The Bellators

3:8:8

Inside the hollow living room of the dirt-built residency, the kitchen of dirt block countertops on the left, stands Ekitai patiently. At last, over his brown overcoat's shoulder, through the far bedroom doorway Dana enters the hallway with a straight elegant posture, closely followed behind by Kokei whose head is down low covered by her long pink hair as she trudges along nervously.

The two walk up the corridor towards Ekitai, Dana immediately noticing him and flashing a soft smile while Kokei remains reserved. They approach Ekitai from one end of the corridor to the other, and upon entering the living room Dana's calm expression becomes puzzled as she starts glancing around the room and kitchen while Kokei presses her fingers together anxiously.

The two reach Ekitai where Dana continues to inspect, her green eyes flashing gold as Kokei raises her head up and begins, "I-uh...just wanted to say-," yet her apology is interrupted by the very person who requested it, as Dana interjects, "Where's Medit?"

Somehow Ekitai is startled by that very question, his eyes expanding before turning his head to his side where Meditat was but no longer is, and upon the realization he stumbles backwards in complete mystification.

Kokei stumbles too from Ekitai's intense reaction as Dana completes her survey before reverting her eyes to green and turning back to Ekitai, who blinks twice before mustering up, "Wait, swear to god if he were real but he was right here! Like, right next to me just now, he was with me, like I didn't hear or see or like at all sense him going anywhere like-...."

Both Kokei and Dana's expressions warp into dread simultaneously and they turn to each other as Ekitai remarks in a mixture of amazement and worry, "God damn he sneaky. I have no idea where he went."

For it was at that very moment that the admission had come to them all together: Dana was right, and they had a whole new problem.

For far, far away, in the dark depths of a completely different cavern, haunted too by stalactites along the ceiling but substantially smaller and in a much more potent darkness that is only combated by the gentle white luminescence emitting from the two chrome disks hovering above the dark flat water that spreads for infinity into the black horizon of the cavern, a bright blue light flashes over the upper disk.

The light vanishes just as quickly as it appears, and on that disk which has a matte black central platform covering half the radii of the surface it's embedded into surrounded by multiple curved holographic screens which flicker on, although the second pad appears to have nothing on its own surface.

Through the curved displays steps a single man, to which all the holograms are relinquished, and the man ambles slowly to the very edge of the pad where he is then met by the projection of a translucent blue narrow bridge that extends from that very vertex all the way to the edge of the other pad. While the bridge is only a couple feet wide and equipped with no railings nor signifiers of safety systems, the man promptly steps on the bridge and continues all the way down from the first pad to the second, walking over dark waters far far below, waters with no letting of its depth below the razor sharp stalactites that stalk every movement.

In a perfect line the man reaches the other end of the bridge where he walks onto the next chrome platform, but in doing so his body strangely vanishes as though being snipped out of the world.

Truthfully however the man has not been displaced anywhere, for upon closer inspection he is on the chrome pad, his four white locks waving from the cavern's breeze as his sharp blue eyes analyze the space with slight head turns to assure his privacy.

Strangely enough the chrome pad is no longer empty but rather bustling with furniture, one end housing the complex machine of silver pillars, chambers, ovens and such all connected by tubes to lead to the chamber exhibiting plates all of which carry the injection sticks all filled with the same blue substance.