//------------------------------// // Away // Story: The Last One // by computerneek //------------------------------// She doesn’t get very far before her ears pick out the growing thumping of something…  Like it’s coming closer. She manages to hide under the third bed before a clunk sounds- and the door swings open.  She instantly slows her scrambling to a crawl, moving as slowly as she possibly can; her legs are loud against this floor. So are the legs of whoever enters through the door.  He stops. “Huh?  But Doctor Horse said there was a body…?  Whatever. Musta gotten the wrong room.” The dark brown legs turn around and leave the room. She contemplates waiting for her end here, but that would take forever- something like a day, as a matter of fact- and she’d almost certainly be discovered in that much time. The door doesn’t swing all the way shut.  She waits for the noise of his legs to fade away before she crawls up to the door.  She pries it open with one limb, and sticks her head out. She’s gained entry into a long passage.  It turns at one end, from which she hears voices on approach.  There’s several doors along the passage on both sides, including the one she’s peeking out of.  She glances up the passage towards the voices; sounds like the one that had inadvertently let her out is talking to the one that had called for the crash cart, both headed this way.  She stumbles her way out of the room- she figures that’s where they’re headed- and hides behind the door one down from her room. It had also been hanging open, revealing what looks to her like some kind of cleaning closet. How she knows the mops look archaic, nor what that last word means, she hasn’t a clue. She listens to the voices grow closer.  She hears the sound of the door she’d first come from.  The voices intensify; it seems they expected to find her there.  They move away, down the hallway- and the steps sound hurried somehow. She peeks her head out, then heads out herself, moving in the opposite direction.  She keeps her ears pointed backwards; if they start coming again, she’s going to hide.  Her eyes locate and track multiple possible hiding places as she travels. As it turns out, she’ll be needing a hiding place sooner than she thought.  She freezes in the middle of the passage, after turning a corner. She’d been focused too much on the distant noises of those two that she’d completely missed far closer sounds.  Like the other set of stepping noises from in front of her. Or the muttering to accompany. She should even have heard the soft rustle of that white-covered wing brushing against the wall!  Her ears rotate forwards as she locks eyes with… She doesn’t know what her head looks like, and hasn’t looked at her back.  But, from what she did look at, this is simply a larger version of herself, with something white on her right wing. She holds this stare battle for a very long time.  Funny, so does… this other entity. She’s not sure what they’re called- but it doesn’t matter. Eventually, she makes the first move.  She twists one ear to face back the way she’d come, catching noises that sound suspiciously like the footsteps of those two, along with another set or two, she’s not sure.  Her eyes flash across the passage- and she quickly steps forwards to slip through another partially-open door. The bigger entity watches her go.  About three and a half seconds after she gets all the way in, the bigger entity follows her in, nearly closing the door behind herself and peeking out through the crack, standing next to her. She spares a search around the room she’s found herself in.  One of the criteria for safe hiding spots had been the complete lack of breathing or chest-thumping noises- and while this room had matched those criteria, she still wants to know where it is.  Never know when she might find herself in some entity’s destination.  Or route. This room doesn’t look likely to be along the route.  However, if her guess as to her location- some kind of medical place- is accurate, the healers might be coming into this room fairly frequently.  It would appear to be a storage room for their related supplies. She looks back up at the bigger entity, who draws back from the door to give her a crooked smile before opening her mouth to speak quietly. “You trying to get out too?” She bobs her head briefly up and down.  That’s usually a yes, if her scanty memories are telling the truth. The entity’s head then tilts slightly to the side.  “Come to think of it, what are you in here for…?” She only looks back.  That question requires more than a yes or a no- and she doesn’t know how to talk. The ear still focused on the door catches a sound…  And a voice. “No ma’am. We need to get an EKG before we can figure out what’s wrong.” Another voice.  Her companion has focused on the door again, wings twitching.  This voice sounds angry- almost desperate. “Then get one!” The first voice returns.  “That’s what I’m doing. Don’t worry, she will be fine.” Footsteps, approaching their closet. The entity in the closet with her seems restless.  “She’s coming here!” she mutters- and glances down at her companion, before lowering herself down to the ground.  “Here- climb on.” She complies.  Once on the bigger entity’s back, she spreads her legs around her back, spreading her wings out against the bigger entity’s wings.  The larger wings flinch at the contact, though, so she retracts her wings again, folding them to her sides. She watches forwards, through the larger entity’s colored hair, as the noise gets closer.  She senses rather than feels the pain in the larger entity’s right wing. It’s a sharp pain, not unlike what her wing had felt like when it had been bent at that point where it doesn’t bend anymore. She’s not experiencing the pain, though- more like witnessing it.  But it should go away soon, right? Yes, yes it should.  Pain is bad. This makes her wonder.  If pain is bad, why was it good before? Easy.  Her own pain is good- it reduces the terrible coming.  How, she doesn’t know. Pain of other entities is bad- it increases the terrible coming.  Again, she doesn’t know how. She feels the entity’s muscles shift underneath her, and tenses her own; this entity seems to be preparing for a dash. The door begins moving.  It swings inwards- very suddenly accelerating as her ride rips it open with one leg and makes a break for it.  She can sense how she’s moving so quickly. She figures she could do that too- but, with her smaller size, she would be slower. Her ride dodges out into the passage, wrapping almost instantly around the white entity that had been opening the door and rushing down the passage.  She hears a startled yelp from behind them as they rocket down the passage. Somewhere along the way, she senses her ride’s wing pain go away.  Her ride navigates quickly through the hallways, dodges another entity- and finally makes a turn towards a window, away from at least three oncoming entities.  Her ride pauses only briefly to throw the window open before leaping out and spreading her wings. Her strokes quickly desynchronize as their flight path wobbles and twists.  She stretches out her own wings, holding them above her ride’s, holding them flat to help stabilize their path. It works- the twisting goes down. Not fast enough.  Her ride’s panicked yelps intensify and transform into pained yelps as they make contact with the ground, tumbling a few times. A searing pain invades her wings at a few points.  The one where her right wing connects to her back is a different kind of pain- but that simply becomes the first to go away, once she rolls herself right-side-up and allows it to regain its normal position.  She’s free! She could run away now- and, possibly, make it to safety. Though, with the persistent pain in her muscles and her senses beginning to fog up once again, she doesn’t think she’d make it far enough if she tried. Besides, she can’t just abandon the entity that helped her.  She takes the half-dozen steps to where her ride had stopped tumbling, further away than she.  She can sense several points of sharp pain- much like her own, already disappearing, pains. There’s a few more- like the one in her ride’s chest.  It feels the same, yet more important, somehow; she knows this one will go away first. The one of next importance is the one in her ride’s leg- and, finally, the ones in her wings.  She touches her ride’s leg with one of hers. The larger entity opens her eyes, cutting off a painful moan, to look down at her.  “Hey, squirt,” she mutters weakly, smiling. “Go tell Pinkie I won’t be able to attend today, please.” She pauses, gazing into the entity’s eyes for a couple seconds.  Entities are coming out of the building they’d just jumped from- they’ll be here before all her ride’s pains go away.  Locating the entity called ‘Pinkie’ and delivering the message will be difficult, at best; not only does she not know how to talk, but she’s already running on very limited time. Finally, she nods, glances at her surroundings, and picks someplace full of entities to hide. And to figure out how to ask after this ‘Pinkie’. She runs.  Just like the larger entity had done.  She only barely manages to stay upright for the first several strides, but her gait quickly stabilizes, and she accelerates. Her muscles disagree.  They’ll start failing again soon.  Her vision is beginning to blur once again. She makes it to the door.  She tugs it open, dodging inside. “Surprise!” This is new.