Scared and Alone

Hasumi awoke in the dark damp lair she’d been sequestered away in, her blue eyes barely able to make out the shapes of the area around her. The artificial girl, who looked to be a teenager, could barely remember the events that had led to her being trapped down in this gross location. She mainly remembered following around her creator, that strange and annoying masked man, as he investigated some noise that had disturbed him. The idiot had led himself and Hasumi into a trap, quickly getting overwhelmed by a bunch of strange looking men as they surrounded the pair. Of course Hasumi’s creator had been able to save himself but he had opted to leave her behind. The girl wasn’t sure if he had meant to or if he was simply so incompetent that he couldn’t keep her safe, but regardless Hasumi had decided she wouldn’t be forgiving her creator for this predicament he had left her in.

After she had been dragged away she recalled being brought forth to some strange man, whose body was so heavily modified that Hasumi didn’t even want to think about it. Just briefly trying to remember her current situation caused her to nearly gag and heave as she remembered how disturbing the monsters around her looked. She began to shake and hug herself, quietly weeping as she began to have a panic attack as her mind reeled with thoughts of the strange modifications her captors had gone through. Rather than simply stopping there her mind obsessed over the imagery, images forming in her minds of lab tables covered in blood and normal people being turned into the monsters she witnessed.

None of these images were likely accurate to the experiments that had been performed on these strange chimera men, instead some of the visions drew from her memory link with her creator. It was his labs that he witnessed these events happening in, and sometimes Hasumi imagined the brooding masked man as the one doing the experiments. Hasumi’s shaking and crying exploded into screams as her imagination went wild, somehow it felt like she was the one in a lab being experimented on. She imagined the mask man leaning over her with a scalpel and other tools, with the flesh of other creatures on a table to his side.

The screams of the girl alerted some of the strange chimera men that had been assigned the guard her, awkwardly lumbering mole men that seemed to enjoy the dark and damp cave they were living in. While Hasumi couldn’t see these men in the darkness she heard their loud footsteps as they approached. The small young woman crawled away, sniffling as she tried to look towards the sound of the approaching monstrosity. Her baggy clothes were covered in grime and dirt as she slowly backed away towards the corner, but the artificial girl didn’t notice.

“Please, please stay away. I don’t have anything, just leave me alone!” Hasumi pleaded and begged as the mole men approached, soon finding her back against a wall of the dark basement she found herself in. Her whole body was shaking as she hugged herself, tucking her legs into the baggy sweatshirt she was wearing to try and feel slightly protected.

One of the strange mole man began making weird noises as he stopped just a couple of meters away, Hasumi slowly starting to realize that the man was trying to talk to her. It seemed to take the man awhile to figure out how to work his mouth, as though he hadn’t tried to figure out how to speak with it since being transformed, or perhaps even made.

“N…no….. hurrrrrt. Um…. Am…. Fre… friend. Am friend.” The noises seemed to be a struggle for the disfigured chimera man as he tried to communicate with the frightened girl.

Hasumi simply shook her head as the monstrous man talked, her mind reeling even further as he made it clear that there was at least some level of sentience left in the thing that was in front of her. Though pity and sympathy wanted to find a way to express themself through the girl she found her terror to increase even more, realizing that whoever this was had to endure their life knowing that they’d been altered in a grotesque way. She hugged her legs against her chest even more tightly as she screamed at the man, her voice going shrill as she panicked.

The mole man backed away as she screamed, trying to say something else in his strained weird voice as Hasumi’s cry of fear and disgust continued. As Hasumi ran out of breath she cried, not wanting to bother to scream again but still not feeling in control of herself. She tried to stifle her breathing so that she could better hear the mole man’s movements, her ragged breathing turning into panicked gasps as she tried to calm herself down. After what felt like forever Hasumi finally got her breathing somewhat under control, and she could finally hear the mole man fidget about between breathes.

Hasumi’s left hand started to brush against the dusty floor of the basement, searching blindly until she found a loose piece of rubble that her small hand could grab a hold of and lift up. Awkwardly flinging her arm towards the mole man, Hasumi attempted to throw the piece of rubble in his direction. Unfortunately she was still rather clumsy in her body, not having had time to adjust to it and gain muscle memory, and the piece of rubble clattered off into the darkness instead of hitting the mole man.

Hasumi could hear the monstrous man fumble about as he turned towards the sound of the rubble bouncing, though it didn’t seem to distract him very long. As he was turning about Hasumi quickly stumbled through the darkness, her left hand now pressed against the wall as she moved along it. Her breathing picked back up as she tripped and fell, barely catching herself and stumbling back to her feet as she tried to flee and find an exit.  

The girl soon found herself colliding with a large figure, quickly realizing it was another mole man. Screaming again Hasumi backed up, tripping over a large piece of rubble and falling backwards. Fortunately there wasn’t any jagged pieces where she fell, the girl only finding herself getting bruised on her back as she hit the ground.

Hasumi could hear the sound of more mole men converging on her position as she rolled onto her side and curled up into a ball, her legs tucking back into the large sweatshirt she wore as she cried. She waited for them to grab her and drag her off to some lab, but as she waited for her doom to befall her she found that the mole men were all stopping a short distance away from her rather than getting to close. She could faintly hear them shuffle about all around her, making strange noises that almost sounded like talking.

After some time Hasumi heard a different noise, prompting her to lift her head up towards the direction of one of the mole men. She was surprised to find a lot torch being held by one of the mole men, though he seemed to be turning his head away from the light as though it bothered him. The scared girl got into a sitting position as she looked toward him in shock, not understanding why they were providing her with light.

The mole man slowly walked towards her as Hasumi stared, her brain trying to process the kind act from the disturbing looking stranger. Part of her wanted to turn away from the man in disgust but she felt bad looking at him poorly when he was performing the first act of kindness that Hasumi had received. Hasumi reached out gingerly, her face half turned away as she struggled to look at the mole man’s face as she accepted his gift.

The torch wasn’t particularly well made, but it was sufficient to help Hasumi figure out her surroundings for the time being. The girl held the flame away from her, not wanting burnt bits to fall upon her arm and hurt her. She began to turn about in a half circle, now able to somewhat see the area around her as she turned away from the wall and inspected the ruined basement she had been taken to. She noticed now that the place she was stuck in had a large ceiling, and that she seemed to have been taken to a place underneath a huge industrial building of sorts. Looking around, trying not to focus on all of the mole men shuffling about, Hasumi noted that this place seemed nothing like the dark basement that her creator had been residing in.

As Hasumi scanned the area the mole men that had tried to talk to her and the one that had given her the torch got closer. She didn’t notice them until they were about to tap her on the shoulder, and when she did she was quickly startled and jumped back and away from them with a quiet yelp of surprise and fear. She nearly swung the torch in their direction, but stopped short of doing so once she realized that the creepy looking guys weren’t trying to harm her. The two men had raised up their arms to defend themselves from the torch, but slowly loweeed their guard as Hasumi hesitated with the torch raised high.

“Pla… please…. We. Are. Friend.” it was the one who had tried talking to her earlier, forcing his awkward mouth to try and form sounds that vaguely resembled words. Hasumi stared at the mole man as he tried to talk to her, finding it impossible to look away from him as he addressed her. Somehow it was even scarier to see the mole man talk than it was to hear it, Hasumi had hoped that her imagination had been scaring her more than reality but as she stared at the deformed, sad man she realized she was wrong. It took all she had not to scream again, her body shaking as she fought against the instinct to howl at the top of her lungs and flee.

Hasumi did her best to try and hear the mole men out as they talked to her, trying to explain that she should stay and help their creator learn how to turn them into functional clones like her. Hasumi shook as they talked, remembering now that the strange leader of these men had taken blood from her with syringe when she had first been captured. Her free hand gripped the forearm of the one holding the torch, touching where the needle had pierced her. It seemed he had studied it and somehow figured out she was an artificial being, and now had plans to try and do more tests on her. Hasumi felt like she was about to vomit, and had to focus to stay standing and not drop the torch.

“Please.. please you all have to help me get out of here! I don’t belong here, I need to get out!” Hasumi pleaded with the mole men around her, hoping that perhaps their proclamations of friendship meant they didn’t want to see her come to harm. Unfortunately it seemed she had misjudged the mole men, as their demeanor seemed to change differently than she expected.

They suddenly berated her, their words slurring and becoming harder to understand as they began to call her selfish. She began to get a vague understanding of what they meant to say, they all seemed to want to be her friend because they thought she would be the key to helping Kurogane make the next leap in his expierments.

Hasumi shuttered as her eyes widened and she looked around at the mole men. She fell to her knees and cried, asking them to please not let her get hurt. They seemed to pity her, but had no intention of letting her leave. Slowly the group around her dispersed, leaving the girl alone with her dying torch as she cried over her fate.

[EXIT]

TWC:2036

Claiming Beloved Presence with 2,000 words
Total stats:75+20=95
Vigor:40+20=60