Intangible - a Generation Loss AU

Intangible

The first thing Ranboo noticed when he woke up was the searing headache piercing his skull. His vision was unclear, but he could just make out that he was laying on the floor, staring up at bright fluorescent lights and a bland off-white ceiling. Reaching up to rub at his eyes, he succeeded only in making his headache even worse and he turned over on his side to block the lights from view. Suddenly realising his fingers felt strangely wet he held them up in front of his eyes. Still not able to see correctly, the most Ranboo could make out was a dark red liquid coating his fingers, and now that he knew, he could feel it slowly dribbling down his face as well. Blood.

"What the hell..?" He pulled himself more upright, and as his vision began to clear, he saw the room he was in appeared to be some sort of abandoned store. Ranboo sat hunched over for a while longer until his vision and head had cleared up enough to function. Slowly standing up, he propped himself against a wall to see his surroundings better. The shop was trashed: shelves knocked over, merchandise all over the floor, and a thick layer of dust covering everything.

Ranboo stood there for a while; he couldn't remember what had happened before he ended up there, or why he was bleeding so much. Seeing a little mirror laying in a corner, he went to pick it up to see how bad his injuries were. But when he saw himself, Ranboo nearly dropped the mirror in shock.

The face looking back at him was the stuff of nightmares: his face was battered and bruised, covered in holes oozing blood at even intervals across his head. His mask was also full of holes with jagged shattered edges, so much so that there was not much more than the frame left. Through the holes in his mask he could see more puncture wounds on the bottom half of his face. Ranboo reached up to his face and gingerly touched one of the holes, watching himself in the mirror, so he could tell if this horror was real. And it was.

He should be dead... but he wasn't.

...

Ranboo dropped the mirror, flinching as it shattered on the floor at his feet. He made his way to the door, finding it covered in a partially translucent film preventing any clear view through it. Carefully edging it open, he peeked out and looked both ways, making sure the coast was clear. Something about this place was unsettling, it made him feel like every move he made had to be secretive.

He snuck down the hallway trying to make the least noise possible, but he had no need to worry. No one was in sight anywhere, it was like the place was abandoned. As he moved down rows of storefronts he concluded that it was a mall, even if it was strangely abandoned. Or, so it appeared. All the other shops appeared to be in similar condition to the one Ranboo had found himself in, but he realised something strange...

The lights were on everywhere he had been. Meaning the power was on. Meaning, maybe this mall wasn't as abandoned as Ranboo had assumed.

And so he set off to find any signs of use besides the power, peeking around doors and through windows as he passed each storefront. This continued for a while, until eventually Ranboo rounded a corner and was met with the sight of three well dressed people with strange masks covering their faces standing behind a window. He abruptly stopped, waiting for any sort of reaction. He was so determined to find other people, but now that he had he was having doubts. Luckily for him, the strange people showed no reaction to his appearance. It was almost like he wasn't even there.

Moving on, he passed more destroyed shops and the occasional room that seemed to be used as storage, full of boxes or other random props. One room he passed was full of wires all grouping back together at a central point, while another he couldn't see into at all, the front being a sort of opaque white screen.