"Van!"
Nu stumbled as the Earth shook, the unnatural tremors throwing her off balance. Van caught her as she fell, and he held her tight in his strong arms protectively.
The earthquake stopped as suddenly as they had started and Nu cautiously stopped clinging to her companion. "What the hell?" Van asked, but Nu just shook her head.
"Senshi?" She asked, remembering the time Senshi had moved the Earth to shield them from the Umbras. Nu rushed over to her room, walking slowly with her arms out wide just in case it happened again, and knocked on the door. "Senshi, are you alright? Was that you?"
SIlence.
Nu wrung her hands and looked over at Van. "Maybe something bad happened," she whispered as he came over beside her.
Van aimed his weapon at the door and motioned for Nu to open it. She did so cautiously, expecting the worst.
Instead, the room was empty, the door to the balcony left hanging open.
Van sighed and relaxed his aim. "She's gone again? Why does she keep flying off?"
"If I had wings, I'd use them all the time too," Nu commented, looking around for anything unusual. "I hope Mag and Jayden are okay..."
Checking in Mag's room revealed that she was simply gone too, which made Nu increasingly uncomfortable.
"Do you remember her leaving?" she asked, wringing her hands nervously.
"No..."
Nu got an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach. "We need to check on Jayden!" She grabbed Van's hand and dragged him to the door.
"Wait!" Van protested.
Nu looked at where he was pointing, to something small on the ground that Nu hadn't noticed there before.
"They're... dolls?"
Two simple straw dolls, like a simplified version of the one Nu used to have as a child, lay on the floor as if they'd dropped out of the sky. Nu scurried over and scooped them up. One had wings and blond-pink hair like Senshi and even had the same tattoo on it's shoulder. The other one had dark hair and was dressed kind of like Vandal. It seemed to be glowing a bright blue colour, so bright it was difficult to make out the details.
"Look! It's you!" Nu laughed, holding the doll up so he could see it.
"Where did they come from?" Van asked, grabbed the doll and looking at it closely. The blue glow intensified as he touched it.
"They were just there," Nu tried to explain, but she had no more answers than Van did.
He lightly tossed the straw doll back to her, and she caught it happily. "Keep them close, they've got to be important. Go grab a bottle of water and we'll head out."
Nu agreed, and together they went down to check Jayden's room.
Vandal went to knock and the door swung inwards as if it wasn't closed properly. Nu's shoulders slumped as she looked into the clearly empty room. "Jayden?"
She stepped forward, but Van moved his arm to block her. Nu gave him a questioning look, but his narrowed eyes were staring straight ahead.
"There's something here," he muttered under his breath, and Nu grabbed her hand tighter around her tooth.
"Umbra?" she asked, hoping it was one of the freaky blobby monsters rather than having another run-in with Cordis.
Van just hoisted Leonette and walked carefully into the room, his eyes darting around.
Nu followed cautiously, her water bottle and both dolls tucked uncomfortably under her arm. She wished she had thought to grab a bag or something before venturing from the room, but Jayden's safety was more important.
The room itself looked hastily abandoned, with things knocked over and the bedding strewn about. Even the drawers were all opened, their contents tossed aside on the floor. It looked less like signs of a struggle and more like someone was desperately searching for something.
Despite Van's warning, there didn't seem to be anything in the room, so they allowed themselves to relax. "Jayden's gone too..." Nu remarked sadly.
Vandal lowered his weapon. "I could have sworn-"
His sentence was cut off, however, as something hit his back.
"Van!" Nu cried out as he fell forward from the sudden impact, crying out in pain. Nu could see deep scratches appear on his skin and the air on top of him shimmer, as if some invisible foe was scratching him with its claws.
Letting the dolls and the water bottle drop to the floor, Nu struck the shimmer with the tooth. "Get off him!" she screamed as she lunged. The tooth grazed something fleshy and the invisible creature shrieked in pain, materializing into view for a moment. It looked like some kind of animal with sharp claws and four long spindly legs. It was only about the size of a large dog, but it had a set of impish wings with barbed tips that Nu was glad it hadn't decided to use. It had no eyes or ears that Nu could see, but it shrieked at her with a maw filled with sharp teeth.
As it moved to attack her, Van rolled over onto his back and shot Leonette at the creature, hitting it squarely in its jaw and killing it instantly.
"Van! Are you okay?" Nu scrambled over to him, helping him to his feet. She went to grab her water bottle from the floor, and noticed the Vandal doll had some tears on its back, similar to where Van was hurt.
Before Van could answer, dozens of shrieks cried out throughout the hotel. "Van..." Nu wrung her hands nervously.
"I'm fine," he spoke up, "but I think we need to leave."
"You don't think the others..."
"I just know I don't want to be killed by these invisible assholes." he admitted, and Nu nodded. "Give me those things."
Nu handed him the dolls and he stuffed them in a pocket. "Should I heal you first?" she suggested, seeing blood covering his back.
"No time."
"Then let's go," Nu said, grabbing his hand and practically pulling him out of the room.
More shrieking echoed in the hallway as they ran, and Nu tried to keep an eye out for places where the air shimmered. She wished she had a more useful ability - any of the normal people of her village would be able to tell where the creatures were instantly.
"There!" She spotted a shimmer coming out of an open doorway and pointed.
"Got it!" Van acknowledged, letting go of Nu's hand. He quickly took aim and fired at Nu's indication, killing it before it had the chance to attack them.
"Nice shot!" Nu praised, and Van seemed pretty pleased with himself.
Their reprieve was short-lived, however, as one of the creatures appeared in the stairwell they were headed towards, shrieking at them with all the anger of the world.
Van blew the thing's head clean off and continued running, trying to reload his weapon as he went down the stairs.
Everything went silent, the terrifying shrieking stopped. Nu allowed herself a moment, thinking perhaps they'd managed to escape these horrible creatures' grasp.
That thought left her mind pretty quickly, however, as something jumped down onto her shoulders, claws digging into her back.
She screamed and crumbled under the sudden weight and pain, falling down a few steps and dropping her tooth and water bottle. "No!" she heard Vandal swear and finish reloading, but the invisible creature was trying to attack Nu's face.
She blocked it's attacks with her arm, the blood from numerous cuts dripping down onto the flight of stairs below her. "Get off her!" Vandal growled before his shot blew the creature's head clean off. and he ran down to check on the fallen healer. "Are you okay?"
Her entire body was shaking, and she looked around for the tooth and bottle she had dropped. "I think so?" Her arms hurt with every movement and blood dripped down from her fingertips.
Nu saw Van's concerned look and she suddenly felt so guilty for being so weak. She smiled widely at him. "I'm fine, really. Just shaken." He helped her stand up painfully on shaky legs just as another shriek rang out nearby.
"Come on," Vandal coaxed her through a door and into what he thought was the hallway.
The carpeted floor gave way to tile, and there were shiny metal counters lining the room. A massive stove and other modern appliances were interspersed around, with pots and pans and all forms of cookery nicely hanging on the walls.
"A kitchen?" Nu asked in awe.
Several shrieks nearby reminded the confused duo of their predicament, and they hurried towards a strange hanging door with no handle or hinges. Nu pushed it open and went through, stepping into a beautifully decorated room filled with tables and chairs.
"Where the heck are we?" she asked Van.
ns 15.158.61.6da2
