Elora Griffin & Yuu Kurogami
April 3rd – Evening
OTHER SIDE: Nakano, Streets - Alleyways
Just one look at the crack-covered sky and the insane green moon made Elora understand that she was not in Kansas anymore. No, this was…
A green moon so absolutely alien that if a normal human had looked upon it, they’d have gone insane. A sky so shattered in a way so essential and wrong that you simply were unable to understand it, barely able to sense that the metaphysical connotations of this were more than worrying. And looking around you…
It was the same street you had been before. Only so utterly warped and distorted as to be unrecognizable. The buildings were twisted into spires that extended towards the broken skies. The green light cast bizarre shadows everywhere, which trembled into maelstroms of pure midnight.
This was Tokyo, but at the same time this wasn’t Tokyo. This was a city, but it was also a wasted land, one so utterly devoid of life and growth that it could only be called an embodiment of death itself.
This was what you saw. This was where you were. The other side of the moon. The other side of the earth. The other side of the coin.
A world as eldritch as you now were.
A world that was without a doubt fraught with pure danger.
For a moment, you were so overwhelmed with what you saw, that you were rendered speechless. That most of the nearby buildings had turned into Tim Burton’s gothic wet dream definitely wasn’t helping matters.
You had no other option but to temporarily dismiss this absurdity to take care of your companions.
“I’m… fine…” Rika was the first to answer, squeezing your hand with all her strength, while she used her other arm to stubbornly push herself up, struggling against the dizziness, and borrowing your strength momentarily to stabilize herself. She was trembling and covered in absurd amounts of sweat, but it was the same Rika as always, trying to stand up just to spite that feeling of weakness that so invaded her.
Sitting up was as much as she could manage. The heat wasn’t helping things any for you. The warped street was like an oven, and sweat clung to you and your clothing in a sheen, head to toe.
“God… now this, this is some anime bullshit…” Ryou said, lying face up on the sidewalk. “Hell, my ribs healed up…”
“Shouldn’t that be something to rejoice about?” Sakura groaned as she stood up on wobbly legs. Just like Yuu, she seemed to have taken the transformation much better than anyone else. And she seemed to have been visited by the same miraculous restorative services that came with said transformation.
“Nah, now I can’t impress girls by telling them I got my ribs busted fighting some sort of zombie on steroids.” Ryou replied.
“Should’ve known… gah, just end me now.” Sakura put one hand to her forehead, massaging it, only to retract her hand with disgust, covered with her blood.
“I’m… I’m alright…” Kiyoko said, opening her eyes slowly and looking around. “Akane?”
“Here. I’m okay, nee-san.” Akane answered weakly.
“Thank god…” Kiyoko said, forcing herself up, and crawling his way to her little sister with the force of pure will and big sister energy, cradling Akane on her arms.
“I’m fine too. So is Ayako!” Nanami reported, the brunette at her side nodded her head.
“Where’s Erika?” The latter asked, looking around, and quickly locating the blonde.
“Ewww…” Erika was standing near the urine-soaked, vomit-stained mess that was Osamu, looking at him with a mix of disgust and pity. The Treasurer had taken this whole… thing much worse than anyone else apart from Yuu, Sakura, and oddly enough, Erika. He was basically a trembling lump in the street, refusing to answer external stimuli.
“Seriously… what are we going to do about him?” The blonde asked, swiping the blood off her eyes with one hand.
“No, in the first place… what the hell is with this whole damn… thing?” She asked, to nobody in particular.