Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Le Maree Della Guerra (The Tides of War) ❯ Journey To The Deep Sea ( Chapter 17 )

XxXxXxXxXx

Le Maree Della Guerra (The Tides of War)

Movement 17: Journey To The Deep Sea

By: Revamp

XxXxXxXxXx

Hiroto ventured off to start his mission. In order not to risk being caught, he decided to go there on foot. He wasn't going to risk teleporting into the Deep Sea, then being caught by someone or possibly risk being seen. It would take more from him to walk such a long way, but he wasn't about to screw this up. He really wanted to prove that he could do this, and if he succeeded then he'd come back as a hero.

He walked through the sea, the waters got darker and darker as the penguin headed away from the light ball in the sky. The temperature of the waters dropped with each step that he took and soon the only thing that served as his light was the cigarette tucked between his lips. Hiroto eventually came to the bottom of a large hill that was covered in branching coral and sea anemones.

“Oh-ho! Well, isn't that nice? It's bright and friendly out here, so that's a good sign,” he said sarcastically to himself as his red eyes with black pupils scanned the area for any kind of life. “No one's around, either. I've got everything ready to go.”

The Rock Hopper penguin continued to walk up the hill, going along a winding, small road that had only been made with the erosion of high travel over the years. It was quiet and the water moved gently around him. Soon, he came to a block in the road. One of the pieces of coral had fallen over the path, so he climbed over it.

“It's actually pretty nice off in here,” Hiroto continued to walk as the atmosphere changed around him. More and more of the clusters of branching coral dominated the land, twisting around in grotesque patterns. He ventured up another hill and walked down the other side, down a curving path. As he continued on there were rusted strands of barbed wire and old posts from a fence that were bent, broken, rotted and fallen on the ground. It looked as if someone demolished it or it fell apart over time. A bough of a wooden boat stuck up from the ground not too far away, remnants of an old ship wreck of long ago.

Hiroto turned, following the path as he passed another part of the wreckage. Black pupils glanced around at his surroundings frequently as he checked for any sign of enemies looming around. He continued to walk past an oar that stuck up from the ground. Walking up the third hill, when he reached the top, he saw another oar and a bunch of rocks around it. Soon, Hiroto came to yet another hill, and his legs were beginning to burn with how much land he had traversed.

“There's too much fucking walking,” Hiroto complained. “Why did I do this again? Oh yeah, because I'm an idiot.”

This was so hard! Why didn't he just teleport in and risk being caught anyway? It would have made things so much easier. Needless, he continued to walk up the hill and when he reached the top, he finally saw what looked like a two-story house. It was isolated, as if no one had been in or around it in years. The building materials were weathered and it had a few holes in the roof.

“Is that a building?” Hiroto asked himself as the atmosphere darkened around him. “Wait a minute. Oh, it's getting dark. It's getting dark quickly. It must because of how far away I am from that orb.”

He lit another cigarette and discarded the one he had been smoking as he walked up onto the stone porch of the building. The stones were weathered and some of them were crumbled under the erosion of time. “Oh boy! I get to go to an abandon building in the middle of the night. This is going to be phenomenal!”

He couldn't just walk away and not investigate it. There could have been something inside of it that he needed, or even more clues to Deep Sea operations that no one might have been aware of. Hiroto put his hand on the doorknob and turned it, opening the door. The penguin walked through it cautiously and glanced around. It was very dark inside of the house.

“Hello! Is anybody home?” Hiroto figured that he would just go ahead and get jumped if that's what was going to happen, but instead he was met with dead silence. “I'm just gonna walk into your front door.” The penguin pushed it open and stepped inside. The floor creaked beneath his knee-length boots. “Excuse me,” he spoke again, trying to make sure no one was going to jump out at him.

Walking through the first room, there was nothing special about it. This just appeared to be a normal house. There was furniture scattered everywhere and turned over, as if someone tried to ransack the place. Judging by the state of disrepair it was in, there was no doubt that it had been abandoned for a long time. He was actually surprised some homeless denizen hadn't taken residence in it. The penguin appeared to be in a living room. There was a television that laid face down on the ground, a busted up stand that it had once been sitting on, a rotted, old couch and several chairs that were tipped over, along with a bunch of garbage and clutter.

There was another room off to the right and he walked into it. It appeared to be some kind of entertainment room. Pieces of the roof crunched beneath his feet as he saw a table with chairs haphazardly around it.

“Oh boy,” Hiroto put his hands on his hips as he stared at the furniture, “what the fuck is this shit? How do I know what to do in here? Or where to fucking go?”

He walked into a room that had no doors. There was a grungy, tile floor that had once been white. Several pieces of the tile were busted. There were also cabinets, some of the missing doors and a flat-topped counter and bar area. On the counter, lying on the grimy marble top laid a phone. Hiroto walked over and picked it up. He put it to his ear and heard nothing.

“The phone line appears to be dead. Oh, that's a good sign,” the penguin sighed and released a plume of smoke as he did so. He didn't expect it to be working, but it was worth a shot.

Since there was nothing else to see in that dreadful-looking kitchen, he decided to retreat back into the room with the table and chairs. Upon further inspection, he found something that looked like the remnants of some kind of flyer that was crumpled on the floor. He bent down and picked it up, reading the contents.

“Oh, hello,” his eyes scanned over the words. “Honoring the Death of Collossus. Ack!” The penguin exclaimed and threw the picture away from himself as if it had some sort of disease that he would catch. “Son of a bitch still haunts me even after he's dead.”

He made sure to step on that paper for good measure as he walked out of the door and into the living area again. Hiroto said he'd see what he had here, as he spied a flashlight that was on the floor and turned it on. He hadn't expected it to work, but it seemed like it still had battery left. A bright light shone across the room and illuminated a small circle onto the wall. It was better than wandering around in the dark.

Shining it around the room, he saw a chess table with pieces that were scattered about and some of them were even in the wrong places.

“Someone obviously doesn't know how to play chess,” he commented on that fact before he turned around and shone the light onto an old piano. He walked over to the instrument and banged on the keys. They sounded out of tune and were far louder than he expected.

“Yeah, that was a good idea. Just gonna bang on the piano,” Hiroto cursed to himself as he advanced through the house. He walked out into a small hallway and saw another phone sitting on a dingy little night stand that was outside of the door frame. He picked it up and got the same results as the last phone.

“It's dead too,” Hiroto chunked the old phone onto the ground and as he did, he noticed a piece of worn paper lying beside of it. The penguin picked it up and read it.

I can't thank you enough for helping me out. It's been a rough road coming here. I wish I had turned to you sooner. You have no idea how happy I'll be once this is all behind me.

Love you,

Symphony

“Ugh, gross,” the penguin's face wrinkled in disgust as he tossed it down and walked around a table towards another door.

There was an old picture that hung on the wall, suspended on the dirty and torn wall paper. It was marred and distorted with a little mold growing on it. Hiroto squinted to see the content. He couldn't tell exactly who was in it, but he knew there were two denizens present.

“Oh, is this a married couple, friends, or just two guys? I don't fucking know,” he took his eyes from the mysterious portrait and continued to glance around. He couldn't waste too much time concentrating on one thing. The penguin walked through another door and down a long hallway.

“Looks decrepit in here. I guess they don't like staying in here and frankly, I don't blame them,” Hiroto would be long gone as well if he hadn't found pieces of information within this busted up old play.

As the penguin walked down the hall, he found another note that was tucked away by a dumped over flower put that had coral inside of it. He read the contents of that letter.

Hey Accord,

It's been a while, hasn't it? I hope you didn't forget about me. I have to write those letters in order to not get caught. I can't thank you enough for helping me out, you know? Because of you, I remember what happened that day. Remember when you used to visit me in the arctic? It was after father died, and we'd go fishing together? We'd talk about the last war, and how we both longed for a world of darkness. That life just happens and it will never lose its realism.

Peace always ends, so why fight your instincts? Things seemed simpler back then. We lived in a world of our own. Bound by our own beliefs of a world raised by Darwin's Law. Our fathers died because they weren't the fittest, but we aspired to be. We both believed nature was cruel and those who believed otherwise were merely blinded dreamers lost in delusion. No matter what, we can't escape our primal instincts.

Sorry, I'm rambling. Anyway, it's nice to hear from you. I know things have been less than normal, so I wanted to check in.

Symphony

“Is that it, huh? What kind of garbage has been-“ Hiroto began to talk but he was cut off as he laid sight on a wall that was plastered with a bloody picture of sharks that had been crudely nailed to the wall. “Whoa! Oh my! Was that always there? I don't think so and that definitely wasn't there before. Okay, going up the stairs now.”

The penguin's steps were quick as he continued on and walked up the old, wooden staircase and quickly moved past the pictures that hung on the wall. He wanted away from those creepy things as quickly as he could go.

When he reached the top of the stairs, there were books that were strewn about. One of the bookshelves looked as if someone had gone through it and there were potted pieces of coral that had been discarded on the floor.

“You got some fucking décor in here. Real peachy,” he shone the flashlight around to see a series of doors. This looked like a hallway that led to bedrooms.

Opening the first of the doors, he peered inside to see a messy bed. It looked like someone tore it up looking for something or someone had one bad awakening. The penguin shone his flashlight around the room and caught sight of something that glinted at him.

Hiroto opened the door all of the way and walked into the room. He concentrated on the object that was shining at him from across the room and upon further inspection; he saw that it was a key. Grabbing it, he held it in the light and examined it further.

“Kay! Found a key! Good for me!” The penguin exclaimed and glanced around the room some more. There was a foggy window that provided a poor view outside. It blurred everything more than it clarified it. Hiroto put down the flashlight and tried to pry it open. It took a little man power, but he managed to get it open.

A rush of fresh water came into the house and all he could see was hills covered in coral. That didn't help him in the slightest.

“Oh! Well, what's the point of that? Maybe it's so they can fire on intruders from above? Or maybe it does serve some purpose. I don't know,” the penguin shrugged and picked up his flashlight, exiting the room.

Across the hall was a bathroom. There was nothing wrong with it besides being aged by the elements. Nothing was disturbed like it had been in the other rooms. It had no windows, so the small room was darker than the previous ones he'd been in.

“It's awfully dark,” the penguin commented to himself, “and I do not know what I am looking for.”

He walked inside of the small bathroom and shone his light down the toilet, then inside of the bath tub. He then shone it on a small shelf that contained a few books. They looked undisturbed, and had acquired algae over the years.

“I haven't seen any fucking cameras anywhere. Do they not monitor this floor?” He came out of the bathroom and shut the door, but as soon as he turned to walk back down the hallway, his mind was assaulted with a barrage of blurs and flashes of bright color. Pain seared through his head so profusely that it almost caused him to drop his flashlight and become dizzy.

“Oh-kay! That wasn't good! That was definitely interesting! That's not a good thing!” He didn't know what was happening, but this house was beginning to really freak him out.

His steps quickened as he turned into the next door and found another bathroom. Light danced over the many objects in the bathroom, yet another untouched room in the house. “These are awfully nice bathrooms. I mean, these bathrooms are bigger than my room in my igloo. Jesus fuck,” Hiroto was impressed with how spacious the rooms of the house were at the very least. He wished he had that kind of room in his humble little ice house.

Quickly leaving that room, his heart was still pounding in his chest and a faint ringing sounded in his head from that assault of hallucinations that he had. Hiroto couldn't figure out what had brought them on. It wasn't like him to hallucinate over anything. These thoughts were brief and fleeting as the penguin walked into another room that was in complete disarray.

“I haven't gone in here yet. I don't see anything in here that's important,” Hiroto shone the flashlight around to make sure that he didn't overlook anything. “No cameras here or anything. As long as whatever the fuck happened doesn't happen again, I'll be fine.”

Seriously, that really freaked him out. After all of this was said and done, he was going to go straight to the castle infirmary.

Walking back down the hall, the penguin looked around at more potted coral that had been lying on the floor. Silt and dirt was everywhere. It was very odd that no one seemed to be around. Maybe they were all fighting like Orzo said they were.

“Anyone in here? Probably not, or at least I hope not,” the penguin then tried another door but the knob wasn't budging. He tried to open it again, but it wouldn't move from its place. The door was locked, but he remembered that he had found that key in the other room.

“I wonder if this will unlock it,” Hiroto stuck the key in the door knob and he was met with a satisfying click. “Oh, so it did. This is good.”

However, when he opened the door, his thoughts were quite the opposite. The room had walls that were splattered in blood. Everything was in disarray, and the wall was covered in papers that had words like `hate' and `die' on them, as well as gruesome images of crudely drawn deaths. Whatever happened here was violent and someone was murdered in such a cruel fashion that their blood stained everything. It was all over the ceiling, the walls and even the furniture.

“The room full of nightmares. I always wanted this. It's good to find the source,” Hiroto felt that familiar creeping feeling crawl up his back. He shuttered as he shone his light around, uncovering every gruesome detail of the room. “I don't like this. This is baaddd.”

He shone his light over a blood-stained picture that was on a nightstand with missing drawers. “What is that? I can't tell. I thought I might have seen Accord in there,” Hiroto wasn't sure, but a part of him didn't really want to stare any longer than he had to at the bloody image.

There was a piece of paper lying on top of a writing desk. He walked over and picked it up to find a picture of a crudely drawn noose on it.

“Oh goody!” He threw the parchment down quickly, and felt as if he was going to vomit. Chills ran up his spine and his heart beat quickly as he turned around to faintly make out bloodied words on the wall. “Can you see it?” Hiroto read the words and backed up, nearly falling over another potted piece of coral. “I'm gonna…I'm gonna keep going because I'm compelled to and I'm an idiot. So, here we go!”

The penguin's voice trembled as he ran from the room and jutted out into the hallway. His steps were faster and he felt eyes on him even though he had been completely alone. Hiroto felt like he was in danger, but he knew that he couldn't go back to Nautica empty-handed. They all counted on him to pull through and be the new Best King.

He wasn't going to let them down, no matter how scared he was.

A radio sat on top of one of the old tables that had been up against the wall of the hallway. As he stepped by it, the machine turned on and a loud, harsh static blared in his ears. It caused the penguin to jump and then freeze. His body locked up and his heart slammed against this chest as his eyes went wide. Quickly, he reached over and tried to find the off switch.

“Quiet down! There's freaky shit around here. Don't you know I'm about to die? Everyone here is about to die,” Hiroto lost all of his composure and yelled at the radio before he took a few steps. A loud crunching noise made him scream and jump back.

He had stepped on another note.

“Oh, it's another note. What fun facts does my sister have to tell me now? Do I dare fucking look? I DO!” The penguin bent down and picked up the piece of paper and began to read it.

Hey Accord,

They'll track me if I call you, so I decided to write again. Glad we could meet again. Riptide's army has fallen, so I'm sure they're onto me. They know armies and get in here despite Earlkonig's place at the gate. Things are getting serious.

They can't keep up this civilized way of living for long. But, like I said before, my father fell for such a stupid belief and died for a town of ungrateful denizens who didn't even remember him. What kind of heroism is that?

They only care about being protected. They rely on it and it's disgusting. How long will this last. They'll all be wishing they had a hero when we strike again.

Symphony

“Boy this is fun, let's go die in a dark building. Oh joyous day! Yipee! Hooray! Yes! My favorite!” Hiroto threw down the note and continued to walk before being assaulted with another sharp pain in his head. The penguin clutched his forehead and bright colors and blurred vision assaulted him.

Why was this happening? He couldn't figure out why his mind was doing this to him, and it was beginning to wear on his sanity.

“Oh my god, you're here a little early! I no longer need your services. Please, go away! And die. Goody, goody, gumdrops!” Hiroto screamed and ran down the hall with his flashlight. “Let's stay calm! I have this under control. Me! Hiroto! Is a pro!”

Suddenly, there was a loud boom, as if someone was banging on a wall near him. The noise startled him so bad that he jumped again and nearly had a heart attack. He took off running again, fueled by his fear and confusion over why he was having such vivid flashes of imagery in the confines of his mind. It felt as if he was in some crazy delirium, trapped inside of a blood-soaked house with weird notes and blood on the walls.

If someone was going to kill him, they just needed to jump out and do it.

“Yeaargh!” The penguin screamed and held both sides of his head, hands fisting the wavy spikes of his hair. “YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE! YOU JUST APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE! I need those cameras, you bitch! YOU STAY BACK YOU BITCH! DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM! I AM HIROTO! I WILL BE THE GREATEST BEAST KING EVER! Don't you know who I-Oh, I already said that,” he didn't really know what he was going on about at this point. Hiroto just wanted to find any semblance of a camera and get the hell out of there.

Just then, the hallucinations assaulted him again, causing his vision to blur and the same barrage of colors to flash before his eyes. He was tired of this. He just wanted to go back to the arctic and sit around, fishing and being lonely. Anything was better than this. Hiroto just wanted to go back and forget all of this horrible stuff ever existed.

“YEAAAHHH! STOP IT! I need to win! You stop it! You stop it you son of a bitch! You're not going to keep me from my objective!” He turned the corner and his steps slowed down. Heavy breaths exited his mouth and stopped for a moment. “God, you're such an a-hole,” Hiroto panted out the words and walked quickly down another hallway. “I don't want to be caught with my pants down in front of the Deep Sea Forces.”

His vision blurred again.

It was happening infrequently now.

“AAAAHHH! GOD DAMN IT! Hooooly crap!” The penguin took off running again, not even truly knowing what he was running from. He screamed and continued to run, his fear and that feeling of being watched fueling each step that he took as he ran through a door and found himself at the end of some stairs that led up.

“Let's get this over with,” he placed his hand on the railing of one of the sides of the stairs and walked up, trying to calm his fiercely beating heart. When he reached the top there was nothing but walls and he heard a small click.

“What the?” Hiroto looked wildly around and tried to find the source of the sound. “What just happened? Oh, I went into this-“ He turned and opened another nearby door, which led him to another set of stairs that was on the same side of the room that he had just come up from. “Okay.”

The penguin walked back across to the other set of stairs where a door was. He tried to open it, but it was locked. Fists slammed into the door as he tried to see if it would open, then he frantically jiggled the door handle in hopes that it would budge, but it wouldn't. He walked down the stairs and saw that between the two sets of stairs were double doors. He went to try and open them, and they were locked as well.

Walking to the right, there were two hallways with more sets of doors. He went down one of them, where a cluster of three wooden doors were. He walked to the first door that he saw and opened it. The door led into a small room that had nothing but a bunch of boxes in it. He went into the door across the hall into another room that had a bookshelf and an old picture that was half rotted on the wall. Hiroto straightened it in order to better see what was in the frame and as he did so, it turned.

“Hello?” He jumped back in shock. “I just turned that-“ The penguin turned around to see that the bookshelf had slid out of the way and revealed an underground passage made of brick. He stared down it, wide-eyed. “Whoa! What's down there? Wait…”

He turned from the path and went back into the hallway to check the other door, but it was locked. Then he went to another door to find that it was locked as well. He stopped to light another cigarette. The penguin had lost the last one he had when he took off screaming. He had no idea where his flashlight went, either. He must have lost it in his panic.

“Do I have a flashlight? No I do not. I dropped it when I ran,” Hiroto sighed to himself and opened a door in the other hallway. It led to a room with a blood splatter in the middle of the floor. “What! Blood on the ground. Boxes, Bookshelves.”

Hiroto walked to each room that he could get to. It was just the same old stuff in each one. He seemed to be running dry on trying to find clues or even any cameras. It was eerie that no one was around, but on the bright side, his headaches and hallucinations went away. Maybe it was just his fears getting the best of him.

“What's down here? Soldiers? I've got a baaaaddd feeling about this,” the boom sounded again, but louder this time. “Yeah, how about you go to hell?”

He didn't know where it came from, but he wasn't sure that he wanted to find out.

There were more hallways that he ventured down, then he turned to a slanted floor that went down into a door. Hiroto stared down the menacing looking door and took a puff of his cigarette. “Ugh. Man, I do not like this place. This place gives me the creeps.”

He opened the door and it revealed another pitch black hallway. “There's not even like-AH! Dark hallway!”

After hesitating a little he walked down the hallway, all around him grew darker. His eyes glanced around, trying to catch any hint of something. He had to double-take a lot of times to make sure that no one was following him. Since he couldn't see that well, he couldn't tell if anything was there with him.

“I think I just saw something. Did I see something? I thought I saw something. Ugh!” Hiroto felt the paranoia creeping up on him. He felt like someone was going to come out of the darkness and grab him. The penguin spent so much time looking around that he nearly ran into a door.

Upon further inspection, he saw that the thing he thought he had seen was a glint from the brass hinges on the door. “Oh, it's just a glint. Oh, I get it. Man, I do not like this hallway.”

Opening the door, he revealed a white brick hallway that had several doors on both sides. The once pristine bricking was dull and the paint was flaking off. It was dingy and looked as if it were some kind of dungeon setting that had been long forgotten by the world.

“Whoa! I like this even less!” He turned to see what looked like a doorway that had been bricked over. “What's this? Looks like some kinda door.”

He walked to the other side and continued to just try to open any door that he could. It was locked. He tried another door, it was locked. He went to three more of the doors and they were all locked as well. With every handle he turned, he grew more and more irritated at the fact that he seemed to run into a dead end.

“What's the deal?” Hiroto asked himself in irritation as he went to another door and it finally opened. “Oh, here we go,” he walked inside to find a light bulb that lay in the middle of the dingy wooden floor. He bent over and picked it up. It just looked like a normal bulb. There was nothing special about it at all.

“I found a light bulb? Yay? What am I gonna do about that?” Not really knowing what he'd need it for, if anything at all, the penguin just carried it with him as he walked across the room to see a machine with a key pad on it stuck to the wall. On the electronic screen it simply said `enter code.'

Beside of it, there was a piece of ripped paper that had smudges on it. “Wh-What?” Hiroto scratched his head in confusion. “I can't even see these. They're washed out. What is going on here? Oh, oh wait. I get it. Wait…one…” He punched in a set of numbers as the banging noise that he once heard before grew more intense.

It sent a wave of chills through him as he frantically punched in many different sets of numbers, trying to figure out if any of them worked. He was afraid to turn around and he hoped that someone didn't come in and try to kill him.

“Get me out of here! Get me out of here!” He kept frantically punching in codes, but nothing was working. He felt his paranoia heighten as fear coursed through his blood. “How do I get out of you!?! Get me out of here! Get me out! Enter! Enter! Turn on the cameras!”

He continued to press buttons frantically as the sound grew louder and more violent. His voice got more frantic and he began to freak out even more. “How do I get out of you? There's something behind me, isn't there? Well…shit. What is this? I can't do anything. Is this a bug? Jeez, what the hell was that all about?”

The penguin turned to see that no one was there and the sound faded. Hiroto signed in relief and puffed on his cigarette in order to calm his nerves. His shaky hand held the stick of special tobacco and exhaled with trembling breath. “That had me worried.”

Sticking his head out of the door cautiously, Hiroto headed back down the corridor into the hallway. “Oh, this building is so quiet! Ugh!” He couldn't help but notice that all of this time, there had been no one and nothing around. Hiroto should have been happy about that, but he couldn't help but be unnerved by it.

It just felt like he'd get caught all the quicker, or something unexpected would just out and get him.

Hiroto walked through another door, glancing around for something, anything.

“I don't even know what I'm afraid of, because I haven't seen anyone yet-“ He paused and stared ahead into the small room that he had wandered into. There, in the corner of the room was a camera staring down at him. “What are you? Do I need a code for you? I got some fucking light bulbs.”

Turning around, Hiroto came to another locked door. He paused a little and looked thoughtful. “Okay, so I need to go to another part of the building to get a code?”

The penguin backtracked and went down the hallway of brick that he had passed up earlier, zig-zagging around barrels and walking across a blood-stained floor as he made his way down a winding hallway. At the end of the serpentine walkway, there was a blood-stained door. He opened the door only to reveal that it led him back around to the room with two sets of stairs.

“Was there something in this room I needed? Nope,” Hiroto went back the way he came and back tracked himself back to another door that opened to an empty room.

“There's nothing in here,” before he was about to turn, Hiroto's shoulder bumped a picture that fell off of the wall along with a piece of paper. A smile crossed his face as he grabbed for the parchment. “Oh! Haha!”

Just as he stood up, he heard a faint moaning that wiped that victorious look right off of his face. “Oh shut up! You're not going to do anything to me! You don't have the balls do to do anything to me. I'm way too brave and awesome!” That's what he was going to tell himself anyway.

He opened another door down a hallway and found a key on top of a table. There were words inscribed on the key that read Library Key. “Oh? There's a library? Where is the library?”

No doubt it was one of the doors that were locked but, which one? The first thought in his mind was that it had to be the big set of double doors in that room, but when he returned to them, they didn't open. He turned to the hallway that had a set of locked doors and shoved the key into each one, trying to get any of them to open.

With luck one of them did.

“I don't know when I'm going to get found out,” he muttered to himself and the door came open. “Ah! That's the library door!” He walked down a small hall and into a big library that looked untouched by time. It was tidy and quiet. Many old books lined the shelves and there were a few on some of the reading tables, all closed.

“What have we here?” Hiroto glanced behind the shelves to make sure that he was the only one in the room. “Anything behind these? Is something going to pop out at me!?! Is something going to try and surprise me?”

He glanced at shelf after shelf and each yielded no results, until he looked behind the last shelf. His face lit up with surprise at what he had laid eyes on.

“Ah! What are you?”

…To Be Continued