Una Extraña Aventura: A Zeppeli Tale [ON HIATUS}

Chapter Two: A Nasty Surprise

2 hours later

Las Palmas, Canary Islands

Stepping off the bus, not very far from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria's Tafira campus, Carmen began her short stroll through part of the capital city. Las Palmas, in reality, shared its status as capital with Santa Cruz de Tenerife but was the larger city between the two. As such, the hustle and bustle of the night offered her an excellent distraction from the lax nature of the resort of Maspalomas.

"Ah, this breeze is amazing!" Carmen mused as she ventured through streets that were thinly used at that hour of night.

She eventually found herself wandering towards the Tafira campus. As she would soon realize, the buildings that made it up were unimpressive. It was hard to make a good impression on a girl who'd grown up in the vastness and beauty of Rome. Las Palmas didn't even pale in comparison. Still, the nature of the area prompted her to think.

"Maybe Vitale had a point," she said to herself in Italian. "An education, going to a university like this? I suppose I could bear it for a few years. I don't wanna go into adulthood emptyhanded."

Finding her solo adventure rather underwhelming, she was about to turn around when a hand clamped itself on her shoulder.

"Oi, niña! Get out of here!" a rough masculine voice speaking the local Spanish cried. Spooked, she turned around. Her hands charged with Hamon with a slight breath as she made them into fists.

"Who are you?" she spoke in broken Spanish. It turned out the man who had come up from behind her. The clothes he wore and the broom he held indicated to her that he was a simple groundskeeper, keeping the campus neat and tidy as part of his job.

"O-Oh, you're not from around here," the middle-aged man spoke in a mix of Spanish and English. "Well, I shouldn't blame you for not knowing any better. You shouldn't be out here, young lady. Not at this hour."

"What do you mean? I'm not a little girl who needs to be supervised all day and night. I'll have you know that, Señor!" Carmen, unappreciative of what she interpreted as the man trying to get into her business grunted as she shrugged the man's hand off.

"Young lady, even grown men and women have fallen victims to this... this thing. Don't take it lightly."

"I'm still not following you. And frankly, I'm not interested--

"People are dying here!" the groundskeeper cried with urgency. "And not just on this campus. For the last couple of years, people have been found dead in very strange circumstances. The police are obviously quiet on it, but the ones who find the bodies say they're found with no blood in them, as if the life was literally sucked from them. We've even had students from the university found in such a state. Ah, pobre niños y niñas."  Poor boys and girls, the older man shook his head.

The emotion in the man's voice stirred something deep within the girl. But she remained not fully convinced. Bodies without blood being found all over the island? Something that could only be described as a thing causing such deaths?

"Whatever you say, sir. I guess I'll leave." she shrugged, before turning around.

"Get home quickly, young lady!" the man warned as she left his sight.

Crazy old fart, she thought as she found herself leaving the area of the campus. Probably some scary story he tells his grandkids at night. Who the hell is supposed to take those words seriously? Some little kid, I bet.

As she tried to find her way back to the bus stop she came from, she realized that she didn't quite remember how to return. In a foreign country where she knew little of, she started to feel nervous. In a dimly-lit area unable to read the map she'd brought with her, she saw herself in a sort of crossroads where colonial-style buildings were separated from one another by gaps, comprising of alleyways. 

She scanned around, trying to see which narrow passage was the closest to where she believed the bus stop was. The one she decided on venturing into was just barely illuminated by only the moonlight, the streetlights' reach far. Trying to see how far it was to the other end of the alleyway, a rustling was heard near her.

"A rat. It's only a rat." she assured herself as she slowly made her way through. The groundskeeper's words echoed in her head, no matter how much she tried to push it into the back of her mind, they only became louder the further she traveled through the alley.

In the upper periphery of her vision, she swore for a second that she'd seen a shape jump from one building on one side of her to the other. Was it a bird? It couldn't have been a person, not at the time of night and certainly not over the four-meter width that divided it from the next closest building.

Only four seconds later, however, was her avian theory disproven. A loud bang hit the ground in front of her, too loud to have been a piece of garbage somewhat threw out of their window or the like. Heart beating incessantly, she picked up a piece of glass next to her feet.  She balanced it on her finger and shot a dose of Hamon through it. It leaped into the air and shattered after several meters, spreading far across the alley. Each piece was illuminated in the sun-like light of Hamon, and for a few brief moments she was able to see what had fallen into the alleyway.

The shape of something familiar met her lowered gaze. It was clothed in garments she had seen no less than 20 minutes earlier, a vessel of a life she had spoken to such little time earlier.

"S-Signore Groundskeeper...?" she muttered, taking a step back in horror. But of course, there was no response. The man was dead, and his atrophied form was an indication of that.

Keeping her breath under control, she once again channeled Hamon into her fists. Whatever had dropped his body into the alley was nearby and definitely knew she was still there.

"Show yourself, pezzo di merda!" Piece of shit, she cried with both defiance and fear, taking up a boxer's stance. She'd beaten up countless bullies with her Hamon-laden fists, but would that experience help her here?

She slowly and analytically turned around, until she saw the forms of a half-dozen figures standing at one end of the alleyway, some of whom pointed strong flashlights in her direction.

"Police!" one of them cried. "Hands up where we can see them!"

She saw all of the officers with a hand near each of their guns. She couldn't refuse the request and did what a sensible person was.

Getting arrested by the Spanish police was not on my bucket list for this trip.