tampered | Log: In progress

Log: In progress

When; Today (6/7)
Rating; PG-13
Characters;

hannin, and anyone else who wants to drop in a bit...
Summary;
Log;

It looked vaguely human, a woman... A nurse. Perhaps that was the most disturbing thing of all. He was briefly reminded of the women he had worked with those years back several decades ago... The women who had so bravely worked in that dangerous hell on earth to save the lives of men destined to die...

His hand shook as he gripped the tsuka (hilt) hard and aimed the long blade at what might have been a throat. Hotta let out a slight gasp and shuddered as he felt the blade slide hungrily into the monstrous creature’s flesh, all the way into the corridor wall. The blade tasted the plaster and did not like it.

He cringed and let the blade shift side to side... With an unsettling ease, the head of the creature fell off and rolled down the hallway in front of Hotta’s doorway. He shuttered again and gingerly stepped over the body.

He was tired. He was always tired. But he recalled the masses of butterfly creatures. There had been so many. So, perhaps, there were hoards of these... These creatures? A shrill whiny made him pause.

“Now, now.” He squatted a bit and patted the tiny frightened creature’s head. It backed away quickly from him, its tiny nostrils flared. “It’s alright. You stay here. I have a key somewhere... Ah! Here, I’ll lock you and leave Jan a note. See, you’ll be safe.”

The vibrantly colored creature neighed and then bobbed its head. Hotta smiled. Smart little things. I wonder how much they understand. He grabbed a pen and scrap paper, locked the door and left them both by Jan’s doorstep.

“One of your friends is at my place. I locked the door. Be back later. Gone to kill monsters. Mahalo (regards), Ieyasu.”

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She was determined to find a way out, no matter what Xigbar said to her. She remembered coming to the place by darkness, so she would leave by darkness. No matter where she went, she knew that darkness would be there. It was almost comforting in its sameness across all worlds.

Many of the others, trapped here like her, had taken to sleeping, but Namine tried to push her exhaustion away. She wandered through the city and soon found herself lost. She tried not to despair and decided to turn back, leaving exploration for another day, accompanied by somebody else.

A hideous roar froze her on the spot, and a terrifying thought entered her mind.

"There can't be monsters, too?"

Outside was worse than inside the building. Inside had been one. Outside, there were over a dozen of the nurse creatures. Their featureless faces turned in a sickening unison towards the old war dog as he closed the door behind him. He sighed and reached into his back pocket, pulled a small flask filled with an amber liquid and quaffed a mouthful.

The burning sensation stung his lungs and throat. He felt like coughing. He exhaled slowly, it was not a dream. That, or someone had slipped something into Building Nine’s water...

He was still mid-thought when the first of the creatures twitched her way into range. Hotta blinked, his attention focusing back to the present just in time to see the lead pipe smash into his side. He grunted, the sound of the metal dully smashing into his side echoing through his whole body. He staggered sideways and pulled up his sword.

He winced at the sight of the nurse’s uniform, the cap and high heels. And then he stared into the featureless face and grimaced. “I’m sorry. Sometimes it’s better to be dead.”

He leapt forward with a yell and skewered three of the nurses through what should have been their hearts. Dark filth oozed over his blade and ran down his forearms, making them slick. A pipe hit him in the shoulder from one of the skewered. It was a weak blow, fortunately, and did not smash the bone. However, the pain and filth knocked Hotta’s right hand free of the tsuka (hilt). He swore and twisted, pushing his body weight into the sword. The blade broke free from the trio’s sides with a sickening suck and sliced through another of the nurse creatures.

Hotta staggered back, shaking his right hand as a “pins and needles” feeling shot down his arm and into his fingers. He twisted around and sliced several more creatures in half, pulling his elbows into his sides so that he did not need to use the muscles in his injured shoulder. The ground was growing slick with the dark ooze that was blood for these creatures.

That was eight down, twitching as they crawled across the ground, the now legless torsos. Hotta ground his teeth and braced himself, he ran past the grasping hands of the torsos, the ooze squishing underfoot. He slammed his foot down into the mess and thrust his arms out, the blade flying towards another creature’s throat. But as his foot came down, a hand reached out and caught hold of his ankle. It would not have mattered how hard the hand tugged, except the ground was slick.

Hotta let out a cry and managed to twist the blade so that it clearly cleaved the head from the shoulders of the creature he had been aiming for. But the fall sent him onto the ground hard, causing his right side to explode with a new pain. He grunted and slid away from the torso that had caught him. His foot smashed the thing in the featureless face as he went sliding into the legs of another creature.

His bulk knocked the much smaller, effeminate creature off of its feet and into one of its companions. They floundered on top of each other for several moments. Hotta pushed himself to his feet and hacked both of their heads off in two little slices.

Sounds of fighting echoed all around her, made from people stronger and more real than she was. She ran to a nearby alleyway clumsily, cursing her impractical shoes, which were meant to look pretty but not undergo any use.

Please, let there be no monsters, she begged inwardly, shrinking into the shadows to make herself small. I have nothing to fight with. I have nothing...I can't do this alone. I know you're there, Roxas. Where are you?"

He panted, staggered a bit as he hacked the head off of the last of the twisting torsos. Its limbs shuddered and finally fell onto the muck, giving out their final twitches. That was eighteen. Hotta sighed and wiped as much of the muck as he could from his blade onto his pants. The back of his eye felt like a throbbing blister. It kept the steady beat of the carousel in his mind.

The pain was easing now that the monsters had been slaughtered. But it was there still. Always there. Always tick-tock tick-tock like a clock. Hotta grabbed the eye patch and pulled it off with a moan.

“...ahhh... AAAAHHHH!!!”

Hotta’s howl rose up through the low-hanging fog like an old dog baying at the moon. The pain ran through his brain, blinding white fire. He staggered through the gore-slicked street like an old rabid dog, baring his teeth at anything that got near him.

“... Pain!.. ... In my head!..”

Even through the pain and bright after images, flashes of the carousel through his mind, he thought he spotted something. His nostrils flared and he caught wind of something human, or at least it seemed human. Hotta paused and bit through his lip to focus his thoughts.

A girl?

He paused. The darkness of shadows did not bother the blind eye. It was not affected by light or the lack of light. It spotted the girl hiding from the monsters. Only to his strange vision, she looked was human, she was like a fairy. He shook his head, clamping his hand over the eye.

Now there was only darkness. He staggered towards her before falling down onto one knee. He gasped, shaking his head.

“Who... Who are you? What are you, girl in the shadows?”

She was so shocked at being addressed, thinking that she had hidden herself very well. The look in his eyes was bright with fighting, the scars on his face more intricate than anything she'd ever seen.

"Please...please don't mind me, sir," she said in a small voice, her pencils almost slipping out of her shaking sketchbook. "I...I'm a memory witch. My name is Naminé. W-who are you?"

“So, I’m not delusional.” He grunted, mostly to himself, staring into the dark shadows with one very old, pale blue eye. “Naminé? Gomennasai. I... I am sorry, I fear I am not in the best shape for meeting children.”

His ears twitched slightly at the sounds of scuffling flesh on concrete and the clatter of high heeled shoes. Hotta’s eye narrowed. He turned his head slightly to try to see if he could spot the creatures. There were so many of them!

“Hotta. Ieyasu Hotta. You should have someone watch over you, child. It is dangerous to be out here alone.”

"I...I'm hardly a child, Ieyasu," Naminé protested. "I...I'm fifteen." She couldn't remember whether or not fifteen meant someone was a child. She certainly wasn't an adult, and she did dress like a little girl. She looked down at her plain white dress and childish sandals, and then looked up again.

"But nothing can hurt me here," she said slowly, trying to read the eyes of the man through the shadows. "And I'm probably doomed to fade back into darkness...like all of the Nobodies before me."

Hotta blinked, fifteen? She was young! He smiled at her softly, winced at the shooting pain in the back of his eye. “I apologize, young lady. I shall not treat you like a child. But I’d rather not have to see anyone fade away.”

He shook his head, looking down at the black ooze that covered his pants, his hands and arms. He was covered in the gore from slaying the nurse things. He suspected that this was probably not the way to make friends with a lost little girl.

“Is there someone here you know? Friends or family that might have a place for you to stay, just until the monsters go.”

He felt woozy again, wondered how long before consciousness deserted him again like it did at the fountain when he arrived in this city. If he passed out now, the creatures would surely rip the girl and him apart.

"Th-thank you," Naminé said gratefully, smiling up at Hotta. She hadn't heard anyone say anything like that, as most of the people who saw her had treated her like a freak, someone with a power they wanted to control.

"I know that Roxas is out there somewhere," she said, her smile lingering for a moment on her lips with the thought of him. "I think he's fighting. He said to hide inside a building. He said nobody would get me there."

"Are you okay?" she asked suddenly, fear sharp in her voice as she looked at his face. She could see light leaving his eyes and she began to panic. "Are you hurt? We need to find somewhere safe!"

Hotta smiled back at her. For some reason, her delicate smile brought him strength. He wanted to protect the soft-spoken child. And now that he had someone to fight for again, he knew that he could not fail her! Hotta pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the protests of his bruised body.

If she had a friend here, this Roxas, then perhaps it would be best to get her somewhere where he would be able to find her later. Then again, what if this Roxas was also just a child? Perhaps he, too, needed protecting from these disgusting monsters?

Hotta felt suddenly guilty. He’d seen children hurt before. And he’d been unable to help them. All of the years he’d spent killing and hurting others, but it still hurt him like to imagine children being hurt.

Hotta shook his head, bringing himself back to the present. She was concerned about him. “I think perhaps, the lights from the carousel... They hurt. But yes, we should go some place safe, Naminé-san. In which building does your friend live?”

Naminé looked back up at Hotta, getting the feeling that he wasn't someone who smiled very often. It loosened his scarred face and gave him a look that she felt was...softer, nicer somehow. She smiled all the wider at him, determined to keep that smile alive.

"Roxas," she said quietly, trying to remember the number on the door he came out of. She tried not to worry about him, knowing that he would be all right if he still had the Keyblade.

"He's in the room next to mine, room 999 in Building 12. We...we can get there if we hurry!"

Hotta nodded with a grunt. Building twelve, that was not far away. It was only three passed his home. That would make it easy enough to find, even with the fog. And perhaps it was just an optical illusion, but seemed that twelve was a much taller building than the others. But it was impossible to really tell in this place, things here were so distorted, so unreal...

“Alright, just be very careful.” He took a limping step towards the entrance of the alleyway and paused.

The violence and the gore, the sounds of his earlier fighting, were attracting a mass of what at this distance appeared to be massive roaches. They scuttled at a blinding pace through the tracks and slick marks that he had left as he fought. He exhaled sharply, turned to glance at the girl. He was not certain that if she would be safe running through the insects. Would they attack her?

Of course, he turned back and let out another hiss of air from between his teeth, watching them surround one of the still-twitching nurse creatures. He shuddered at the sounds.

“We should find another way around this mess.”

Naminé nodded in agreement, resting an idle finger on her cheek as she tried to peer through the darkness. She had chosen to hide in a dead end, and she loathed herself for it now. But then...just there...she saw that there was a small hole in the brick wall, leading to a hollowed-out building.

She hissed towards him, trying not to make too much noise so that the monsters wouldn't swoop down on them. "Look!" she said, pointing to the hole. "Can we use this?"

Hotta moved towards the girl, but he kept his eye on the monster, never turning himself away from them. He glanced down at the hole and motioned for the girl to step out of the way before kicking as hard as his could. The stones cracked and crumbled away, opening the hole in the wall large enough for even Hotta’s more than six foot frame to duck inside.

He nodded, glancing back at the horde of insects. Something suddenly crunched in the far distance. Hotta’s ears twitched and he sucked in a mouthful of air. Did that sound like a tiny, shrill scream? One of the insects? No! There was more of those sounds, crunch, shriek, and a low metallic sound of scraping.

Hotta felt the hairs on his forearms and the back of his neck bristle. His lip curled away from his teeth, and he took a step backwards. His voice was very calm and very soft. “I think we should go now, Naminé-san.”

He did not turn to see if the girl was going, his eyes were locked on a section of brick wall. Something was out there. Passed the brick, the shape of something only vaguely human was stepping down onto the pavement, crushing the insect-like creatures under its heavy feet.

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Log: In progress

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