damned_institute | Night 59: Main Hallway 2-East

[From here]

Once they hit the dead end of this hallway, Tifa directed them to the left. A pitch black corridor greeted them like the entrance into a giant monster's belly. There was the usual apprehension, but it was an unnecessary feeling tonight. They both may have been injured, but it hardly made them infirm. If there was ever a night to brave the darkness, it was this one.

Beside her, Zack stood, waiting on her cue since she was the one leading this operation. Tifa gave him a confident nod and moved forward. She took one step and stopped short. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as the hallway before them came alive with the sound of growling.

Apparently her analogy hadn't been too far off. Out of the abysmal bowels before them stepped a rabid, ragged hound. It was in some later stages of decay and bigger than any dog had the right to be. It wasn't alone either. Several claws clicked across the linoleum tiles and clogged the entrance like the guardians of hell's gate.

"Well, let's hope they don't spew fire," Tifa quipped lightly as she bent forward, awaiting the first wave of attack. It came shortly, but the dog had aimed itself at Zack. That was fine by Tifa; she turned her attention to the next closest beast that came out of the darkness.

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They had been about to reach the end of the hall and Zack had been preparing to turn left as per Tifa's directions, but it soon become clear that it wasn't going to be that easy. The growling sound was something that was far too familiar for comfort. Zack hoped that he was wrong at first, but when he watched one of the rotting dogs step forward, he realized that he had been naive to even assume that.

It just figured that dogs would attack them. Zack knew that Tifa was only vaguely aware of what had happened to him a few nights back, but he had turned into one of these things. It made it hard to even look at them, though Zack was aware that the monsters would have no hesitation in ripping him apart.

When he had been one of these things for most of a night, it became more difficult to just focus on killing them. He realized that they didn't have any human consciousness inside, but --

The first one came right for him, almost like it knew, and Zack darted to the side, taking a swipe at it with his sword as it raced past. His blade bit into its flank and caused it to let out a pained snarl. "Looks like it's time to claim our own hallway!" he called out to Tifa as he waited for the dog to circle back around. This area was still completely clean, but it wasn't going to stay that way.

"Sounds good--" Tifa's words were clipped short by a quick footed hound that was hell-bent on taking her down with a running start. Her hands clenched in anticipation, which of course didn't end well. The manageable pain of her fist now sent a terrible sensation through every nerve in her body.

Black began to eat away at the borders of her vision as she wavered in stance. She thought she may have cried out, but it was hard to tell past tunnel vision and remembering to breathe properly. Thankfully, materia didn't require physical exertion. A spell of Ice coated the oncoming dog and froze him in place and then a decisive heel to the head shattered the thing into dozens of pieces.

Well, she was down a hand, but there were still two good legs and a left jab. It could certainly be worse. She could be just a fighting torso with hundreds of hounds surrounding her. A dozen or so was nothing to bemoan.

"New rule--" she began before jumping forward to catch the next frothing beast. "Bonus point for getting blood all the way on the... ceiling!" Her last words were punctuated with force as she practically shoved her foot through a dog's chest cavity.

Zack heard Tifa cry out, but in the end he had to assume that it was either due to shock or something that wasn't immediately obvious. Not that he could see much of her when the hallway was completely dark and they were surrounded by a pack of hounds, but she was still standing. That seemed like the most important point.

As the dog that Zack had been fighting started back toward him, apparently undeterred by his earlier hit on it, he forced himself to forget about the girl fighting behind him and make sure that he stayed focused on his own fights. The whole point of trusting someone to guard your back was that you didn't have to spend the whole fight worrying about them.

He did hear the familiar sound of an Ice spell, which caused him to grin as he lunged forward to jab the point of his sword into the dog's lower chest area. It ran right onto it, unable to reroute in the narrow hallway, and then Zack jerked back, watching as it skidded to a halt and fell to the floor in pain.

"The ceiling?" Tifa wasn't playing around, apparently. "Got it!" Zack spun around and raced past the girl to the next monster in sight, this time aiming his sword low. The blade hit the dog down by its belly and then slashed up and through it, with a splatter that he was hoping hit the ceiling. Now that he was getting into the zone, he wasn't quite so worried about the fact that he'd taken the form of one of these things before.

"Ah, you cheat!" Her words held no heat as she watched the spray from his sword fly up. Even with the glow surrounding the institute, it was hard to see just how far up it went, but it was Zack. Tifa couldn't imagine the man half-assing anything.

Well, her fists certainly couldn't throw anything that high. She would need a bit of help. The hound she had dented in was punted into the air once, twice, before she sprinted for the nearest wall. She used her momentum to hit the force field with her feet and ricochet off into the air above. One kick was all the carcasses needed to sail higher, but it came just shy of hitting the ceiling.

All she could do was groan and let gravity bring her back down to the floor with a loud smack of her heels. The dog followed behind her with a wet thud right on top of its snarling brethren.

"That counts as mine, right?" she asked, making her way back to the center of the hallway by Zack. Technically, Tifa had used the dog as a tool, so she would still get the point! Maybe?

Zack was left there to stand and watch as Tifa tried to get some blood up on the ceiling herself. It was true that he had an advantage when he had a sword that he could use to direct the blood splatters, but what the girl pulled off was arguably more impressive than what he had done.

While Zack was strong and generally pretty agile, the way that Tifa bounced off of the wall like it was nothing was impressive. It was true that the dog's body barely missed the ceiling, but the whole thing was neat enough that he was willing to let it slide.

And in the end, the contest wasn't all that important. What mattered was that the two of them were taking out monsters together and generally having a good time of it.

"Sure does," he replied as he gave his sword a twirl, wanting to put it into his back holster until he remembered that he didn't have one. That was a shame. He glanced over at his arm again, noticing that the burn was still in full force; luckily, the adrenaline that came with fighting had lessened the pain for the moment.

That wasn't going to last, though. "We'd better keep moving," he said with a sigh.

"Right." There was no telling how many creatures had been unleashed. If they stayed here waiting for their prey to attack, it was likely they would never get anywhere with every new wave of attack that hit.

The quickest route seemed to be materia-based. Any creature standing in their way would be slushied or fried in a matter of seconds. It helped clear the new corridor real fast. The smell, though, was unfortunate. Tifa had been pretty confident in her assumption that she had smelled all that the underbelly of society could produce. Apparently, rotting dog hide just hadn't been a popular fragrance in Midgar.

Night 59: Main Hallway 2-East

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