Chapter 7 The Beginning: Waking up to a new world (Part 3)

Daichi walked over closer into what was either a room or building. The words “Hey there, need a hand?” had barely left his mouth before he noticed what had the redhead in tears. There were pieces of people and blood everywhere.

Next to the redhead was what Daichi assumed used to be a girl. One that could have been slightly cute, but it was hard to tell since he could only see her face with that look of terror forever stuck as her last expression. Finding the girl unsettling Daichi turned to look around the room instead.

He shifted his eyes to see if he could find anyone else and found that there were one or two faces he more or less recognized. More or less because the faces were only more or less still faces. Some of them had missing pieces or were altogether crushed “I can tell the way the redhead is freaking out that either the scene is really disturbing her or she noticed someone she used to know.”

In reality Daichi should have known everyone here. It wasn’t a particularly large school in a large town. Except he’d never paid much attention to the people around him. He was never in the present and couldn’t help but drift away and focus on the intangible. Not because he wasn’t practical or pragmatic, a dreamer with no focus. Rather it was because Daichi had an aversion to people.

“Hey there, my name is Daichi, are you okay?” Daichi asked Hannah thinking “Maybe I can just soothe her a bit by having her focus on something else, it can’t be a good thing that she’s’ still being so loud.”

*Sob* *Sniff* “Eh… Daichi? From class?” Hannah asked as some recognition appeared on her face

“Yeah, ‘that’ Daichi. Are you okay? I heard another voice, do you need help?” Daichi wanted to comment on the fact that he was the only one with an odd name like ‘Daichi’ in the entire town but kept it to himself. He was just glad that Hannah seemed to be calming down a bit.

“Eh! You survived too? Uhh yeah… I’m okay! Kaden! Kaden is trapped under that ceiling. It’s collapsed on top of the desk, and his leg is stuck! We need to get him out!” Hannah was a little frantic and her comments weren’t coming out as coherently as she thought they were.

She pointed at the side and Daichi noticed who she was talking about. Although he couldn’t make anybody out.

He walked over to the only desk still in the middle of the classroom and reached his arm out to help the red head up. “C’mon let me help you up and we can figure out a way to help Kaden.”

Hannah reached up and grabbed his hand as he yanked her up. He wasn’t meaning to be so brisk but Daichi was on edge after all the noise she’d made. He brushed himself off and pulled her forward with him as she bumped into his chest. Daichi didn’t notice the slight blush on hannah’s cheeks and was only focused on checking out the situation with Kaden.

“Eh uhh, can you let go of my hand?” Hannah finally managed to say while growing red like a beet. Being so close to Daichi had kind of made everything feel less frantic as she’d focused on how close she was to him. She’d rejected plenty of the boys who’d shown an interest in her, and not one had gotten a chance with her. She was as pure as the driven snow when it came to boys, and Daichi’s almost heroic arrival (in her eyes) was a welcome distraction.

Not paying attention to Hannah Diachi let go and focused on Kaden’s situation. He saw what she was talking about and he saw the guy under the desk and where his leg is trapped. he also saw the class idol underneath him. He heard lots of bad rumors about a stalker in class that had a thing for her but he didn’t think this guy would try and take advantage and have his way with her mid-apocalypse.

Daichi couldn’t tell if this qualified as an apocalypse. “I should probably keep an eye on him if we get him out.” he thought making a mental note.

“Okay, I don’t have any magic or enough strength to lift the ceiling. I’m guessing you don’t either?” Daichi asked no one in particular.

“Ah! No! I thought I might, but I don’t. Never mind. Nothing.” Hannah was still a little flustered and it wasn’t helping her incoherent answers.

“Can you guys figure something out, I think Ava is finally waking up and this is going to be a pretty awkward explanation on my part if you guys don’t get me out of here quickly” Kaden said a little awkwardly.

“So he doesn’t want to get caught having his way with her! Yeah, this guy is definitely suspicious.” Daichi thought but didn’t comment. “Okay, so since we can’t move the entire ceiling, we’ll look for some pipes and and try to just lift the entire high enough for an inch or two so you can pull your leg out.” Daichi told as he decided on the only course of action he could think of.

“Why don’t you stay here and focus on keeping Kaden calm. Ava too in case she wakes up and starts freaking about what happened” Daichi told Hannah as he looked around the classroom trying to find something useful.

“Better to have her focus on Kaden then look around the bodies. I don’t want her falling apart on me, plus what if Ava wakes up and starts screaming at Kaden for what he did to her? That’d be worse case scenario basically.” Daichi thought as the annoying image of Ava screaming started playing through his mind.

Daichi started walking around and start edlooking for anything useful. Unfortunately everything was distorted, torn or just useless at this point. Most of anything he could see that might useful was half-buried under a pile of wall, dirt and people.

He walked around the building and started looking around, with everything falling to pieces it was hard to tell what was where. If this was his school before, it definitely didn’t resemble it anymore. Even as he was walking he was looking up. The three moons were eerie, they almost seemed like they were by design. “How can they orbit or stay in place like that while not distorting their own fields of gravity?” Daichi wondered while getting sidetracked again.

He saw a half open door tilted off to the side of it’s hinges and hoped for the best. He’d already walked around too long and was starting to reconsider how helpful it would be to put in this much effort for strangers.

Daichi pulled on the doorknob and the whole door just came off right in front of him with a loud crash. This made Daichi chastise himself for not even thinking that it might happen. He was too distracted and his mind was all over the place.

“I need to calm down, I’m spreading myself too thin.” he closed my eyes for a second. Inhaled and then thought about just focusing on the one task before him and nothing else. He exhaled and opened his eyes and looked inside. It was the remnants of a cellar. At which point he was not surprised but rather a little amused. “This could work” as he eyed a few sets of dangling pipes that used to run part of the water throughout the school. Daichi moved and tried to get to the closet pipe and tried to tug off the end of a pipe that’s dangling down and realized it was not going to be so easy. He tried to put his full weight and go limp trying to pull it down before an L shaped pipe finally came down off the bracket.

Huff, huff… Sigh…

The sounds of Daichi’s labored breathing could be heard quite loudly as everything else was dead silent. “This should not have taken this much energy. Maybe I’m just lucky that it ONLY took this much energy, or that I managed to do it at all.” Daichi was trying to be optimistic. Even he knew that the situation wasn’t looking great and this was just the first little hurdle he was going to have to get through. He found a weaker and thinner pipe already on the floor and picked it up too. Throwing them both over his shoulders as he started walking back.

“Ugh..” Kaden noticed a sound coming from underneath him “Eh. Hey Hannah, Ava is waking up!”

Finally regaining consciousness. Ava was a little disoriented and her head was throbbing as she noticed she couldn’t see much “Uh… What’s going on…?”

“Uhm. Well. I… Kind of…” Kaden could only stutter as he tried to think of what to say. Luckily Hannah didn’t mince words and jumped into action immediately “He saved your life!”

“What?” Ava finally realized someone was on top of her.

“Look something happened, and everything went dark, everyone passed out and before we knew it everything started crumbling, it’s not like it was an earthquake or something, everything just fell apart. Before you say something look at your status.” Hannah summarized everything hoping to keep Ava calm as Kaden heaved a sigh of relief as it shortened his part of the conversation “Whew… So hey… I’m Kaden” a big grin plastered all over his face as he spoke.

Opening her eyes wide in surprise. “What’ in the name of the gods??” Ava was finally putting the pieces together as she regained her wits.

“My status is all wrong. Even the stats and types are different. Why are you on top of me…” Not even fully comprehending the changes behind her status window she immediately realized that there was a scruffy guy on top of her in a compromising position making her feel exposed. Blushing, this realization overtook all of her other feelings of confusion.

“He pulled you under the desk when everything crumbled, and now his leg is stuck. You can’t move until we get his leg out otherwise he’ll get crushed by the rubble.” Hannah pointed out as Kaden just agreed happy to have her speaking for him “Hannah. You talk, you do everything. k?”

Hannah rolled her eyes at her brother’s cowardice “Sigh… Look you saw your status window, it doesn’t make sense right? Ours are weird too. I can’t check any of the stats and see what they mean either. Even though it’s confusing it should at least prove that something serious happened. There’s another guy here though, he just found us and we went to look for something to help get Kaden’s leg unstuck. I’m sure he’ll back in a second.” the more Hannah spoke the more made sense to Ava even if she didn’t quite understand everything that had happened “Okay…” Ava quieted down and stopped talking and started thinking.

……

“You think that guy ran way or something?” Kaden asked his sister as he genuinely wondered whether Daichi was just taken off. “No! I mean, why would he? He didn’t have to come out and talk to us in the first place if he wasn’t trying to help.” Hannah answered feeling a little defensive for Daichi even if she didn’t know why.

“Maybe he was just trying to feel us out. It’s not like that loser has ever struck me as the helping-hand type.” Kaden pointed out.

“Fe-“ The word had only begun to leave Hannah’s lips as Daichi cut her off “If I was doing that I would have asked for information before leaving. You should have some more faith in your fellow man you know.”

“Dude!? What are you talking about, I was just trying to distract my silly sister. Obviously you were coming back. I could tell from how resolute and manly your voice was before. You’re clearly an honorable guy, and quick witted and” Kaden suddenly quick witted began to butter Daichi up as Daichi cut him off too “Got it. I’m back. I found a really thick steel pipe and a smaller one. If we try the smaller one first and jam it near the crevice where your leg is stuck, maybe we can lift the large for an inch or so and pull your leg out in that second. Even though the larger pipe might be sturdier, I think it would be much harder. Let’s try this first.”

Kaden was fairly quick witted. More or less, it was quick with his words because he didn’t put much thought behind what he said. He said what was on his mind even if he buttered up the words a bit sometimes. He was generally a straight shooter.

“Red head, why don’t you take off his shoe so it won’t get in the way. Even if we can only slightly light the wall it won’t be for very long.” Daichi made a suggestion as Hannah responded while moving around behind where was was and unwrapped the laces and pulled hi shoe off at an awkward angle “Eh? Me? Okay.”

Kaden felt her hands and the unpleasant tingle run through his leg “Ugh… careful jeeze.” while Hannah ignored him “Don’t be a complainer, no one likes a guy that complains.”

Sticking the smaller pipe near the leg and getting ready to put leverage on it, Daichi called Hannah over so she could help put her weight on it as well.

“We’ll go on three!” Daichi said aloud so everyone could get on the same page.

“Hey. When you pull your leg, I’ll try and pull you closer to me at that instant to help.” Ava finally spoke in Daichi’s presence.

Daichi said nothing to address her and only continued “One… Two… Three!!!” he pushed down with all of his strength trying to get it done and hoping he could manage to put all this strength in for more that a second. “Ugh. It’s not budging! More strength I need to put everything behind this, weight and all!.” Daichi thought as he began pulling down using his my lower body. He pulled with strength he didn’t know he had and finally felt the rumble give just a bit.

“GRR NOW!” he screamed

“OUT!” the second he heard the voice he let go feeling physically exhausted.

Feeling a little curious he called his

-Status-Name:Daichi SeishinClass:NoneLevel:5Race:HumanEvolutionary Path:???

Title(s):Psychopath, Touched by ChaosDivine Protection:NoneAttribute(s):ChaosHealth:100/100Mana:400

Strength:9Agility:8Vitality:9Spirit:1Intelligence:40Wisdom:40Aptitude:71Ability:5/500

Skill(s):None

Ability:None

Inheritance:Sealed