting to resemble the rotten thing that was barely recognizable as an angel that was his Persona.

A call for help, when she recognized the situation she'd already scuttled to a stop, she ran back to get Toru's other shoulder. "Don't look back, just move, move!"

The exit's right there! Of course they can make it, all of them! She'd see to it the two made it though the threshold in time even if she had to drag them both in either of her hands!
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
One might think, maybe, that a rotted foot such as Toru's would flare with beyond-blinding pain if one put even half their weight on it? One would be mistaken, in that case. When Toru was hefted to his feet by his two female escorts, for the role had definitely reversed from where it had been three seconds before, he felt his left foot hit the ground... but now the only sensation he could feel from his right leg at all came from just below his knee. He could feel pressure there. His rotted foot was on the ground, but it wasn't transmitting signals to his brain. Not right at that moment, anyway. It may as well have been cut off--that portion of the limb was well and truly dead.

A momentary stumble nearly dragged Chika down along with him as Toru's body attempted a running motion, but a numb foot was worse than ill-suited for that. Sukukaja was still in effect, though; Toru caught himself with his other foot, and then jumped, and then jumped again, holding his dead foot above the ground. Sweat beaded his brow, and he was pale from the pain and shock, but he could still move, and the exit was so close.

"Let go! I can--move on my own!" Toru gasped, but Chika didn't pay him any mind. She wildly flailed her half-grown arm behind her back, casting a Mamudo spell over the hallway behind them as the Reaper came into view, hoping it might serve as a smokescreen, or cause the Reaper to pause, or... or something!

The Reaper did in fact stop when it reached the mouth of the hall. Maki, Chika, and Toru were feet away from the entrance, but there was a black cloud between it and them. A hint of movement was visible, but it was dim, indistinct. The Reaper swooped toward the cloud, lifted one of its guns, and made a light, swatting motion--the Mamudo cloud dispersed immediately.

Death was inches away. The three of them were inches from the threshhold. The Reaper raised its gun, a swirl of wind burst out--

The wind spell hit the barrier an instant after the last three Persona-users crossed it. The razor-sharp cyclone did not pass that impenetrable border--it died, with a sharp, thunder-like CLAP just behind the group.

But all of the air that spell had pushed forward rushed out like a wave, with enough force to throw blast all three of them off their feet. Chika screamed, from pain or fright or both she couldn't say. Toru made no noise at all, simply flew forward like a ragdoll with a face just about as blank and uncomprehending...

The Reaper hovered there for several moments after the wind died died down, revolver barrel and one yellow eye fixed on the open exit. Then, it lowered its gun. It seemed to consider the entryway for a bit, and then... it just drifted away, passing them by, moving along.

Chika, who had lost her grip on Toru when the wind hit, lay curled on the ground, eyes shut tight, teeth gritted tighter, her half-regrown arm clutched protectively to her chest. She'd managed to turn her body away from the ground to save it from further injury, but... now her good arm hurt. Her sword belt had also fallen apart when the wind hit: Kizuna lay on the ground two feet away, its formerly pristine lacquered sheath chipped and cracked, pieces of the handle of the sword halfway-disassembled, the tang exposed. The metal underneath didn't appear rusted, but not much of it was visible yet, and Chika was in no state to examine the weapon.

As for Toru?

"Well," he said, pushing himself with one arm so that he rolled over onto his back. "This has been... an adventure. Shall I make the call for a healer, or would somebody else like to do the honor?"
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TheGameFreak
Upupupupu~!
Aleph and Yuka stood with the others as they finally got the chance to catch their breaths. They had just ran from Death, and survived. They would live to see another day. They looked at everyone else. They seemed all right, save for two people who seemed to have to had parts of themselves be mangled by the Reaper.

Aleph pulled out his smart phone in response to the other's man question. "I'll do it." He said. Then, he began typing out a message for the Bedlam Blotter. Yuka looked over at Maki. Where was she and the fedora man before the shit storm happened? Oh well.
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GKG
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when ur team wipes but ur ult is at 15%
Finally, Akio stepped out through the hole, and he found himself outside. The young man continued to run for a few more steps before he slowed down - he reached for his cheek, realizing that it was boiling and red from the continued effort. His hair was sticky with sweat, but that wasn't important - he was alive. Well and truly living.

The boy turned back, and winced when he saw the injuries Chika and Toru had sustained - the man with his mummified foot, and the girl with her mutilated, disfigured arm... He was about to whip out his own phone to post something on Bedlam about their need for healing, but Aleph reacted faster. He was way too winded to formulate any sentence, so he decided to take the bundle of clothes he'd picked up from his pocket and take a look at it.

On closer inspection, the wrapping seemed to be ripped, slashed shreds of the material labcoats are made of, tied tightly around a small, solid-feeling rectangular object with a pair of old, black shoelaces. When the bundle opened, a small, black book bound in what felt like either very cheap leather or decent imitation of it spilled out into Akio's hand. The front and back covers are featureless save for some small, dark speckled stains along the bottom corner near the spine. When the boy tried to open it, he found that three of the pages near the beginning were stuck together at the top corner--splotches of dried blood held them together fast, and peeling them apart without ripping them, while possible, would be a delicate task.

However, between these very pages, a small slip of memo paper was also inserted almost like a bookmark. While held in lightly by a bit of blood near the top as well, this memo was nowhere near as dirtied as the pages it was sandwiched between, every last word etched upon it clearly legible, as well as the name scrawled in the "from" space, all written in sharp, angry-looking strokes:

Memo from: S. Nakamura
 
The black stuff doesn't come from the anomaly you little shit it is the anomaly. we've been studying it for three years now and we still don't know what it is. but what we do know is going to make home office shit themselves. spontaneous extropy? violation of the conservation of matter and energy? scratch that the shit it does to probability alone would make it more valuable than stable antimatter. and it's in the fucking air here, don't you get it?

This "black stuff" does shit we don't understand and it's just been sitting here for however many hundreds of years this shitty town's been around and people have been breathing it in.

Who knows the effects it's had?


The book itself, however, was a different animal entirely. For the most part, it seemed to be empty--a day planner dated and formated for the year 2003, in fact, that its owner hadn't used beyond a few little notes in the pages near April 1st further into the book. A few little notes adorned pages for about a week after that day. On April 1st: Aunt sent me another planner, let's try not neglecting it this time. On April 3rd: Head researcher is a total ice queen, handle her requests first, followed a few lines down by That Hachirou guy creeps me the fuck out, avoid him. On the 5th, Suzuki and Nakamura always making messes by taking lunch in each other's offices. Wish they'd just move in together and save me the hassle. And finally, on the 8th: Upgrading the heating, going to be a long week.

Beyond that, the original owner seemed to have never been bothered to write in it. But nearer the beginning, where the memo had been wedged, a much more prolific diary enthusiast seemed to have come upon this planner much, much later, and taken it upon themselves to fill in a small chunk of February's pages, scratching out the printed dates and scribbling in dates of their own.

It took Akio a bit of searching in the day planner to find these particular notes, but he started to read as soon as his eyes fell on the words.

Contents of the Neglected Day Planner
 
Several pages back from where the memo had been inserted into the book, a series of hastily-written journal entries begins, written in hasty, somewhat-shaky writing that does not remotely match either the notes in the planner's April pages or the memo contained within.

3/28/2010
 
7:54

If I get shanked or ripped apart down here, someone please just find this. The idea of dying and no one knowing why gives me the shivers. It's been two days now, and I'm trapped down here, but I don't think I'll get out. The others got out, I think, or hope, but I shut the door to these apartments and locked it and that fucking fire spell melted the card key. I've looked high and low and all I can find are locked doors and a gymnasium. They have a pool in here. The water is filthy. It's water, though. I can't seem to find any other water. My first Persona has fire magic, so maybe I can boil it.

This would be so much easier if I could use the others. Why won't they answer me? I can tell they're there, but they've all gone silent.

I've never seen this area before, though. If I can get some of these doors open, maybe there'll be something new in there. They all have card-locks, though, and even that key I lost wouldn't open them. Probably need individual ID cards. Yeah, that's going to happen.

If I hadn't told Rokuru to fuck off, I might not have run out of thermite so fast. I knew I should have asked him to teach me how to make it.


3/29/2010
 
3:45

Third day. Managed to boil some pool water in a pot I found in one of the rooms with the broken doors. Surprise, surprise, it was terrible and I'm still starving but at least I'm hydrated now. I'll laugh if I die of some illness down here, though, surrounded by monsters.

I tried to nap and woke up this evening and I swear to god I saw one of them forming out of nothing. Or did it come out of the vent? I didn't see it clearly. Might have just been something that particular Shadow did because I've never seen that one before, either.

But even with the door propped up shut I can't be safe down here. Can't sleep, even for an hour. Have to stay awake. Found a vending machine of Hoshiyen but fuck that crap, the aliens won't get me before the Shadows do.

14:06

Thought I found a way out for a minute. There's a cargo elevator in the back, but when I tried it, nothing happened. Can't open the door to the shaft, it's too heavy. If I could use Grendel, I could just break the damn thing, but that one won't answer me either. My only hope is to find some way to power it on again. I hope it's not something inside the elevator shaft that needs fixing, I'm screwed if it is. Why don't they answer?


The final two pages, between which the memo was found, are splotched with blood and illegible in several places, as the writer were injured while writing it.

3/30/2...
 
0:45

...thought long and hard about when each of them sto...d talking and the first one was Cybele. Don't know why I didn't th.... of .... it but it stopped when Aimi found out about Reiko. Reiko didn't care, she thought it was funny, we...........at night and it was the best we ever had. But Vetala didn't stop answering until.......... I looked back and the monster had her and the look on her face was hate before...............now that I think of it, Cybele was Lovers and Vetala was Devil, those were the first to stop. Aimi was Lovers Arcana, and Reiko was Devil. Was it because of them? Some kind of revenge curse?

That doesn't explain the others, though.


....31/201....
 
[The time marking on this entry is hopelessly smeared with blood and completely illegible]

I found som.......ng. I found something. I got this stupid do... open and found something. I have to get out ......... to the others. Where is the elevator's stupid power gen............an't waste any more time thinking about my Personae, they need to know this. It's bigger than ........... pid bickering, anyw....


"Everyone, I think this is important..." was the only thing Akio said when he was done reading.
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