"Rings of blood and rings of woe. Are you the one to carry me so? I butchered them up, I made them bleed. I carried my task for the darkest deed. God Almighty, smite this dread. I am the one who sees the dead. Now it's time for you to see. Come, stay, and be my family...."

---

~The World of Wasted Dreams~

---

-Day 6-

Hideki High stood proud and tall even as the sky above became a grimy and gray expanse of color. More rain. It seemed the wet season was taking its toll on the students, and there didn't seem to be an end in sight. Even still, it did nothing to deter the school's various different students from participating in their studies. As if fate knew of this dreary boredom, a new student made her presence known to the entire class. Fate indeed....

The slightly short girl had long black hair that cascaded down to her back while a set of red eyes contrasted with pale skin. Either this was a normal look from where she was from, or she had some ideas about how people perceived her. Writing her name on the chalkboard, the newbie turned around to face the class with a small smile and a bow of respect.

Even now she was scanning, looking for specific individuals. Seemingly ordinary people with irregular ties to their own destiny. Katashi Todo. Jack MacArthur. Anri Rokudo. Anthony “Tony” Wright. Alex Carter. Mii Kurozawa And her. Yuriya Yozora. Fully aware of the unsettling nature of her appearance, the girl made an effort to widen her smile though it still came across as forced and akward.

"Hello. My name is Yoshida Shizune. It's very nice to meet you all."

---

-Day 0-

Shizune groaned slightly as her vision slowly began to return. Her head hurt. That was something new. Sitting up, she looked around to take in her surroundings. And the more she saw the more she soon remembered.

An average school day. The end of the day actually. A couple of members from the school P.O.I.R Club-whatever that stood for-had decided to help a couple of students with research or something. Always research. Something happened. The power went out. Everyone else had gone home, so no staff or other students were present at the time. Shizune vaguely remembered an earthquake. How could she forget that? Then everything went black.

Standing up now, she saw that the classroom was now torn apart. Desks were skewered everywhere, the floorboards were covered with dust and a sticky substance that could have been blood or mucus. But the worse part was the outside world. Shizune walked over to the window and opened it, revealing a wide forest that seemed to span for miles surrounding Hideki High. The sky was blood red with no stars in sight. Only a pitch black moon.

The World of Wasted Dreams. A nightmare. A twisted parody of our own reality. Hell.

Shizune narrowed her eyes and turned back, only to see what she already knew was there. All of the students were sprawled on the ground, unconscious. Sucked in with her in this dark realm. Walking over to them, Shizune began to gently wake each of them up.

"Jack, are you ok? Anri, please wake up. Katashi, you have to get up." Her gaze followed over until landing on someone much similar to herself. Her best friend. Or so it seemed.

"Yu-cha-" she stopped herself, hesitating with, "....Yozora, you must wake up. Quickly, before they arrive." Her warnings were suddenly drowned out by a melody of music. Violin music. It was beautiful. A song that spoke to the soul and opened up the hearts of mortal men. Listening to the sweet music coming closer to their position, Shizune paled. What? Why was he here? This was too soon!

"Everyone, please!" She spoke with renewed urgency now. "We have to leave now!" The music got steadily closer, entering the run-down classroom, surrounding Shizune with its deafening noise....

---

"Uuugn. How long was I out?" Anri rose from the floor. She had... Very little idea where she was at. But the first thing that she noticed was the smell. It smelled... Horrible. Like that one time she left a chicken wing underneath the oven for three weeks. Disgusting. But as she looked around, her disgust quickly turned to horror. She remembered that she had to stay after school for... Something. A project or another. Whatever the reason, she knew she was at school. But looking around, she was not in her classroom. No, her classroom was boring, with uniform desks lined up in a 7x7 fashion. Barely any space to even get into the seats with how tightly packed they were (They weren't, but Anri thought they were). But here, the desks were scattered about... And there was gore everywhere.

Of course it wasn't as if Anri knew if the mysterious substance coating the class was really gore or something else, but by the smell and appearance, Anri thought she had walked into some sort of horrific murder scene. She quickly got to her feet and edged to the wall, heart racing, trying to figure out what had happened. But nothing was coming to her. She could barely even remember why she was at school, let alone the events that led up to now. In her panicking Anri didn't notice that Shizune was up and trying to say something. Mostly because Anri could only hear music. Anri ran up to Shizune, seeing that she was the only one awake at the moment, clinging to her as if somehow she could protect Anri. "Yoshi-chan, what's happening? Where are we and what is that music!?"

The sound of music was the first thing his slowly waking consciousness could identify. It was a beautiful sound, really. The soft tones of a violin resonated inside his head, seeming to echo inside the walls of his skull before fading into nothing. His head began to ache as the eerie music grew louder. His thoughts started processing once more as he was drug back into wakefulness. What had happened? He remembered a power outage and what he assumed was some sort of earthquake but not much else. Voices crept into his aching head to accompany the music. They sounded familiar, though he couldn't place who they belonged to.

Anthony peeled open his eyes. His vision was blurry, his cheek resting against something hard. The floor. He blinked several times and sat up slowly, patting the floor around him in search of his glasses. He found them easily and wiped the lenses on his shirt before replacing them back on his face. With his vision returned he was able to properly assess his surroundings. Later on, he would wish he wasn't able to find the glasses.

The classroom was a mess. The desks, which were normally arranged in such a neat and orderly fashion, were strewn randomly across the floor. Posters, books, pencils – thrown about everywhere, as if some sort of tornado had torn through the room. Everything also appeared to be covered in some unidentifiable substance that stuck to his skin and smelled like roadkill. It seemed as if the room were tinted red.

Carefully, Tony got to his feet. With his better vantage point, he noticed other students sprawled out on the floor around the room. He could see only two other that were conscious. He recognized Anri, clinging to the new girl in obvious desperation. What was her name again? Tony was terrible at remembering it.

A sense of doom settled upon him. His heart rate was rapidly increasing, but he tried his best to stay calm. He swallowed the nervous lump in his throat before calling out to the girls. He had to raise his voice over the ever growing sound of music. ”Are you guys okay? What happened? Who invited the orchestra?”

Alex flashed back to consciousness with a gasp like he'd been forgetting to breathe in his sleep. Why was he asleep? It took no more than a second to take in most of his surroundings. The floor was hardwood for sure. He could see a few desks messily pushed off to the side of the room. The room had a reddish tint. It sort of looked like his classroom, but his vision while lying on the floor was quite impaired. His last memory was of the classroom and something else, but that was hazy at the moment.

He pushed himself up from his facedown position to better see where he was. He took a deap breath and licked his lips as he arose. He had a habit of sleeping with his mouth open. He barely managed to turn towards a desk as he vomited underneath it. Whatever coated the floors had managed to find it's way onto his lips as he slept. The viscous, rotten, irony taste mixed with the smell that complimented it perfectly in it's vile way, was to much for his shocked stomach. Throwing up was a quick rude awakening for him. He really did not like it and wanted to find the causes as quickly as possible to prevent them ever again if at all possible.

He wiped his mouth with a dry part of his sleeve and looked around again. It was certainly his classroom, but it was in some strange sort of disarray. He glanced out the windows to notice a red sky with a black spot that was cut off by the limited view. It sort of explained the red tint to everything, but why was the sky red. He now began to try searching his memory for what led to their predicament. He could only remember a blackout and an earthquake? He had never blacked out like that before. The darkness was eerie and he never blacked out before. Something serious must have done it to him. He began to feel himself, but he didn't feel particularly sore anywhere. The whole thing was feeling very unreal. He was getting very confused and the inability to figure this out was frustrating him.

He suddenly realized, it was too unreal. He just flashed to this seemingly new place and with little to no memory of it. This must be a dream. With a new relief in his revelation, he easily realized how all of this could be explained by him dreaming. A room that barely makes sense, a sky that barely makes sense, he somehow got this taste and smell somewhere, and even a random assortment of classmates. He had just noticed a few of the others at the moment as well. None of it really makes sense, but it all seems logical to me. This certainly feels like a dream. I wonder how much fun this one will be, or if I'll remember it when I wake up.

The music had been growing steadily as he woke up to his new environment. Shizune was trying to wake everyone up at first and now Anri and Tony were trying to figure out what was going on as well. Everything was seeming very real and actually really well put together for a dream. He stood up with the help of the desk he was next to and waited for whatever was going to happen next. Shizune seemed to know what might be going on, but her worried expression didn't look good. He wasn't sure of his dream theory and every moment that passed his doubt grew exponentially.

Consciousness, wholly unwanted and unwelcome, dawned upon Katashi whether he wished it to or not, a voice drifting into his ears amidst a steadily rising crash of classical music. The voice that carried a feminine lilt with a touch of urgency sounded to be that of Yoshida Shizune, the recent transfer student. Katashi was curious as to the reason he had been sleeping in the presence of Shizune, but judging by how he could hear the names and voices of others as well he would conclude that nothing untoward had occurred.

Tactile sense flared in irritation as Katashi shakily rose to a seated position, his spine aching dully from being flat on a floor. There was something damp and viscous clinging to the back of his uniform that had his skin crawling from the cool sensation. He had yet to blink the restless sleep from his eyes, the tiny, reptilian part of his brain telling him not to, to exist in ignorance of the world as the dulcet tune of a violin threatened to plunge him back into the darkness.

No.

Katashi blinked his eyes open, and took in the macabre world around him. Recollections of an earthquake that had thrown him to the floor in the first place may have explained the disarray of the rooms furniture as well as the scattered students in various forms of consciousness, but that didn't provide an answer for the state of disrepair that pervaded the space or the viscous ichor coating the floors. His gaze was drawn by an unearthly light filtering in through the windows behind him. It shouldn't have been possible, but what lay beyond the window was a boundless crimson sky holding aloft a cold pearl of polished obsidian.

"This is..." Words eluded him as what to say. Unreal? It certainly looked and felt real enough. Absently wiping his hands off on his pants he pulled himself away from the windows and towards the awakening group who were blessedly friendly faces at the very least. Shizune was attempting to rouse the fallen, three others beside them already awake and expressing there own confusion over their predicament.

Though Anri and Tony did raise a concern that left him staring at the door warily. "Not to offend our school orchestra, but we don't have a violin prodigy. Whoever is playing isn't from our school."

"Mmm... mmm..." Yuriya groaned as her consciousness slowly returned. Her head was heavy and... covered with something cold and sticky. Was it, blood? The ferrous smell certainly made it a possibility, which Yuriya confirmed as she lumbered back to a sitting position, before the blur of her vision cleared enough to let her gaze at her fine digits covered in the rusty red of stale blood.

Then it were her other senses that returned slowly, one by one, until she was overwhelmed with information, holding her temples between her left index and thumb, in a vain effort to dull the headache that was assailing her. "This song, what is it?" Yuriya said to herself, just before noticing that she wasn't alone on the dreary Plutonian landscape of the crimson world, no, she wasn't alone at all, there were a few more students, most of them foreigners, whoever was playing that song and...

"Shizune? What are we doing here and" Yuriya said getting back to her feet and walking to the window to get a better view of the landscape that enclosed them, right on time to see a flight of black bird-like things leave the trees on the distance, "why is it that I feel like this isn't the first time I have seen this place?" she said in a grave voice.

---

~Shizune Yoshida~

---

Hearing Yuriya’s calm tone was enough to reassure Shizune in what she was doing, though the notion that they had been here before made her usual frown deepen. Sure enough though, the other students began to gather in one spot, with the exception of Jack and Mii, who were still unconscious. Choosing to hover over them for protection, Shizune looked up at her gathered classmates. Her red eyes seemed distant and her voice was level and controlled, losing its earlier panic. The violin was getting closer. This would have to be quick.

"Everyone, please calm down. The more you panic, the more likely you'll attract him,” she said, eager to leave it at that, directing for everyone to take in their new surroundings closely. "We've all been dragged into a different dimension from our own. One that looks and acts like our own, but as you will all find, it is naught but a twisted reflection. This is the World of Wasted Dreams."

She said this as if it were indisputable fact, completely confident in her own words. Whether the others chose to believe her was up to them, thought it was hard to dispute the weird surroundings. Not to mention the red sky and dark forest outside. Though the true mystery was why Shizune knew any of this information at all.

"There's no way to escape because we can't exit this school. You will also find that you will lack the need for normal bodily functions. You won't feel hungry but you will find your exhaustion increasing as time goes on," she listed, giving all that she knew of the situation to inform these people as quick as possible of their impending danger.

"In this world, it's just us...and the monsters. Predators that will hunt us down and kill us. That's all. It is the utmost priority that we stick together and don't make any risky moves if we wish to survive. Now please, let's find somewhere safer t-"

Shizune's eyes widened as the darkness shifted ever so slightly. That feeling....there was a growing sense of something wrong in the back of her mind. She knew what it was now in sick realization because as she was giving her speech, she hadn’t realized it before. The music had stopped playing.

"Everyone...please stay in the classroom,” she said quietly, her eyes were fixed on the....the thing that lay in wait, standing in the hallway.

It looked like an impossibly tall man dressed in dark clothing, a jacket and pants. A white powdered mask lay on its face, with only two slits for eyes. Its left arm looked bloody and torn apart, flakes of flesh and cloth shredded and melded as one. In its right arm was a violin stick. The Friagne.

Shizune took a step forward, carefully motioning for the others to stay behind while keeping an eye on the thing. The Friagne titled its masked face sideways in an inhuman manner before raising the violin stick to its left arm....and then proceeded to slash it back and forth violently on the shredded skin. What resulted was the beautiful melody of violin music.

Without hesitation, the thing's chest began to rip apart to the swoon of the melody, revealing several long strands of material. On closer inspection, one could see that these strings were in fact veins. Still bleeding, fresh, and thin human veins. With a lash, the Friagne's innards reached forward and wrapped around both Alex and Tony’s throats, lifting them up in the air and strangling them.

Shizune ran forward to try and help the two free themselves, only to have a large cut suddenly appear on her cheek. Stumbling back, she tensed as several dolls in the form of small newborns began to crawl out of the Friagne's gaping opening and leap and slash out in all directions. They each had half-burned and crooked faces armed with knives in their hands.

As the veins coiled tighter around Alex and Tony’s necks, the creature continued playing its violin piece by using its self-inflicted instrument. Shizune gritted her teeth in agitation and fear for her classmates. No, no, no! This was all wrong! Why was this happening so early? Friagne wasn't supposed to be here!

---

---

None of this made sense. This had to be a nightmare. The chaos in the room, the smelly blood chunks, and now Shizune, who Anri always felt was that sort of emo-gothic-horror-ghost-story type of girl, said they were in some realm called the World of Waking Dream. More like Realm of Nightmares, but this was no time to act edgy. Anri immediately distrusted Shizune, because to Anri no one could be so calm and collective if they didn't have some hand in this. If this was just a sick prank, Anri will literally throttle someone.

But things soon proved to be no joke. Shizune suddenly stopped talking and told everyone to be quiet. Anri was still waiting for Shizune to speak when she too noticed that the music had stopped. This couldn't be good. Anri looked around and noticed someone standing outside the door. Some sort of… Man. But Anri knew better than to think this person was remotely human. Sure enough it raised its right arm, some sort of saw (actually a violin bow, but Anri thought it was a saw) and started slashing it's own hacked up arm. But instead of blood, music came out. And then it's intestines.

"What the fuck!” Anri screamed out. There was no way any of this could be real. If this was a movie then this thing would be the creepy but gimmicky horror movie monster. Anri would have been unnerved, but not scared. But being here right now, looking at this thing… Anri was terrified. The monsters intestine were choking out Alex and Tony, and creepy dolls with knives came out of the monster. In her panic, Anri only followed her instincts. She reached and clung onto someone, hoping they had some solution to this madness or at least could guide her to safety. And that unlucky person was Yuriya, who seemed to be the next cool headed and furthest away from the monster. "Yuri-chan what do we do!? How do we survive something like that!?" Anri didn't imagine the thing was flammable, and right now burning things weren't really on her mind.

As Shizune told everyone to stay calm, Alex took a deep breath in an attempt to completely calm his body. He was already pretty calm, but slowing his erratic heartbeat was another feat that he hadn't actually mastered. Shizune's description was a twist in reality in that it seemed certainly impossible, but very easily the reality of the situation. Even though it was odd and still nerve wracking, it was nice to see someone had some experience of the realm and lived to tell the tale of it.

His conclussion of a dream had quickly faded and it turned into more of what could be an adenture. His life did seem painfully boring. He had been checked in to see a psychiatrist for some of the dangers he had put himself. He believed in an afterlife and really didn't fear death as such. Still to give in to death wasn't idea he catered.

He was beginning to wonder how Shizune had returned from this world if there was no escape, but not being able to exit the school seemed reasonable. Although there must be someway to return to their original realm if she had returned before. The need to not eat anymore appealed to him greatly. It's not that he hated food, he just hated the fact he had a dependance on it. Although the slow but sure exhaustion didn't sound fun to him. Getting tired could be overcome, but exhaustion was real.

The promise of monsters made this adenture seem all the more real. A deep well swirled in his stomach, but he kept himself calm and pushed it down deeper. Paralysis from fear was how people died when they could have lived. Although Shizune was definitely right in that they all should stick together and make more conservative choices here.

He then noticed that the music had stopped. It seemed Shizune had realized it as well. The music was quite eerie in it's own right, but now that it stopped, the silence seemed to hold an air of impending doom. Perhaps the mood wasn't entirely wrong. A large, strange man appeared in the hallway in front of the door. His face was masked and his left arm was completely amputated and shredded. Shizune seemed worried, but told everyone to stay in the classroom. Perhaps that was best way to deal with this thing or maybe it wasn't that bad. Then the worst thing possible seemed to happen.

The man lifted the stick in his right hand up to his left. It looked to thin to be a saw, but when he began grating his left arm with it to create music, any idea of what it could be escaped him. The veins that emerged from his chest looked like some tentacled, Lovecraftian freak. Without any warning and with incomprehensible speed the veins lurched toward him and wrapped around his neck. Alex quickly grabbed at the veins around his neck. He soon found himself no longer on the ground with legs flailing as well. His first instinct was to make it so he could breathe, but after his wrestling friend told him it was actually the veins to the brain that knock people out, he shifted his fingers slightly to protect those veins as best he could. The lack of oxygen was intoxicating though. Alex was struggling with everything in him to loosen the veins but it wasn't working. His eyes were beginning to well up and his face was beginning to develop a purple hue. He felt like he was going to lose consciousness soon anyways.

Then he realized. Wait heroes don't kill monsters, monsters kill monsters. He let out a little laugh as his face gained a innoportune smile. With that he quickly let go of the veins around his neck and grabbed onto the veins that reached out to him. He pulled his legs up around them as well and grappled them as best he could. He pulled the arm sideways a bit and chomped with all the strenghth in his jaws on a section between his hands. He pulled and grinded on them until finally they broke off, spewing blood all over him and into his mouth. As the veins broke he fell to the ground flat on his back and knocked the wind out of himself. He didn't care about shock anymore, he was in a kill or be killed mode, and this violinist needed to be killed. He pulled the veins from around his neck and got up as he regained his breath. He tried to use the veins as a club against a baby freak, but instead just slapped it with it. He quickly turned and grabbed a chair instead swinging it violently instead. It knocked the baby into the wall. Reality had no meaning to Alex anymore. He just needed to be a bigger monster than the monster at hand.

"Yaaawwnnnn~" Jack stretched out across his desk, popping every joint he could before opening his eyes. He was always a heavy sleeper, his disregard for his surroundings lasting even moments after he was technically awake. He sat up, rubbing his eyes as he looked around noticing his class mates. He racked his brain trying to figure out what was causing such a look upon their faces before he finally heard the commotion. He looked up to see his friends Alex and Tony being strangled by a mysterious being.

In a flash, he reached into his vest for a box cutter he kept along with a few other theater repair tools. He stood up and ran out the door, leaping over the critters that seemed to suddenly appear all around him. He was about to get hurt a bit, but a few scratches wasn't going to stop him. Seeing Alex already freed himself, he was the first one he pulled back into the classroom by his collar. Then, with his box cutter fully extended, he slashed at the tentacles holding Tony until he was free before kicking him back inside the classroom as well. With his friends safe, he then had time to notice the actual threat. His bravado quickly faded as he found himself face to face with the beast. Noticing the source of the eerie music he swung violently at the creature's bow in an attempt to cut the strings of either the bow itself or the arm that produced the music. He figured if the music stopped, most of the fear would leave his classmate's minds so they could come up with something better to do. If he was going to spend his last moments buying time, he was going to do so trying to help out his classmates.

@Bird@rechonq

---

World of Wasted Dreams. If it were from anyone else under any other circumstance, I wouldn't be believing it, but the truth is right here before my every sense. Actual supernatural phenomenon revealing itself only to bite us all in the ass like some gorefest horror movie. Well King might have said this is the price for looking into the unknown, though the ichor and darkness makes me think of another horror author...

Katashi's darkening ruminations weren't without merit as he found Shizune staring off towards the door, everything falling into a dead silence. Before the motley group was an eerie figure that bore the appearance of orchestra violinist who suffered a nasty injury on the way to the evening's performance. Bile accumulated in Katashi's throat as his mind went through the mental gymnastics to connect the shredded arm to the bow string held in the other. As impossible as it sounded, the student knew that in such an alien local as they were that he could hold nothing he knew as an absolute certainty here. Even the basic necessities common in all living things weren't applicable in the World of Wasted Dreams, which would have spoken to the scale with which they were all imperiled if not for more pressing matters drawing their attention.

The creature acted in a mockery of human expression, drawing the bow along torn skin and muscle to produce that enchanting perversion of one of man's greatest forms of expression, it's music a grim dirge to foreshadow the fate that seemed to await those trapped in this dimension. Finding this further punctuated by the lashing of intestines around the other awakened boys' throats, lifting them from the floor and attempting to strangle the life from them while a deluge of blade-wielding dolls issued forth from the creature's chest.

Damn it I need to do something, any-

Spurred on by the frightened pleas of Anri, the savage will to survive in Alex, and flagrant disregard for school regulations on carrying concealed weapons at school in Jack, Katashi choose his course of action.

Grabbing the fallen chair he had been occupying before their dimensional transition by the backrest, Katashi dashed the few steps between him and Shizune who was still standing over the last student who had yet to awaken. With a surge of adrenalin emboldening him Katashi swung the chair horizontally, smashing away the closest dolls as far away as he could and preferably out the door. A wooden leg, seemingly loosened during the quake, flew off with the impact and sailed across the room, skidding along the floor before coincidentally coming to a rest near Yuriya.

"Shizune, how do we deal with this thing?!" Katashi barked out, voice terse as he stole himself to face more of the approaching dolls. Planting himself firmly before the occultist and the sleeping student with weapon raised for another sweeping blow, he endeavored to give the one person who had any experience and knowledge of this place and its inhabitants some breathing room. "If you've been here before you must have dealt with this or something like it. I'll try and keep these bastards back but you have to get us out of here before someone dies!"

~Shizune Yoshida~

---

Shizune gritted her teeth as the cuts began to add up; the dolls just kept coming, no matter how much of a fight or effort the group put up. Through the pain, Shizune saw Alex act quite monstrous himself and she had to admit she did not expect him to take a bite out of the Friagne’s veins. Nor could she predict Jack hiding a knife in hand and slashing out like a berserker. Regardless, seeing both Alex and Tony escape was good news. At least everyone was still alive.

Shizune gave the two clinging forms of Anri and Yuriya a shake of the head before kicking the dolls out of the way. Staying in one place cooped up like this was probably going to get them killed. At least Katashi seemed to have the right idea, demanding an answer from her.

“We have to distract it or burn it. It doesn’t like fire and staying in one spot will only have it surround us. I think it would be best if we lost it in the hallways. Scatter and regroup. We need to get rid of it but we can’t be alone for much too long.”

Yet even as she gave that plan, the dolls had already begun to cease their assault. They were eacy being hoarded back into the Friagne's chest, chanting some childish babble while doing so. The masked creature looked over a single form. The one defense the still unconscious girl had was now on the other side of the doorway. And that made all of Shizune’s calmness turn cold, face paler than usual.

"No! Somebody wake her up! Somebody wake her up!"

Scrambling to get up, Shizune tried to close the distance between them, only to falter from the wounds inflicted on her now bleeding legs. The Friagne lashed out its veins to string up Mii like an ornament. If nothing was done, this girl would become the first blood.

---

---

Things had taken a turn from weird to grim with the arrival of the source of the song that echoed through the school a few moments ago. Yuriya was still trying to get herself together and formulate an idea about what was happening when Anri clung to her, fearing for his dear life. "Rokudo?" Yuriya asked on reflex, surprised with the suddenness of the action, which almost knocked her out of her feet.

"It's simple, we don't fight it." Yuriya said as she fought to get Anri off her, "We have to follow Shizune's plan. For the time being let's focus on reaching the Art Room or the Infirmary, there should be alcohol on those places, I bet we can get a lighter or two on the Teachers' Room as well." With that said, Yuriya went to the window and opened it, gesturing for the others to follower her. "We can't escape through the corridors, get everyone back here safely and lets use the gutter pipes to climb down to the next floor. It should be sturdy enough to handle our weight."

"Shizune, you are coming with me!" Yuriya half yelled as she took Shizune off the harm's way."Leave her be, you all! We if we stay here unprepared we'll be the next ones to die, let's get ready and avenge her death later, but this can't be done if we die here." As Yurya said so, she came back to Anri, "Take Shizune and run. I'm the one who made the plan, so I have to leave last, to ensure everyone's safety."

---

---

Distract it? How? Most of the boys were trying to attack it and it didn’t seem to notice them any more than it would have noticed flies. And burn it? Sure, Anri liked fire, but this wasn’t the time to indulge in her sick fantasies. She had a lighter and some lighter fluid, but that would barely be enough to start a campire. She only had a lighter in her pocket right now, and she doubt she could burn this monster with a wimpy flame. Nothing around here would burn easily either, unless that gunk that everything is covered in is actually kerosene. If Anri could get some sort of spray deodorant or her hairspray, then maybe she could fight back, but right now she had nothing.

Shizune’s next plan to split up the gang sound even worse. Anri wasn’t the most savvy student in school, but even she heard and understood the basic idea: Don’t split the party. She understands that if they all went into hiding, the monster would have to take time to look for them, but Anri was pretty damn certain that it was going to find them. Splitting up was a lottery to see who would get sacrificed first. To make matters worse, there was still one girl left who hasn’t gotten up yet. It was Mii-chan, one of Anri’s own friends. She froze in shock as she realized that the monster, the Friagne, seemed to be be creeping ever closer to her unconscious form. ”Mii-Mii! No!”

But Anri was weak. She wasn’t as strong as some of the other boys, nor was she smart, and she couldn’t even keep a cool head. She was a pretty face with a lot of guts, but those guts failed her now that she was facing off against a freak monstrosity with babies jumping of it’s stomach. She would stare down a whole team of jerkasses and punks, but this… Thing? That was too much for her. She didn’t know what it was, she… She didn’t know if it could be beaten.

For now, Anri had only one thing she could do: follow orders. While she didn’t like Shizune’s plan, Yuriya’s was arguably a bit better. Still running away, but at least they won’t get picked off one-by-one. Anri didn’t think she had the athletics to shimmy down the gutter pipe, less so in her heeled shoes, but right now anything was possible. She took Shizune by her hand to lead her to the pipe, more so if she tried to resist. ”We have to go, or else we'll all be dead!”

Alex was still feeling enraged, but with the retreat of the infant doll knife swingers, he began to calm a bit. He heard Katashi calling for advice from Shizune. That was certainly the smart thing to do as she had been here before, but it didn't seem like she was doing a good job keeping them away from harm. It seemed like she was struggling to deal with the situation herself. Perhaps even she was unsure what to do in the exact moment. Regrouping and getting supplies was a good idea, but not an immediate one. Fortunately Yuriya had a decent idea. Yuriya was a little cold towards Alex most of the time, but it was because she considered him an outsider. He grew up in Japan, but because his name was English and he was technically foreign, she still gave him cold shoulders. That didn't really matter now though. She was the only one with an idea. It could get most everyone to safety immediately, but it unfortunately left Mii behind.

The idea of leaving someone behind was quite unnacceptable to Alex. "Screw a noble sacrifice or avenging a death, we need to save Mii." Unfortunately again, Yuriya might have been right. Alex frantically tried to search for a possibility to help Mii, but nothing seemed possible. He finally decided that an act of stupidity might be needed. He was going to take her and simply jump out of the third story window and deal with the probably broken legs later. At least Mii would be alive then, but he had taken to long to build up the courage... or stupidity. The Friagne had already lashed it's innards across the room and grabbed Mii, holding her unconcious body like a lifeless doll wrapped in his bloody veins. The sight of her being held was shocking and ruined his plan. After taking in the shock for a second, he grit his teeth and growled, "Fine," to Yuriya as he ran to the window. He helped Anri with her dilema with Shizune as he noticed her struggling a bit.

---

Their collective lack of control was never more apparent then in this first encounter with the monster known as Friagne. Utter chaos surrounded Katashi, and while he felt he had made the right call in counseling Shizune it was turning out to be a futile effort as they lacked the basics means with which to rebuke the monsters advances upon them. The pervasive sense of helplessness only worsened when the Friagne abandoned the offensive and withdrew its macabre minions, settling upon a single target that was ensnared with frightening ease amidst its own entrails.

Faced with the futility of their efforts, even the astonishingly enlightened Shizune proving ineffectual in this instance, he quickly realized that the others were right in leaving behind the slumbering student. Even if they had recovered her from her captor, not totally impossible given they had scene those tendons be cut and tear, they would have no way of evading its retaliation while carrying an unresponsive student.

"Damn it all, we can't stay here." Teeth gnashing with vehemence at what they would have to do, Katashi steadily backed away from the monster with the chair poised to strike out against any more intestinal bindings. His hand darted out, grabbing Jack by the back of his collar and pulling him back towards the window as everyone else prepared to make their escape down the rain gutter. "Move it people! If it finishes her before we are gone, she is dying for nothing, so climb!"

It pained him to so callously disregard a human life, but there was no way for the group to live if Mii remained sleeping. He could only console himself with doing what he could to keep the rest alive and hope that she remained sleeping till the very end. What little time he had been here told Katashi it was a mercy to never see this realm.

~Shizune Yoshida~

---

Yuriya’s words would take some time to register for Shizune because she was staring at the limp form of her fellow peer in the Friagne’s grip. She knew what was coming next. She knew what sort of things this monster was capable of. Yet her legs moved anyway, turning her towards the window and abandoning one of their own.

While some of the students would express shock, others were near-outraged with fury at how easily they were leaving Mii behind. But what else could be done? Shizune would insist that she be the last to climb down, giving Yuriya an icy glare if she protested. Once everyone had made it down the pipes and into the second floor classroom, she turned to look one last time.

The Friagne held Mii in its arms like a spider, crawling backwards and out of the classroom. Mii wasn’t dead yet, just still unconscious so perhaps they would be able to save her. Though with her knowledge of what the Friange did to its victims, they would have to act fast.

Suppressing a shudder, she climbed down the pipes and met with everyone on the second floor. As always she was frowning but…well now she had a reason to frown. No doubt the others wanted some kind of explanation or answer, something better than the flimsy one she had given them. For now, they were safe, the occasional bumps up above a grim reminder of the fate they had all avoided.

Finding a patch of wall that wasn’t coated in red, Shizune leaned upon that with crossed arms and sighed. Things were always not what they seemed in the World of Wasted Dreams. So when the sound of slow, running water was faintly picked up, she flashed her eyes sharply to a sink in the corner of the room.

One of the class sinks was running water, the faucet seeming to be jammed. There was no way of stopping the flow, water already filled to the brim and slowly falling to the floor. Great. Now they would have to think with that racket going on in the background.

---

Seeing Shizune's rage caused even Yuriya to halt her thought process. Up to now, she has only been thinking objectively, doing whatever she could to ensure everyone's survival but, if this situation they were in was dire to the point of shaking Shizune, Yuriya had to seriously ask herself, what kind of blood ran on her veins?

Well, the answer would not come now, nor did Mii's demise, promising a chance for rescue, or a trap, well-crafted by their hunter. Whatever it was they should think of it once they reached safety, at least for now.

Once everyone reached the room right bellow the one they started in, Yuriya mimicked Shizune's gesture and found a place to rest her weight. Yuriya kept to herself, letting the sound of the running water be the only noise to permeate the derelict class room as she tried to get some rest. Eventually, though, the dark-haired student, spoke "Well, at least now you boys can die happy if it comes to it, right? After all, you got to peek on all our underwear, especially Shizune's." Yuriya teased with an evil glare in her eye as she ran her gaze through all the boys, resting it on Katashi, before returning to face Shizune.

Teasing such as this might seem inappropriate in this kind of situation at first, but now that they were at the direst of the moments, something to ease the mood could only do them good, right? At least Yuriya was confident in using such a tactic, especially with the fact that her own underwear was securely held out of sight by her pantyhose... unless the lighting of this nightmare realm was good enough to reveal the see-through nature of the black legwear, that is.

---

As Alex reached the floor below, he began to help the others through the window as well. The last thing they needed was to lose someone to a simple accident. His guilt would have driven him mad if that happened while knowing he could have helped it. As everyone made it into the lower room, he bent over and rested on his bent knees, easing the muscles in his legs. He began to try and regain control of his labored breathing and erratic heart rate. Getting a grasp on the reality of the situation didn't exactly make that easy, especially the reality of having left someone behind. Yuriya began to joke in the tense moment, lightening the weight of the mood, at least successfully for him.

"Dang it. I was to busy to look, but if you were eager..." He trailed off as he saw a glance that sent a chill up his spine. He had a feeling that finishing off that statement would put him in more danger than he was in upstairs. The glance fortunately faded off though and he found his breathing becoming easy again.

His attention wandered to the sink nearby. The overflowing water seemed rather weird to him. The drain seemed to be clogged and water was beginning to run onto the floor, but what concerned him was water had just begun to overflow. If the water were running for a while the whole area would be mixed with water, but it was just reaching the edge now, like it was waiting for them. This left him feeling very on edge, like the room was a trap waiting for them. "Umm Shizune, should we move quickly? I'm getting a really bad feeling about this room."

---

It wasn't an easy process but the surviving members of the group had managed to evade the Friagne and escape to the floor below via the drainage pipe. Though evade may have been giving them far too much credit, as it was already retreating with a captive Mii in toe when they were on their way out. He looked upwards at the series of frantic thuds above, showing that it had apparently stashed Mii away and returned for more. "Close the window and someone keep an eye on it. If we can get down here in heels, who knows if it can." He said to the air, not trying to command them in this crisis when it may only spur provocation.

Finding a decent enough spot beside Yuriya to center himself after their disastrous first encounter with the supernatural, he allowed himself a wistful smirk at her efforts to provide them a measure of levity so they don't succumb to the bleakness of the world around them. "While Shizune is a alluring by every definition of the word, I'm surprised you'd think so little of your own allure as the picture of a traditional Japanese beauty." He met her gaze with an arched brow as she swept across them all, a touch surprised she lingered on him when they weren't anywhere near as familiar with each as she was Shizune, but let it slide as she came to notice the source of Alex's concern. "I hate to bring the mood back down, but we can't rest here. Even if that is plain water that isn't part of a larger trap to harm us, that is not going to do us any favors if we stay. Chinese water torture anyone?"

Assuming something ridiculous didn't happen, like the room sealing itself and everything filling to the brim or aquatic monsters spewing forth from the faucet, the psychological affects of water used to torment people were a well known fact through out history. If they stayed it likely would only put them further on edge, and that could cost them. "Though if we insist on not moving, we should jam the door with a chair to buy ourselves some security. Unless there was something else you'd like to add, Shizune, Yuriya?"