Chapter Text
“Alright so it takes about… three shots to the head to kill them with a standard 9mm handgun,” Tord says tapping the note into his phone. “Wish I had something with more firepower…”
“I’m surprised you haven’t managed to hide a shotgun on you at all times,” Tom deadpans, having shifted back to his human form.
“Believe me I’ve tried,” Tord says, as he snaps a few photos of the mangy creature bleeding out onto the carpet. It looks like a long stretched-out dog with skinny limbs and disturbingly human-looking grey skin. The ears are pointed and the serrated jaws that snapped at their heels would no doubt hurt like hell.
He thinks these things are called hounds.
“You don’t have to waste ammo, Tord,” Edd says, floating over the corpses, cheek resting on his hand. “We can take care of these entities in no time.”
“I told you earlier I’m just trying to be prepared.” He pockets his phone. “If I get separated from you again I need to know what I can shoot… And what I just need to run from. I can at least improve my odds of not dying.”
The other three glance at each other, suddenly alarmed. Tord rolls his eyes. They get like this sometimes when they’re reminded of Tord’s mortality. He isn’t going to apologize. He’ll stubbornly cling to his humanity as long as he wants.
“We won’t get separated again,” Matt says firmly. “I can… hold your hand?”
Tord wrinkles his nose at the offered hand. “Pass. I’ll just stick close. We should keep going.”
“Ugh… no I’m so sick of this place!” Edd whines, turning upside down in the air. “It smells bad, there is no service, I’m hungry and there is no cola!”
They have been walking for a while, occasionally encountering entities along the way. Some are harmless. Others less so but dealt with pretty easily between the four of them. If they’re here for too long they’ll run into other issues though.
Like starvation. Thankfully, Tord is always prepared to skip town at the drop of a hat. In case the police come knocking about complete misunderstandings…. like the paintball incident.
“Hang on I’ve got something,” he says, pulling one of his cubes from his pocket. A nifty little invention, about the size of a dice, that can store anything from a couch to food supplies for at least a week.
He pulls out a protein bar and a can of cola.
“Here,” he says handing Edd the cola.
Edd holds the can like it will shatter in his hands. With his strength, it might.
“Tord,” he says. “Have I ever told you that you’re my favorite roommate?”
“He hands you a cola can and suddenly he’s your favorite?” Tom scoffs.
“Yeah!” Matt whines. “I thought I was your favorite! I’m everyone’s favorite!”
Edd just sips at the cola, pinky out. “Well, when you guys have emergency cola in a cube then you can be my favorite.”
Tord stifles a laugh and shoots the other two a smug smile as he chews on his protein bar.
“For the record, you're my least favorite," Tom grumbles, arms folded. "You leave your inventions and hentai in the living room."
“Aww, Thomas. You're my least favorite too,” Tord retorts with a grin. “Now let’s get moving.”
They continue on, rounding corners, finding rooms, and following hallways. They keep their hands on the walls and search the larger rooms for an exit before moving along. Tord continues to mark the walls to keep track. Edd leads the way with Tord and Matt in the middle, the redhead keeping close, and Tom bringing up the rear.
While they search one of these larger rooms, Tord hears something other than the drone of lights or Edd slurping his soda.
“I think I hear something,” he says, looking around. He pulls out his gun and flicks the safety off. Sounds like it’s coming from just around the corner…
“What is it?”
Tord almost jumps out of his skin as Matt is suddenly looming behind him.
“Jesus, I almost shot you!” He clears his throat. “I was just saying I think I heard something… it sounds like crying?”
“Oh, I hear it too,” the redhead says.
The two of them look around the corner… only to see a child, quietly sniffling in the corner of a dead-end hall.
“It’s a kid!” Matt exclaims.
“It could be an entity,” Tord whispers. The kid, a little girl with pigtails and a checkered dress looks up and, upon spotting them, stands. She looks to be… nine? Eight?
“Who are you?” She asks, approaching slowly. “Have you seen my mom?”
“Uh… no,” Tord says taking a few steps back, just in case. This has very big trap alarms going off in his head.
“Can you help me find her?” She steps closer, big watery eyes blinking up at Tord expectantly. Ugh. He can’t stand kids.
“What did you find?” Edd peeks around the corner. Tom plods over as well.
“We found a kid!” Matt exclaims with the same enthusiasm he has when he finds a cool toy.
Tom raises a brow at that and Tord knows he’s thinking the same thing as him. Despite, Tord constantly teasing him and calling him stupid the eyeless monster has good instincts.
“Huh,” Edd says. “First human we’ve seen. Do you think she fell down here too?”
“It is possible,” Tord says. “You can fall into the backrooms from anywhere supposedly.”
“I guess we should take her with us?” Edd suggests.
“Yeah!” Matt says.
“No,” Tom and Tord say at the same time. Then they scowl at each other for a moment.
“What? Why not? We can’t just leave her here!” Matt says.
“Yeah!” Edd agrees. “That’s just cruel.”
“We have no idea what she is or what she can do,” Tom counters. “I say we leave her.”
“As much as it pains me I have to agree with Jehova,” Tord nods.
The little girl starts to blubber again. “Please, I just want to find my mommy.”
Edd scratches his head. “I see what you two are saying but what kind of superhero would I be if I just left a potentially innocent child to die?”
“Yeah! Besides she might be a good snack to have!”
Tord notices something odd flicker across the girl's face and she recoils from Matt.
“Matt, no!” Edd scolds. “We do not drink the blood of the innocent!”
“Aww… but Tord is so salty and I didn’t bring any extra blood packs…”
Shit. Right. While neither Tom nor Matt needs food the vampire does still require blood every so often. The fridge is stocked with a few packs that they uh… liberated from a hospital. Better than Matt going on a hunger-induced murder spree.
Incidentally, Tord is also the only one Matt can feed off of in emergencies. Edd’s blood is far too irritated and whatever black goop flows through Tom certainly isn’t blood.
“Are you hungry right now?” Tom asks, seriously.
“Well… not that hungry,” Matt says.
“Then it will be fine,” the eyeless man says easily. “We’ll get out of here before it’s a problem.”
“You’re unusually optimistic,” Tord snorts.
Tom shrugs. “This place doesn’t scare me.”
“Look, let's just take her with us,” Edd says. “I’m the leader so what I say goes.”
The other three just groan, rolling their eyes at that.
“Alright little girl, come with us!” Matt says. “I promise I won’t bite you!”
She looks warily between the four. “Are you… monsters?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to,” Tord replies, putting away his gun. “Can we go now?”
The four set off again now with a child, whose name is apparently Kimberly. She sticks close and Tord notices she seems to gravitate toward him. Perhaps because he is the only other human one out of all of them? She keeps trying to hold his hand but he snatches it away.
“Here!” Matt says finally coming up next to them. “You can hold my hand. I’m nicer than Tord.”
Tord chooses not to comment on how willing the vampire was to bite this girl’s neck open.
Kimberly takes Matt’s hand anyway. They continue until they reach another of those large backrooms and search the place for an exit.
“Nothing here,” Edd announces from the ceiling.
“Nothing down here,” Tom echoes. “Just more ugly walls and carpet.”
“I know an exit.”
All four of the turn to look at Kimberly who is still holding Matt’s right hand.
“You do?” Matt asks.
She nods. “Yeah. Over there.” She points to a nondescript section of the wall on Matt’s left. He turns to look and the shift happens so fast that Tord doesn’t even get the warning out in time.
“Matt!” He shouts.
The girl’s head splits open in four sections. A grotesque fractal of jagged teeth, flesh, and tongue that closes on Matt’s arm like a Venus fly trap on a bug. Matt screeches.
“Holy shit!” Edd shouts.
Tom is already running over to Matt, partially transformed with striped horns and claws. Tord has unloaded a few rounds into her torso but Matt doesn’t appear to need the help. He tries to yank himself free. His arm rips off in her mouth at the shoulder.
He then grabs the entity by the throat and flings her clear across the room. Edd freezes her solid with a breath.
“Bollocks,” is all Matt says, looking at where his arm used to be. “That will take a while to regenerate. Good thing it wasn’t my face.”
“She bit off your arm!” Tord says.
“I’ve had worse.”
“Matt, this isn’t the time for Monty Python jokes.”
“Seriously, Matt. Your arm is gone,” Tom says warily. “Are you sure you’ll be ok? Your regeneration is pretty slow.”
“It will be fine! I’ll just be left-handed for a bit.”
Tord chews his lower lip in thought. Matt’s regeneration is slow because he doesn’t usually have fresh blood. In the past fresh blood has boosted his regeneration significantly. It’s not ideal but neither is having Matt down an arm in this situation.
“Forget it,” Tord says. “Just take my blood.”
“Are you sure?” Matt asks, but the flashing look in his eyes is hungry at the offer.
“Yeah,” Edd says. “You’re usually wiped after Matt feeds."
“I’m already the weakest link in the chain,” Tord says matter of fact like. “Me being a little tired won’t affect much in the long run.”
Again the shared look of awkwardness between his monstrous friends.
“Just get over here you big baby.”
Matt hesitates still. “Are you really, really sure?”
“Hurry up before I change my mind! And don’t take too much.”
-
“Matt, what the hell!” Tom shouts, looming over the vampire, sockets flashing purple. It isn’t a question as much as it is scolding.
Tord leans heavily against Edd who steadies him by the elbow. The world spins, his hand pressed to his own neck. Those goddamn fangs hurt like a bitch.
“Sorry,” Matt says on his knees, rubbing his sleeve over his lips guiltily. “Guess I was hungrier than I thought.”
“For all your complaining about my blood you sure took a lot,” Tord snaps weakly.
“Do you want some cola?” Edd offers, holding out what is probably just swill in a can at this point.
“He needs water, Edd,” Tom says. “Did you put water in those cubes, smart guy?”
“I wouldn’t be much of a smart guy if didn’t,” he says, haughty despite the blood loss. Tord removes his hand, satisfied the two punctures in his neck aren’t oozing as much anymore.
“Are you good?” Edd asks as Tord waves him away.
“I can stand,” Tord insists, getting a protein bar and water bottle from the cube.
“Tord I’m so sorry,” Matt whimpers, with big red pleading eyes. Both pale hands were clasped together as if begging for forgiveness. The good news it took two minutes flat for the vampire to regenerate a new arm with the fresh supply of blood.
When Tord’s arms don’t feel like leaden noodles he’ll note that. It’s become something of a hobby to document his friend's abilities.
“Whatever, I’m fine,” Tord says, shoving the rest of the protein bar in his mouth and chasing it with water. “My body will make more.”
“You’re not impressing anyone,” Tom says, arms folded and brow furrowed. “You don’t look fine.”
Tord glares at Tom. “Whatever. I just need to…” His vision pitches left, the ceiling suddenly appearing above him. He doesn’t hit the ground though, Edd holding him up.
“Yeah, you’re not fine,” Edd says. “You need to sleep. That usually helps with the anemia.”
“Faen,” is all Tord can croak out.
“I’ll take him,” Tom says, deep voice unusually soft. Tord can hear the unpleasant sounds of Tom’s transformation accompanied by only a few pained snarls. Tom told him the pain was familiar now.
Giant purple claws take him from Edd and he’s laid out on Tom’s wide scaly back.
Tord sighs as the group continues on, leaving Kimberly on ice.
When he gets out of here he’s going to figure out how to blow up the backrooms.