The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[22]

For the Alt Branch [22A]

Finley rubbed his beard nervously for a moment but looked over at Blessin confidently. With what he was packing, Giselle doubted he had any reason to be nervous, but then he hadn’t run into what they encountered at the New Age shop. Not that Giselle had any hope that filling a dark spirit mass creature full of projectile holes would do much more than spread shrapnel from everything it hit and probably wound one of them.

Giselle didn’t want or need a gun, but she was glad that people trained in their use were with them and had them. Since the gate was open now, Finley inquired if they should bring the cars through for easy access. Blessin checked the time on her phone and whispered a few soft sounds.

“We should have a few minutes…umm, before any points of concern. If you want. Bring them around so everything‘s closer.”

Finley agreed to this, and Dale offered to help bring in the other vehicle. Finn passed him the keys.

Giselle puzzled over this, since they made a big deal of finding the right place to park that would be safe in this neighborhood. Blessin actually hadn’t been too insistent on that. It was like her mind was elsewhere. Giselle did her best not to feel paranoid.

She’d just known this woman for a few days. Less than one, really. Gwen vouched for her but the creepy man they met by the coast who turned out to be Cerberus definitely seemed innocuous and laughable with the way he reacted to them and how just a spray of mace hobbled him. But he held a vendetta and scoured away her wife’s right eye. How much could she really confidently say about the woman?

Personal matters lay to the side, but so far as her claims of knowledge about another universe and the way she used crystals and ‘agape’ to guard against Cerberus seemed proven, Giselle definitely fretted about whether they were jumping in with an unknown quality after one evening of chilling out, eating ribs, and playing Smash.

Blessin led the way with her flashlight out as the early evening settled around them. The warehouse looked like any generic large flat building lacking branding and a posted address.

There were several loading dock doors and regular doors with round locks. Giselle wondered if they were going to have to shoot them off or something suitably cinematic. It turned out Blessin headed for the keypad right next to the dock and entered a quick code. Moments later, the door to the side clicked open and the dock door slowly rose up.

Gwen raised a skeptical eyebrow and asked, “Wait, is their passcode like 1234?”

Blessin chuckled. “837429. I know someone on the inside.” Giselle scrunched her face up but slowly advanced with the others towards the door. The area within was exceptionally dark, but she was able to see piles and piles of loosely stacked but lightly organized restroom equipment. All stark ivory in tone, they made Giselle think of fragmented whale bones. Looking over, Giselle frowned to see that the equipment appeared to be the first thing that raised concern and alarm from Blessin. She scanned cautiously around the nearby interior with her flashlight.

From what Giselle could see inside, the warehouse seemed rather unfinished, as though the builders just dropped a frame on top of a concrete slab with basic support beams and pylons and hadn’t bothered to do much else. By this point, Dale and Finley drove the cars through the open fence and towards the open loading dock. Blessin raised her hand and directed them to park just in front and not pull through, urging, “Hang back just a minute.”

Finley, resting his weapon as he walked around the area by the door, commented, “About what I expected. Looks like abandoned inventory.” Blessin gave a quiet, nervous affirmation.

Checking on Hanako, Giselle noticed that she too appeared reticent to enter. Mari at her side twisted, shifted, and even kicked for a moment. God, that felt weird but didn’t bother her as much as she expected. Finn noticed her expression and made sure she was all right.

Once everyone was inside, it was clear the flashlights they brought with them wouldn’t be nearly enough to push back the darkness. Edging carefully through some tightly organized equipment, Blessin sought out an old computer setup that looked like a register checkout abandoned from the 1990s or a K-mart.

Quietly, Blessin urged the group to stick together and not wander off. Dale nodded and remarked that he had no intention of splitting up because he knew horror movies started just like this, although he quipped, “Well, not exactly like this…” he panned his light around, catching the stark white toilets and seats.

Casually, Blessin asked Hanako if she noticed or felt anything around her “compatriots”. Finley flashed a look of curious concern. Hanako didn’t say anything for several long moments as her feet scuffed the cement. She found her way over to Giselle‘s side and lingered there.

”No”, was Hanako‘s simple answer. Finn laid a hand on the right side of her face and shifted his fingers around carefully before noting, “That’s weird. I can sense something. Like before. But it’s different. I felt beauty. Not this time…”

Blessin furiously typed at the keyboard. Then, her fingers paused.

“…Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit… Okay. It’s fine. It’s perfectly fine. Gwen? How fast can you sprint now?”

“W-what?”

“You did track and field in high school.” That was a new one for Giselle, but she’d just pieced together Gwen’s history in the last three months. A shifting sound radiated from the darkness. Gwen didn’t need more prompting than that before Blessin tersely shouted, “Door!”

No matter how fast Gwen was or might’ve been, the dock door suddenly slammed closed, and she could barely even jiggle the handle of the smaller door. She started kicking at it before Blessin ordered her to get back to the group.

Guns came up all around as Finn begged for an explanation. Blessin made sure they had a pool of light around them as she quietly explained, “You saw something bad. So did Hanako. But we see toilet stuff. Only problem, records show they liquidated their stock. This place should be empty.”

Eerie laughter filtered in the dark, slowly shifting to a vast, deep roar. Toilets, seats, and other products started to vibrate, as though alive, as though the missing teeth of some immense giant.

Hanako raised her blue light in the darkness. Giselle did the same but with more hesitation, thinking about Finley standing nearby in terrified confusion. He had his guns and devotion to friendship, but she couldn’t help but fret that she led him to his death.

Tightening into a circle, everyone with guns raised them in defense. Finley seemed at a loss for words, freaking out. But, when Blessin glanced at him, he gave a deep sigh and expressed solemnly, “My ax.” That was when the tangle of clinking ceramic shuddered with violent force. The sound of the guns firing was deafening for Giselle. Hanako flinched as well. It was hard to hear anything after but violent ringing. She felt rumbling, as though the entire world were crumbling.

It was clear after a few volleys that destroying the objects sprawled around simply unleashed what was hiding inside. Twisting tentacles spun like drills of black tornadoes spreading forth. Giselle had no time to be hesitant, she stepped forward and unleashed a concentrated wave of light. It was a lot to ask of Mari and brought on stomach-twisting upset, but she focused her love for her friends and family like drawing out a radiant sword.

Hanako joined her moments later and raised whips made of glowing, clear sky daylight. Where the whips touched, she focused. Blessin spoke of turning it into inanimate things, so Giselle searched her gut for something to work with. Pillows, she considered. But that didn’t seem like it would be much of an inconvenience to the entity. In her first wave, Giselle had something specific on the brain. With a flash of light from deep inside her, the advancing end of the tentacles dropped to the ground and meowed.

Yes, she had actually turned the damn thing into cats. The transformation from spectral clouds of miasma into confused black cats was enough to bewilder the entire thing into drawing back and dropping. Meanwhile, Finn rushed to grip her protectively but also claim, “I see something.”

During this lull, Finn briskly explained, “It’s dark and disorganized. Forced together or torn between focus.” Blessin listened in and helped direct Hanako and the shooters to a weak point in the mass, where it was tense like pulled licorice taffy spinning and twisting in an eternal blender.

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As the cats melted back into twisting black plumes of chaos, she made sure everyone knew to run at the opposite wall despite questions the group had about what that would do. Finley appeared like he was just going on crazed adrenaline with sweaty uncertainty. But he and terrified Dale both raised their guns when given the order. Hanako and Giselle went first and, this time, focused on creating things much heavier. Black pitch, pavement, and rock. Some portions latched onto the real ground and others confused themselves for it.

“FIRE!” Simultaneously, Giselle and Hanako thought of birds tangled in sticky cloth for the top portion, and immediately the entity was twisted and torn into writhing shapes. A center portion, like a liquid mouth with flashes of sight, gnashed in fury as the guns sprayed. This time, the creature yowled and shrieked as both portions twisted backward like a snapped leg.

“GO!” Gwen took off like a shot, beyond anyone else, but soon pulled back as the lights couldn’t reach far enough to keep pace with her. Finn hurried just behind her but was soon panting as much as poor Giselle. Blessin ran with her arms close, totally like a girl, which Giselle wished she could’ve complimented her about, but she was expending all her breath getting her gamer legs to move fast enough. Hanako didn’t have gym, but she didn’t seem like she would’ve done that poorly with how she stayed with the group. Dale and Finley kept to the back but not too far behind, which had less to do with their physical shape and more to do with the guns and ammo they were hauling.

Finn checked behind them nervously, seeing something in the dark that none of the others could. Still a ways from the opposite wall and making good progress, the entire space rumbled as if a train were driving right on top of the roof, mixed with a prehistoric roar. It provided a convenient second wind shot of adrenaline to the entire group.

With tears and hacking, Giselle watched as the opposite wall sprouted with a wriggling mass of blackness to challenge the one they caught at the front of the warehouse. Whatever toilet parts and pieces they encountered and ran past now seemed to be gone either in distance or from the illusion vanishing.

But salvation appeared to their right as a section of the back wall projecting quite a ways forward opened with the closest wall falling away like a large, cargo door. Blessin didn’t need to tell them to head toward it. The problem was the group was starting to run out of energy and the black masses still had plenty.

Frantic gunshots did little more than bring back the deafening ringing. Slipping to the back, Giselle and Hanako gripped hands and focused not only on some sort of shield to protect the group but also on piling up transformations of lead to hinder the entity. It helped, but they were still losing pace.

Blessin joined them and bowed her head while prancing backward. A tangle of golden light launched from her head, as though carried on wings. That was all Giselle saw before the largest portion of the mass stumbled and wrapped up in itself with sticky spiderweb projections. Giselle had no clue what just happened, but she had the sneaking suspicion there was something more going on with Blessin than some crystals and ‘agape’.

This wasn’t the time for those questions though as they finally managed to get everyone inside the brightly lit chamber at the back of the warehouse. Blessin mashed a button just inside and the door dropped like a breath-stealing sledgehammer. Not that any of them had breath left to steal.

Finley looked about the worst for wear with rivulets of sweat streaming from his beard and glossing his exposed flesh. Finn leaned against the wall and desperately did his best to gingerly lift his legs without shaking. Despite Gwen’s history, she looked like she was about to collapse and throw up. Dale, surprisingly enough, looked like he was on the fastest path to recovery. And he played nowhere near as much DDR as Giselle had been able to get in with Finn. Not that any of it helped her feel any less like she was dying right then. Hanako leaned against Giselle as she took several gulping breaths.

Blessin didn’t appear out of breath at all but still exhausted as she managed, “Sadly. The worst isn’t over yet.” Before any of them could ask for some sort of clarification, the chamber dropped steadily like an elevator, throwing some of them off their feet. Meanwhile, the faintly bluish lights above flickered like someone was playing with a light switch. Blessin glanced around nervously and ignored questions even after the steady descent came to a bracing halt.

At this point, she urged everyone to get to the center. It was just in time as the walls dropped away, to turn what once was a modest room into a daunting platform with just a slight lip on all sides. They clung to each other frantically, especially when the underground cave resolved its features. There was blackness everywhere, a rising hungry darkness that spread an ominous chill. It was like an entire lake in perpetual night swelling its banks to eat them. When they reached the ground level, everyone broke out in screams when the light above them shut down and very gradually blinked on again. A section of the floor that looked like a conveyor belt and matched a path leading away sparked listlessly and did nothing.

“THERE! Move!” To the right and what felt like an insurmountable distance away was another wall split into serrated teeth like one of those openings to underground vaults that Giselle remembered from playing the Fallout series. The problem was none of them could even lift their feet over the side of the dropped platform, let alone sprint that distance.

Feeling exhausted within her fiery side and from every inch of her body, Giselle had no idea what to do. Dale suddenly shouted that they could use him, please use him, if it would help. Giselle realized what he meant a moment later as Hanako turned and twisted him with her energy, whatever she had, into his female version. It was a tiny shot of energy as Dale fervently gasped and jiggled to play up the transformation. Heaven knows what Finley friggin thought at that moment. She tried not to look over at him but, at the same time, she understood he was there, and he was scared. They were all scared. They were her friends, her loved ones. And no dark, twisted bastard with an empty soul was going to take even one sliver more from those she loved!

Melding vicious anger and every ounce of love she could twist up into a tight flaming ball, Giselle wielded everything she and Mari had into a flamethrower of destruction. No transformation this time. Just burn the fucker to ashes.

It felt like the wielding of fumes against a mountain, but it was enough to swaddle them in the kind of light falling on the platform. Everyone knew they had to run even though they couldn’t. Third wind, whatever that meant. They dragged themselves as a stumbling, fumbling group towards that door across the way as Giselle felt like she was screaming every ounce of breath from her throat. She wished that the little one didn’t have to give so much, but she was grateful.

Finally, leaning against the edge of the hardened metallic wall, Blessin screamed, “COME ON, YOU BITCH! YOU BETTER OPEN UP!” She slammed the console for emphasis, but sliced her arm. There was a strange, yellow ring underneath where she was standing. After too many nervous heartbeats, it finally began to part. They all tried to squeeze through when there was barely enough space but still helped each other to get as deep into the well-lit space as possible. Of course, once everyone was inside the screaming began for the opening to close and prevent the damn thing from following them.

It washed and wriggled against the blazing light like a sludge wave crashing into a breaker. Giselle barely had the chance to recognize that the light on the platform and above them was basically the same as Hanako and Mari’s glow. With excruciating slowness, the door started to close again as the sludge struggled to squeeze through the teeth but melted with sizzling ferocity and black stains against the ground.

Just when everyone’s heart couldn’t take much more, the door finally sealed. Coughs and incoherent words wafted through the chamber as they advanced to the other side and waited expectantly for whatever came next.