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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2018 3:51:04 GMT -4
This really was probably the first time the delinquent was genuinely excited for an event since the injury. It was also the first big sort of social activity that he wasn’t forced to attend. He still showed up to class, of course, but he hadn’t been part of the bigger kind of social clusterfucks in over a month. Honestly, compared to his former social habits, he had shifted back into being somewhat of a recluse outside of classes since the injury. The only person who had regularly seen him outside of classes was his girlfriend, Aki. The rest of the time was spent building those damned Hero Operations courses and training his absolute ass off… because the fact of the matter was that the American had retreated back into himself after being exposed to his first brush with real trauma.
Brash stupidity was still on the menu, of course, but less than before. There was no longer a need for the delinquent to ‘prove himself’ in nearly the same way that he did before. The blustering façade of overconfidence was gone, replaced with a much more natural and measured exterior. He no longer had to overly project confidence he didn’t feel, because he had proven himself in his own eyes worthy of the title of hero because he knew for a fact that he would never crumble even under the harshest pressure.
Today, he got to dress up as another hero who didn’t crumble under pressure… but admittedly did a lot more than that. Darkshine’s hero costume, plainly put, was a hell of a lot of black. A black robe, black pants, black boots, black gloves, and a black detachable collar that could easily be used to cover the face from dust or other mild hazards. It wasn’t Alex’s personal style, but boy did it feel good to wear the costume just once. He had specifically got the replica made for Halloween, and honestly just putting the damn thing on made him feel like… one hundred percent more competent with his quirk. Like, if he held out his hand in front of him he felt like he could cut a fly mid-flight in half or some insane Darkshine shit. He couldn’t, of course, but it was fun to imagine. Just putting on the costume made him unable to resist just subtle rips of nearby shadows with his quirk, just to expend some energy and flex his strength a little bit.
But that wasn’t why he was in Tokyo tonight. The costume was ordered months ago, but honestly Alex would have been fine only pulling it out at home and never going out with it. Aki had heard about and was excited about the haunted house that was supposed to be pretty awesome, and both of them were also invited by some other classmates to a party that was supposed to be going on later that night. The delinquent hadn’t gone out with her to do something in the city for … fuck, ever? The fact of the matter was, he allowed himself to be convinced to come along pretty easily. It was a short train ride to Tokyo, after all, and at the end of the day it was probably healthy for him to actually go out and get out of Musutafu for a night.
They were in the plaza now, with Alex holding onto his girlfriend’s hand and parting the crowd in a way that was much more force than finesse as he found himself in an all too familiar position in this damned city… he had no idea where the haunted house was. The American and getting lost in Tokyo, at this point, was a combination about as common as peanut butter and jelly. It seemed to happen much more frequently in the capital than it did anywhere else, despite the delinquent’s lack of a strong direction sense. All of the people around just made navigation harder, because he had to spend most of his concentration in making sure that he was keeping them both moving and ensuring that Aki didn’t get bumped by anyone. The shoulder shoves that he gave people that were perceived to be getting too close were not gentle and were absolutely not meant to be. He lacked the finesse of someone actually skilled with in the art of maneuvering in a crowd, but he had more than enough strength to brute force his way through when a polite nudge didn’t do the trick.
”Hey, Aki, where was the place supposed to be again?” he asked, speaking loud enough to be heard over the ambient noise of the crowd. ”If you end up seeing the place first, drag me over there because I think I’m lost again.” he admitted easily, at this point not even being the slightest bit embarrassed about it. Tokyo was a big city, and it was only natural that someone not used to big cities got lost in the region. At least the GPS directions got them in the general area, which should be good enough for them to find the place eventually.
”Why couldn’t the place just be on the GPS?” the boy complained to himself under his breath, his red eyes scanning the crowd around in an attempt to find the damned place. Absolutely bonkers, this was. How the hell did they expect anyone not actually from the city to find the haunted house in this clusterfuck of a crowd? It was insane, truly. Absolutely insane and unreasonable to assume that anyone would be able to find something without a clear and present marker of…
Oh.
Oh.
It turns out, there were in fact large banners indicating the haunted house. It turns out, there was a big ass banner on the roof that said ‘Haunted House Here’ with a huge downward arrow that he had just now noticed after looking up a bit more. ”I found it, let’s go.” the American sighed, shaking his head at his own lack of awareness as he now parted the crowd in the correct direction to get where they needed to go.
Embarrassing.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2018 7:22:57 GMT -4
WORD COUNT; TAGGED: TAGGED: Fluffy |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2018 20:36:07 GMT -4
”Yeah, this should be pretty fun. I heard they put a lot of effort into this one, so it should be pretty scary.” the boy responded with his lips curling up in a smile when Aki was practically bouncing off the walls with excitement at being so close. It was great to see her this excited, because it meant that it would probably be Alex who was led around as soon as they got into the haunted house. He was perfectly prepared for and completely accepting of that fact, because he was absolutely certain that she would either be completely terrified by everything or find the entire thing confusing with little to no in between.
Aki’s costume was… uh, exciting as well, to say the least. They had been dating for two months, and in that time, Alex had largely gotten away from situations where his face would just turn red and he would find himself unable to form coherent sentences. Tonight, when the delinquent saw that outfit for the first time and Aki damn near tackled him to the ground when they met up to go to the train was the first time he had devolved to that level in weeks, at least. To be honest, though, who in the entire world could blame him? Was it fair to say that Halloween was now his favorite holiday? If it wasn’t, it was definitely farther up there than it ever had been before.
Once the actual haunted house was in sight, it was easy for Alex to alternatively politely nudge and brute force his way through the crowd while taking special care to ensure that Aki was touched as little as humanly possible along the way. The building from the outside was pretty damned impressive, with multiple levels and being decorated extravagantly with Halloween-y things and having the faint sound of music even outside the walls of the structure. It wasn’t happy music, mind, it was creepy as shit music that Alex was not looking forward to hearing blare in his face… but that was a problem for future Alex. For now, he stepped up and managed to break through the crowd at the steps to make his way to the big old double doors that led to the inside of the building. The delinquent picked the right door for no particular reason to open, mostly because it was closer.
One thing the delinquent was absolutely not expecting was some shit to happen the instant that he opened the door. The big old double door was easy enough to open, but immediately after opening the right hand side there was a fast movement to his side that looked an awful lot like a surprise attack. His reaction time to this sort of thing had improved quite a bit, and didn’t look halfway as panicked as it did before. In response to the perceived attack, the American simply took a step backward and let the door shut in front of him as he pulled Aki behind him to put his own body in between her and the door. For the brief second the door was cracked open, the creepy ass music got much more audible and Alex also got a glimpse in to just how low the visibly was inside of there. The entire place seem absolutely drenched in smoke, for crying out loud! Who the hell was that going to fool, like what kind of wimp was afraid of the dark?
There was an uncomfortable pause for a moment as what had just happened processed through the boy’s mind and he opened the door again without a word. This time he swing the door open with a bit more force and stayed back to see if the attack came through again… and it did. The ‘attack’ was a dark piece of cloth rigged to sway across the doorway when the door was opened.
Fantastic. Very heroic, Alex. Very brave.
He hadn’t even entered the damned place and he got spooked by a floating rag. ”Alright Aki,” he breathed out, voice a bit more clipped than usual. ”Let’s go.” he continued, using his boot to stop the door from shutting and shoving it with enough force to fully open it once more as he stepped inside for the first time. The creepy music was louder now that they were inside, but the visibility wasn’t as bad at least in the lobby than the delinquent had initially assumed.
Thankfully, this was a very much ‘go at your own pace’ haunted house, because if it had been group mandated… well, Alex would have been much harder to convince to come. They just had to go up to the counter and pay in order for the door to the haunted house proper to be unlocked, and that process was pretty painless. The line was short, and they were up there in a flash. The American had no issues paying, mostly because he had enough at this point to not care. He had worked with Mari insofar as getting costume supplies, including rather weird ones, and learned the ins and outs of that business quite well. The school also supplied him with raw materials and the equipment to do little wooden figurines and other trinkets that he could then sell for some extra cash as well. Once the enthusiastic young man at the register was paid, the door was unlocked, and the delinquent led his girlfriend along until they had reached the entrance to the actual haunted house portion of the event.
Alex freed his hand from Aki’s for a moment and turned towards her to give her a quick kiss before going over one more time some ground rules. ”Remember, you can’t beat up any of the actors inside or smash anything, okay? If I freak out and use my quirk, please stop me too. I’ve uh, never done one of these… so I don’t know how spooked I’ll actually get.” he said before giving her one more quick kiss and grabbing her hand once more and opening the now unlocked door into the next room… which was much more smoke covered than the last.
”All right.” the delinquent said with a sigh and steeled himself to step forward first into that next room.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 23, 2018 7:47:55 GMT -4
WORD COUNT; TAGGED: TAGGED: Fluffy
And the wildling was off. The reigns had come off, and she had been let loose. As such, she immediately pushed into the next area. There was a lot, lot lot of smoke going on in there. The scent was strange, almost dusty. The flashing lights, eerie audio, moving mechanical parts. Unlike what was intended, Aki wasn't frightened. The girl was fascinated. The first thing that happened, was her on her knees in a corner, inspecting the smoke box. "A smoke without a fire?!" This completely blew Aki's mind. The only smoke she had ever expected without a fire, was if it somehow came from a quirk user. "The smoke not even hurt to breathe, or taste funny!" The next thing the redhead wildling was inspecting, was a very life-like mechanical monster arm, that broke through a wall in the building, very close to people passing by. Since it had no rotting scent, it didn't alert the wildling. Instead, she was poking the artificial rotting flesh. "Arm not smell, arm move funny.. this not real, but is so cool! How they make, how they make?!"...The next trap that Aki triggered however, most certainly left an impact. Running from the first room in towards the second, the floor underneath her opened up, dropping her onto a slide to take her into the basement. A loud, shocked squeal left her lips, as the haunted house had managed to startle her. It was followed by complete and utter silence, leaving Alex upstairs alone, likely not even having seen what happened to Aki. Somewhere down below the girl landed softly, unharmed, and immediately began laughing to herself. This place was amazing! |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 19, 2018 22:53:04 GMT -4
Aki may be fearless, but honestly?
Shit like this just gave Alex a bad sense of déjà vu. First step in, with the smoke and the flashing lights… he just froze for a second and his breath caught as he was suddenly back to a place in time where he really didn’t want to be right then.
Smoke covered the area, with flashes of light and loud noises to signal the sounds of rifles firing. Two extreme points of pain in his left shoulder, and a quick look down showing the bottoms of bullets sticking out of exposed sinew and torn up flesh with blood splattering across his neck, his cheek, and his running down his arm.
As he looked down at the blood in horror, though, the scene changed to what the reality actually was. He wasn’t back at Semper Fi. His arm had healed, and he was in a haunted house on Halloween with his girlfriend. When he fully regained his awareness of his surroundings, she was already off to the races to the next room. The boy forced himself to put one foot in front of the other and ignore the creepy shit around him, but was just at an average walker’s pace until he heard the scream from Aki.
Instinct and adrenalin kicked in at that moment to send the boy sprinting towards the next room as fast as he could. Some sort of arm that came out of the wall to fuck with him, but the delinquent lowered his shoulder and just rammed through it. Unbeknownst to him, his long strides had gone right over the pressure plate for the trap door as he stood in the next room bewildered.
”Aki?” he hollered out, to no response. Adrenalin pumping through his system made it very difficult to find the self-control to stop himself from using his quirk. It was probably fine. This was a haunted house, and weird shit happened. That was the entire point of haunted houses. There were three exits to the room he was in right there, counting the one he came from. This place had a maze component too, great.
There was the nagging feeling in the back of the boy’s mind, though, that something wasn’t right. Would a haunted house not be the best place for a villain to go out and take someone or attack them? The environment is perfect, because a scream or sounds of struggle would not be out of place. The smoke provided natural cover, and this was the one day of the year that someone could walk around bloodstained and have nobody look at them twice because everyone would assume it was stage blood or otherwise fake. They would assume they worked in the haunted house. It was the perfect cover, and they could even set a trap in a place just like this without anyone freaking out before it was too late.
During this bout of paranoia, the delinquent had ripped his own shadow. The texture and shape of the thing just melted away until it resembled a puddle of inky blackness before snapping back into shape in an instant. The density of the shadow was different when it was ripped, being visibly darker than normal. It was subtle enough that nobody really noticed it unless they were told about it, but the tell was there. After several excruciatingly long seconds, the American deactivated his quirk and his shadow went back to normal.
He wasn’t going to freak out and overreact. He was going to sit here and play this out normally without breaking anything. He was going to do this without looking like a psycho who lost his shit and used his quirk in public for no reason. That would be bad, and would ruin this event for everyone involved if he just lost his shit and tore down the place or something crazy like that. He was going to be fine, and Aki was also going to be fine. They were both going to be fine, and all he needed to do was get to the exit. All he needed to do was keep his shit together. One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other.
Simple. Walking. Simple. Moving. Forward. Forward.
Good.
He picked a room to advance to at random, and trudged forward to get to the end of the damn thing. The smoke was thicker in the next room, and there was a strobe light being annoying as fuck too and clouding the American’s ability to see. The strobe light was every few seconds, and the rest of the time the place was pitch black so Alex couldn’t see the hand in front of his face. After the first two rotations, the boy was sick of the darkness and just head out in a dead sprint towards what he thought the next room was. He noticed the walls closing in around him rather quickly as his path narrowed, and then he turned the corner while the room was still pitch black. When the strobe light came on, there were several figures in that room.
Several figures that were doing weird and creepy shit like crawling and screaming and fucking coming after him.
Nope.
Nope nope nope nope nope nope.
The American turned tail and fucking ran right back the way he came as fast as he could. Adrenalin was sure as hell pumping through his veins once more, and he ran in one direction – the entrance. He was done with this shit. He was done with this haunted house, he was done with this night, he was done with all the creepy shit and he was done with everything. He would go back to entrance, get the staff to show him where the exit was, and wait for Aki. That was what he was going to do.
Simple plan, except for one thing.
The pressure plate that Aki triggered for the trapdoor was still there, and Alex’s strides didn’t carry him over it a second time. He lost his balance and tripped as he slid down into the basement and ripped his shadow again before forcing himself against all of his instincts to not use his quirk in panic and just trust that this slide had an ending and that he wasn’t about to die or something.
Haunted houses sucked.
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1,750 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
31 Years
Female
"Blockbuster"
SSSS-Rank Quirk:
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Post by Crimson on Jan 11, 2019 21:17:32 GMT -4
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