Save State Hero -Ch30- (Patreon)

Edmund was quick to get down low and scurry through after Alina through the doorway. He’d only barely managed to get his head and shoulders through before he could see the other side.

He’d exited into a location that could only be described as a hellscape.

Literally and figuratively.

“Oh, uh, heh, welcome to hell,” Edmund mumbled as Alina dragged him into a standing position.

She looked confused though also far too at ease as well. As if being dropped into hell really wasn’t that terrible of a situation for her.

“I guess,” she allowed with a sniff. “Reeks of justice though. A lot of it. There’s obviously a great deal of injustice as well but… overwhelmingly justice.”

“I… that… ah… is it because those that belong in hell are receiving what they deserve?” Edmund offered up in a strained voice.

While Alina didn’t seem perturbed in the least, Edmund had a distinct sense of dislike for this place already.

It made his skin crawl. He had goosebumps up and down his arms and legs. The very air he breathed felt almost as if he were breathing over a firepit.

“Oh. Oh! Yes. That’s a very good point. It’s exactly as it should be. That makes almost perfect sense. Especially me being an instrument of Retribution, Redemption, and Revenge,” mused Alina, followed by a chuckle. “Boy, this is another one of those too perfect to be coincidences again. Ryker really outdid himself this time.”

The mention of Ryker brought both of them up short. Obviously Alina had forgotten that he was no longer among the living.

“You really can save him, right?” Alina pressed suddenly, turning to look at him.

“I don’t know,” confessed Edmund honestly. “There’s a lot of problems around the whole thing.

“Problems that seem to be lining up in a way to make it impossible for me to get his ass out of this fire. Problems that almost seem hand constructed to make it damn near unthinkable that I could succeed.

“Any save-state I open is going to collapse the moment I do it. The world itself is unstable. All I can do now is figure out the mission and see if I can’t find some random power up, or solution, I hadn’t considered yet.”

“In other words… Runner told you to just go on because it couldn’t be done,” Alina stated flatly. “Or he’s hoping for some sort of… miraculous intervention. A Deus Ex machina moment where the damn eagles show up and fly everyone off to safety for no reason, but can’t drop them where they actually need to go. For reasons.”

Edmund didn’t say anything.

He just considered Alina’s words and what they meant. Considered if this really was just a way to get Edmund to move on since the situation with Ryker wasn’t something he could actually fix.

“That’s something he’d do. Break you off the path you’re on in an attempt to get you on the correct track,” offered a feminine voice somewhere over his head. “Before you ask, my name is Srit. I’m stepping in for Oz here. He’s a bit… tied up… right now.

“With Ryker passing on, a whole bunch of work that he’d been doing now falls to a bunch of other people to handle.”

I-yeah.

Yeah.

That makes too much sense all the way around.

Damnit.

“Sorry,” mumbled Alina, looking rather sheepish. “I’m not any good at this kind of stuff. My life has been kinda weird. Still getting used to having a more… human… outlook.”

“It’s fine. For now let’s just concentrate on getting out of this. Since we’re already this deep… Srit… which way are we going?” Edmund asked aloud. “And before you ask, Srit is like a helper thing. It used to be a guy named Oz but he’s apparently busy.”

Alina only nodded her head. Her ability to be surprised was quite suppressed.

“Yes? Yes! I’m delighted to be of service. Goodness it’s been a while since I’ve done things like this but I’m rather excited about it,” murmured Srit with a warm laugh. “Not to mention an actual conversation! Admittedly its a bit odd with how slow it feels but… beggars can’t be choosers!

“Ah! Yes! I’ve found the exit for you. You need to move ahead to that large rocky thing ahead of you. It’s actually a building. The local architecture isn’t very good but given you’re in a version of hell, that’s not a surprise.”

It only took a glance at the pools of lava in the distance, broken chunks of black rock, and the extreme lack of any and all vegetation in this red and black nightmare-land for Edmund to confirm Srit’s point.

“Big rock ahead of us. It’s a building,” Edmund relayed.

“Yes!” Srit confirmed. “Inside there will be an exit door that’ll lead elsewhere when you go through it. For everyone else it’ll just look like a bathroom.”

“We’re going into a bathroom,” Edmund finished.

Alina clicked her tongue then began marching forward. Her right hand came up at her side and she summoned a sword of bright golden light.

“What was our first date like?” she asked.

“You got drunk and threw up on my lap while I drove you home,” Edmund answered quickly.

The memories of Alina were readily available if he tried to push on it just a bit. They weren’t crowding him out thankfully though.

“Ugh. I’m an awful bitch aren’t I?” grumbled Alina as they went forward. “Let me guess, then I tried to make up for it the next day and screwed up again somehow.”

“Uh, we had sex. A lot of it. All day. You were kind of in the worst depression you’d ever be in and used me as a therapist and lifeline. I didn’t mind,” Edmund said instead. “In the other timeline… you lost a lot of people important to you. I only knew their names and some vague relations to you but… it was a lot. Names like Maya, Daria, and Warner.”

Alina went silent but she looked very thoughtful as they moved on.

Several “demons” came out to look at them and them promptly ran away. Sometimes screaming.

Alina was more than just anathema to them Edmund guessed.

Entering the building Edmund was surprised to find once again it didn’t match his expectations at all. Though by this point he really shouldn’t have been.

“This whole thing is like… like… backrooms. Dot showed me that,” Alina whispered, looking around at the stark-white office like interior they’d entered.

It was like being in an office building now.

“Ha… yeah, I get that. It’s kinda similar,” Edmund agreed and reached up to run a finger along the edge of a banner.

It read “over sixty billion served!” and had a number of signatures across it.

“I’m not sure if I should be impressed or terrified that hell has a corporate side,” he said.

“Both?”

Alina reached out and opened a door that was to one side. It swung inward easily and revealed an interior that was a giant stadium.

They were now looking out onto a green field on a sunny day for what looked to be football. The stands were absolutely filled with people.

Playing at a volume that made Edmund want to put his hands over his ears, was the chicken dance song.

In unison, the entirety of the audience clapped three times together.

Surprisingly, Edmund had felt the compulsion to do the same as soon as he heard the song hit the correct section.

As soon as the song picked up the start of the cadence there was a loud howl from many of those in the seats.

“What… what is this?” Alina asked.

“Hell, I guess,” Edmund answered and then promptly had to deny the need to clap three times as the song looped back around. His hands were full anyways so it wasn’t that hard.

“The chicken dance is a hell? Seems odd to me,” Alina murmured and dismissed her sword with a flick of her hand. Then began making the hand gestures to the beat of the song, then flapping her arms. Then quickly began rotating back and forth. “I did this in grade school.”

She clapped three times.

“I… I can’t stop? I can’t stop,” Alina said with her eyes widening. Going through the chicken dance once again.

Edmund reached out and pulled the door closed. He now understood why it was hell.

Doing the chicken dance unendingly seemed like torture. Absolute torture.

“Do we even bother with the next door?” Edmund inquired.

“The ‘bathroom exit’ is in one of the hell rooms in a secret break area,” advised Srit. “The… the chicken dance hell was not the right room. Keep searching.”

“We have to check all the rooms apparentl. We’ll just be careful about it,” Edmund said as if the words were a curse. Pulling open the next door he paused to look inside.

All he could see was a great deal of older men and women sitting in what he’d seen a number of times in class when they forced everyone to watch cspan.

Some type of meeting for congress.

“— passes with an overwhelming majority,” declared an old man at the center of the political dog and pony show.

“Not this one,” Srit said.

Edmund shook his head, closed the door, then went to the next one. He gave the doorknob a quick pull.

“— legal from here forward. With this, it’s locked permanently into the laws of this country,” said an old man in the exact same setup that Edmund had seen in the other one.

He paused and did a double take. This really was filled with different people but was a similar situation.

“Not this one, either,” Srit reported.

Edmund pulled the door closed and hesitated.

“What was that?” Alina asked before he could.

“The first one was hell for one political party, heaven for the other. The second was the other political party in a reversed situation,” Srit stated though she sounded distracted. “Their heaven and hell overlap it seems. Amusing and ironic.”

“Boomer politics,” Edmund hissed and threw a thumb over his shoulder.

“I’m technically a boomer,” Alina offered with a wide grin.

“You look like a camgirl that does fitness modeling on the sid,e” countered Edmund moving to the next door. “Boomer my ass.”

Opening it he found he was looking out at an endless ocean. There was a short platform directly in front of him that spread out around the door for a short way.

Taking a step out onto the platform Edmund looked down and around.

The platform was quite literally floating in the air.

He had no idea why, or how, but it was clearly levitating.

Twenty feet or so below was the ocean as far as he could tell. Since it seemed endless in any direction it felt an appropriate description.

Bobbing in the water were a multitude of people. All of them treading water while gentle swells moved them almost imperceptibly.

A recognizable and almost impossible to not miss musical cue sounded from somewhere above. The simple two-note progression simple and horrifying for anyone in the water who’d ever seen the movie.

Except it was already in the mid-phase of the theme and was quite fast.

Edmund saw the shark then. A massive and obvious Great-White and it was heading right for a small group of people who were all screaming now. Floating in the water like tiny ducklings that couldn’t fly yet.

It reached the group and sprang out of the water. Turning sideways and opening it’s mouth wide.

Except… Edmund didn’t hear the accompanying musical sting he expected.

“Let’s go hunt! Doo doo doo doo doo doo,” shrieked the shark as it bit one of the people in half. Letting the top half flop about in the water and start to sink as the man struggled with only his arms now.

“Oh that’s just fucked,” Edmund murmured, memories of his sisters childhood springing up out of nowhere.

The juxtaposition of the two franchises made his head hurt.

“This is the exit,” Srit stated. “The bathroom is out from here and to the left. Go in, open the second stall door, and then go through that. That’ll take you to the next phase. Though… it’ll get much harder from there.

“I can understand where Ryker wanted the party to go, what the goal is, but… but it’s also going to put you in combat.

“And… by the way… you can’t save going froward from there. Everything is an all in one go of it. I think you can load but I’m not sure.”

Given that if I load anything it’ll break, that means I need to go forward as best as I can.

That doesn’t mean I won’t load if I have to, but I’d prefer not to.

“Let’s go hunt! Doo doo doo doo doo doo,” declared the shark as it swam around the half dead man and then nipped off the arm of a screaming woman. “Let’s go hunt!”

“Alright, I’m sold on not going to hell,” Alina mumbled while following Edmund onto the platform. “Going to make sure I’m a good girl going forward.”

“This is the one we want. Bathrooms that way,” he said and led Alina away.

The musical cue had faded and was gone now. Left with only the screams of those below and the water they would eternally wade in.

Not waiting, the two of them found a door with a simple male-female placard above it and opened the door. Passing through it they exited out into something that would likely be better then where they had been, but Edmund was still expecting something to happen.

“Where the shit are we now?” Alina grumbled, looking around as Edmund did the same.

They were standing in a strangely open room with chairs, tables, and desk as the only furniture. The decor looked as if it’d been designed by someone who really liked the look of stainless steel.

Everything was metal or a metal like color.

It was strange to say the least.

Hell, only the ceiling tiles aren’t metal. Given that I can see a space between the tiles and the ceiling it looks like they’re using it to run electrical and venting through it.

Edmund looked back down from the ceiling to what the real concern was.

Which was that this area was filled with corpses as far as the eye could see in every direction. There was no end of to the bodies that were piled up on top of each other.

The only open spot to stand that wasn’t on a body, was where the door had opened and pushed the bodies out of the way.

Glancing back, Edmund saw the door they’d exited what looked to be some type of glass windowed lab envionrment filled with microscopes and other various bits of unidentifiable machinery.

“So… are we in a horror movie, or a horror video game,” Edmund muttered. “Cause if it’s a movie, chances are that we both die unless we find some extras soon. If it’s a horror video game, well… heroines usually die or get captured early on to fuel the call to arms.”

Alina snorted at that and looked at him dead in the eye.

“Do you really think you’d be the hero in a game?” Alina said and summoned her flaming golden sword. “I’ll try to rescue you swiftly. I promise. Don’t let the evil queen turtle monster have her way with you till then.”

Edmund could only laugh at that.

It was a nervous laugh.

A strained one.

They were making jokes, but the scent of blood and meat was overwhelming him. It made him feel sick.

And slightly unnerved.

He couldn’t rely on his power as frequently as he had previously. Everything was getting further and further from his point of safety.

Spiraling rapidly out of control and leaving him with almost nothing to cling to as a net beneath him should he fall from this tight rope.

“They’re not corpses,” Alina said, her entire body going rigid in an odd way. “They’re not bodies. They’re zombies.”

“I beg your pardon?” Edmund asked.

Alina grabbed him by the collar and then physically through him through the ceiling. Smashing through the tiles and landing on top of a vent.

“Fuck!” Edmund squeaked out, his rifle slamming against him, then the vent as he landed on it. It was attached to him by the sling but it was now hanging from him and dangling below. “The hell are you—”

The corpses, or Zombies as Alina more accurately pointed out, began rising up. Clambering over one another and all turning toward Alina who threw out her wings to each side.

Bright golden light began to pour out of her. Pooling around her in an aura.

“My turn to actually do something. Finally. I’ve felt absolutely worthless so far and more of a hindrance,” Alina said and then brought her sword around in a flat arc. Taking the head off a zombie that was close to her.

Her eyes were glowing with more than just the paranormal luminescence they often held when she got into her powers. There was no mistaking her excitement for the situation.

Given her statement and the look of her, she’d been feeling like an anchor being dragged around rather than an active participant in the mission.

Edmund worked at pulling his rifle up and trying to get it into position in front of himself. Holding it awkwardly he did what he could to get it up and where he could look down the sights of it.

Then realized he couldn’t. Not with any real hope of hitting anything and being confident in his ability to not strike alina.

The vent wasn’t that large, but too large for him to hold his rifle and remain dangling on the structure. More so if he wanted to aim well and actually get shots on target.

That meant as far as his rifle was concerned, it was a glorified gravity device.

All it was good for was weighing him down.