The Haunted Asylum (inspired by the boys' video)

Chapter 6: Wait, Where Did Blaze Go?

-----------

Anti's POV:

It's cold and dark when the group walks into the Australian night. The crickets were the only sound besides light chatter and graveled footsteps. Anti can feel a presence watching them in certain spots in the yard, like blobs of paranormal energy. They focus on the stars instead, beautiful lights unobstructed by light pollution and a reminder the group really is in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere. He wonders how the septic egos are going, probably out doing the usual routine with a warm sun and NOT subjecting themself to bullshit like this. He glitches over to Dark Dan and pulls him back by his shoulders so they both are at the back of the group. "Do you know who this James guy is?"

"What? Do you mean whoever Dark said goodbye to?" DD raised an eyebrow, adjusting his hold on the camera around his neck. The glitch rolled their eyes in response, giving a look that said: 'Nice one, captain obvious.' "Yeah... Or at least... W̵͈̄h̴̜͂a̸̬͠ẗ̶̰́e̸̿ͅv̶̮̾e̷̜͑r̶̠͛ Darkie was talking to. You wouldn't know anything, would ya?" They ask quietly, failing to keep any sense of suspicion out of their tone. At this, DD stops dead in his tracks and turns entirely to the glitch, taking off his power-blocking glasses and staring at glowing green irises with black sclera. "Are you asking me what I think you're asking me?"

"I don't know. What do you think I'm asking?" Anti narrows their eyes at the shorter demon, who stares back briefly before sighing. "Look, as far as I know, no one was hired. And I can tell you for sure that neither Blaze nor Dark has been in contact with anyone other than their own." Anti nods, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. "It's just weird, you know? I knew this place was supposed to be haunted but I didn't think it would have such... w̷e̷i̵r̶d̵ effects on us."

"Wasn't it your idea for us to come here?"

"It wasn't just me-"

"Hey, guys!" Blaze calls out to them, the two seeing that the group had stopped walking to wait for them. "Hurry up, bozos, we gotta have a boy's moment." Infelix continued for him; Anti and Dark Dan jog up the best they can to the group while Blaze told everyone he would get some water, walking towards the cars with Blank. After sitting around for a few minutes, Blank walks up to the group with a couple water bottles. Anti sees Dark's face wrinkle with a suspicious kind of worry, and he follows suit as they both realize Blaze is nowhere in sight. The cherry on top is that when Dark asks where the flaming demon is, Blank looks behind him and shrugs. "He was behind me a moment ago; maybe he took a wrong turn?"

Dark turns to side-eye Anti, communicating through expressions alone to ask them if they also caught how weird Blank is acting, and Anti hears their ears ring as they chug a whole water bottle. Dark Dan tries to call the other, but after three different calls go to the voicemail, he sighs and says, defeatedly, something Anti would have never expected, "Let's just move on with the video. I'm sure we'll find him while walking around."

"Are you sure? What if he's gotten hurt?" KillPJ interjects from where he's sitting on a rock, looking pale and exhausted. Infelix is next to him, hands in his pockets and constantly shifting on the spot, occasionally wiping sweat from his head. Their auras have grown and merged, creating a colorful mist, which would be pretty if it wasn't for the surrounding darkness and missing person. Dark hums before melting into the tone of a natural leader, "All in favour of searching for Blaze raise your hand." KPJ, Infelix, Dark, and Anti all raise their hands; Dark Dan hesitantly raises his own after a few seconds, and Dark nods, "That's the majority. We search for 5 minutes, and then all meet back here. We split into pairs so no one else gets lost," He leans over to grab Anti's wrist and pulls the glitch towards him, "Anti's with me, let's go."

Dark drags them until they're out of sight of the others before letting go of their wrist. "Dark?" They ask cautiously, as though the other was a wild animal. Whether Dark wanted to admit it or not, through all those layers of suave, unbothered control, he was sweating at the palms, and his thoughts were racing 100 miles an hour. Anti didn't need mind-reading powers to know that. It was evident in the way he went to grab a tie that wasn't there, kept running his ash-grey fingers through his raven hair, and how his jaw tightened with every noise or strange comment. Fear makes people act irrationally, going into a survival instinct. Even someone as put-together as Dark is not immune to that; they've seen it before when the two first fought in the void. Oh, what a day that was... "I'm fine. I... I just need to think."