Yuri Worlds
[100] Flood
Despite the clear gravity of the situation, they were afforded several seconds to prepare themselves for what was about to splash over them. Yuka didn't have the ability to die, which Misaki hoped wasn't a fib from the company. However, if anything seemed like it would be a danger to her, this monumental mass of stolen, distilled life force was a leading candidate.
Fortunately, Bianka made a note of an emergency escape hatch hidden into the wall according to the main schematics and desperately screamed for them to hurry over there as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, like so many other critical doors, this one was invisible and especially intangible to find the seams and latch. The Nishikawa sisters practically tore their nails off, probing every inch of the door, as Yuka brought out the bat swoop of her arms to protectively cover everyone, with Misaki right behind her.
The mass that tumbled out contained some measure of anti-gravity, which slowed its descent through the chamber. It bought them some time, but not a lot, as the first wave splashed near Yuka's batwing shield and just barely slid over the side. Half-screams, swiftly snuffed out, soon followed. They resisted the urge to listen as the sisters finally managed to pry the emergency door open and pull everyone through.
Yuka caught a thick glob on her arm and stifled her own scream as she retreated through the emergency door. They slammed it shut before the force of a greater wave crashed into it. The material buckled and hissed but didn't yield as the blast flowed down.
Misaki inspected her loved one's limb and discovered that a sizable piece had been simply erased from the obsidian flesh, like a large chomp, instead of the ashen fleck that the security threshold had taken out of her during their escape effort. She couldn't find any sign of what had been sheared off Yuka. Biting through the discomfort and exhaustion, Yuka gave a morbid smile and extended what she had of her body to fill in the void of what had been taken.
She remarked softly, "Maybe I can die. Or something like it. I'm okay. It just hurts when I try to do anything at all. No biggie." Misaki hugged her tightly and helped Yuka to her feet.
The girls made their way through the emergency access corridor and eventually stepped out onto a high platform overlooking one of the side junction paths. What they saw below was horrifying.
The workers in white were scrambling to get out, stepping over one another, stumbling, and getting crushed like colorless lemmings scrambling to safety. But the swift, rainbow-sparkling wall crashed through the chamber and rushed on top of them. Their voices fell silent.
When the rainbow wave was over, no bodies remained. There was only a sprawling mass of blended black outlines mashed together like inverted, unnatural police chalk traces—frozen memories of their last moments.
It reminded Misaki of how the Sasaki moms had been shoved into storage. Although she doubted that any of the girls below might be recovered. Though there was no lingering smell, she envisioned astringent paint thinners like acetone, turpentine, and benzene splashing and melting once animated, living art. The real Melting. Namiko and Chika both looked away and held it together. Kosame raised her head to the ceiling and barely resisted the urge to vomit over the ledge.
"Dear sister, you don't know how blessed you are right now," Kosame softly whispered to Bianka, grinding her jaw to keep everything down. At least it was mostly festival food. Misaki had to question herself about why looking down didn't instill her with vertigo or nausea. Too many things. She just hoped that the little wristband girls weren't caught in this crazy flood.
Bianka explained that because of the spillways and conduits, even a breach wouldn't send the reservoir blasting through the entire system where escapees and innocents were trying to get out. Misaki had to wonder if there were innocents among the workers, brainwashed or forced by the situation to obey cruel goddesses.
Where the reservoir went after the catch basins was the problem. The waystation would secure most of it, but then it would begin flooding what Bianka could track of the entire transit system and potentially shut it down. Getting this close to that section of the system allowed her to finally dig into the particulars. Too much of it was isolated and quarantined from wider access on her level.
"We need to hurry," Bianka pressed the group. "The catch basin will hold for a time, but if we don't do anything about it, then everything will be flooded, all the worlds connected to the transit system. I wasn't sure what the next step would be, but the system hinted that it could just be shunted into an uninhabited world. Thank goodness for that, although that would be our last option because we would lose all that mass. So would the company. But at least no one would get hurt. The better option I see now is that there's something called a rainmaker that can infuse and collect energy from a particular world. If we turn it on with the mass directed into it, I think we can make it rain in the other world. Restore it to how it was before the company stripped it. But we've gotta go now."
Bianka pushed all those words out at a fantastic speed, only slowing briefly at the important parts while dashing along the escape corridor with her sister barely able to keep up and her eyes still shut. Misaki found it immensely frustrating that Bianka couldn't see the whole picture of the system.
So far, everything had been fortunate—almost too fortunate. As though some invisible hand was leading them along with breadcrumbs exactly where they wanted to go and apparently where they wanted to guide them. She just couldn't imagine why the company might want them to break everything like they were doing. Considering her conspiracy-heightened brain, she suspected that Bianka was having similar thoughts and hopefully probing every path before them with skepticism. Assuming the pieces of herself she gave the others were still working.
Not worth stressing about. When and if shit went south, they'd deal with it then. Till then, run and do what they can.
Reentering the waystation area was surreal for Misaki as they entered from the side corridor through the emergency access tunnel. It made her think of sneaking onto an abandoned film or theater stage after hours. She saw where all sorts of people milled about and got ready to go to places unknown. Were all those people actually travelers or just extras? The chair she sat in when preparing her luggage, putting on that little innocuous wristband, checking her timer, and feeling ready for a unique adventure was still positioned exactly the same as she left it. Chika and Nami took breaths and also stole a glance at where they had been last in this place.
Bianka and Kosame rushed off ahead and confirmed that the steps up that should take them to the city were not blocked, and there appeared to be a live connection through the archway portal there. Bianka could see that this wasn't actually a waypoint in a side universe used for transit but rather just a location in the backstage of this world. More deception.
Before the Nishikawa sisters parted ways with them, Bianka pressed that if anything untoward occurred, the path up the stairs would hopefully remain open for them. If not, they would have to backtrack and figure it out. Bianka passed the device to Misaki and carefully fluttered open her eyes. She immediately had to squint against the artificial but still sharp military-style lighting. She staggered and teared up, but her big sister supported her. She and Kosame made sure to give each of them a hug before they hustled up the stairs.
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Just the four of them now. Yuka pushed on ahead quickly, inspecting side doorways but not finding anything of note or concern. They all helped her look. It wasn't long before they backtracked to the area where they first arrived in this world. The gold and blue archway was there, but it was sealed shut. Misaki noted that gold and blue also showed up a lot in company things.
Yuka cursed, even though she said it softly, and gave a look of embarrassment toward Nami and Chika. Fiddling with the side console just produced dull thuds like a heavy monster kicking the wall. Checking around revealed the problem. Everything here was locked down and marked as only accessible through an alphanumeric strand location that Misaki recognized as the designation Travel Anywhere gave to represent their home world. They had gone through and locked the door behind them, trapping them here. And the flood was coming.
It wasn't far off—a sound like thunder but shifting and rustling with creaking, bulging weight swirling above their heads. The unshakable presence of a massive Jacuzzi on the floor above them. Kicking, hitting, and smashing the control console, especially with every weapon that Yuka could possibly summon, didn't help.
Digging around for anything nearby that could work also proved fruitless. This felt like the worst-case scenario. They had bashed open the dam, but instead of spreading the life-giving energy to where it needed to go, it would just flow back into Yuka's world and likely cause untold chaos and destruction. Just what the company intended. Pain and suffering were the point, as Mari told them.
Namiko got in a few more good cathartic hits along with Chika as Yuka found a wall to tiredly slide down with her hands cradling her head. Misaki crouched beside her, but Yuka couldn't bring herself to look at her.
"I fucked up. I shouldn't be allowed to be so angry at Miss Okura for the choices she made. I wanted to hurt them. I really wanted to hurt them by taking back all that they had taken from us. Give it back to you and everyone else. Blast their world to pieces; show them. I never wanted any of this to happen, though. All the chaos, all the bad things that I can't do anything about, all the death already carved out and rushing to arrive. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to everyone. There's nothing… I can do…"
The melancholy in Yuka's voice gently faded as she looked across the room at the arch intended to hold a wormhole, portal, or whatever the truth was about how one traveled from one universe to another. She carefully got up and approached the still, gray surface behind the arch. Yuka pressed a hand to it.
Softly, she muttered, "What if it's still there? Like an afterimage, like a scar..."
Yuka explained her thought process to the others. "They want me to be able to split myself into pieces across universes. Since they used the opening not too long ago, there might be something left over. What if whatever talent they want me to develop might work? This has got to be the best opportunity. I have to succeed. I have to send myself to your world. But the particles and all that handed stuff. The food and everything. I'd have to be like you. Like how you are over there. It's a lot. I know some meditation from Ayame, but I don't know if that's how it's supposed to go. Maybe I can't do it; maybe this is pointless, and I've killed us all."
The others gathered around her. They looked around. Chika swallowed. "Do your best. I would've gone the same way. I did go the same way. What those bastards put me through and put all of us through deserves punishment. And recompense. I don't want to die. But I am with the souls I want to be with in my last moments."
Namiko nodded. "Yeah, maybe we could run if there's no chance, but… I will launch you all up the stairs with everything I have and buy as much time as I can. Fuck the company. Let's do it. Together."
Sitting in the proper position and doing everything Ayame taught her to do, Yuka controlled her breathing as much as possible as the horrible sounds above them swelled like an insect swarm hunting them down. The others attempted to breathe at the same time she did, so they didn't introduce extra outside noises. They held perfectly still despite so much trembling in their colorful, anime limbs.
Whatever Misaki could offer, she gave it as a mind, a focus, a love, and a heart, transmitting to the girl she wanted to marry, the girl she loved with everything, even though they had this silly, confusing starfish connection. That didn't matter. Everything that the company tried to convince them of didn't matter. All the dangers of their own making, ready to pounce, didn't matter. All that mattered was this moment, this quiet, solo eternity in harmony with the soul she loved for no other reason than love itself. Love was her choice, not her destiny, not her completion, not the pressure of others, or anything else. Her choice, Yuka's choice—their love crafted by beautiful little moments.
That first hug so secretly close to here, huddling in a cramped ladies' restroom on a train, walking together, sheltering together in an old shack, laughing with beautiful laughter on the roof of the school with fireflies lighting their stage, naked in several sumptuous baths, and bearing their hearts in the comfort of bed. Riding on a train, walking in the mountains, fighting for each other's lives, defending one another, caring for those who needed it, mourning those they lost, standing up to smiling evil, playing innocent, and fighting for justice.
Together but separate. Together but separate together but saturate together but separate together with separate together but separate together but separate...
That was it. Yuka's eyes burst open, and she stretched a hand towards the wall. She didn't say anything. Then she wobbled and gave a wretched cough that practically tossed her lungs on the floor.
Urgently, they all asked if it worked. Yuka collected her breath and started to shake her head. She grimaced and sighed. She had to say, "I don't know. It felt like I did something, but I'm not connected to whatever happened. I don't know if there's another me over there or if I just wasted our time. Sorry. But if I'm over there, I know I'm fighting hard to give us a chance. If that universe hasn't killed me first. Maybe it...I don't know. It might be fun to see what I look like where you come from."
The torrential sounds above them accelerated to monstrous levels. Misaki faintly remembered the El Niño years when she was a kid. False memory, but it still came to her in this moment.
They had mere moments to decide if they were going to retreat either to the emergency access hallway or the steps. Then that precious blue light flared across the portal, like the hottest fire released, with slivers of gold.
"COME ON!" Yuka's voice screamed from far away, even though Yuka hadn't spoken. The four of them scrambled together, led, launched, and hurried with all the muscular and breastful power that Namiko had at her disposal.
Misaki looked back, even though she was briefly reminded of Lot's wife from that bland Bible. Stuck in slow, thick motion, the rainbow cascade smashed through the corridor and bounced with a fast, seeking lower current, reaching out with watery tendrils that almost seemed alive. Yuka extended another quick cloak to shield everyone, but she didn't need it as they were through before the energized fluid could reach them. And, for the moment, safe.