The Jemaverse

Scientific Reasoning

With a push of a button we were suddenly dimensions away from the lab.  We were in a house.  A dark and eerie house.  The wood floor beneath us was dark and walls to each side were a real dark shade of green.  There was a cobwebbed photo of a rose on the wall, and beneath that was a small wooden table that stood on four old legs with a drawer equipped in front.  The light flashed on and off and the painting changed.  The rose was dead.  Behind us was a door and in front of that was the hallway we were in on the right, and on the left were stairs.  In front of us was a dead end, a mirror.  So Kiara and I turned around.  A ridiculously dressed clown came at us and Kiara had reflex's fast enough to kick it in the face before it reached us.  It vanished into shadow and I took a huge breath of relief.
"So he's afraid of clowns?" Asked Kiara.
"I guess so." I shrugged.
I followed her up the stairs while she explained our objective.
"Okay, so, to stop this we either need to change the nightmare by making it something he's not afraid of, or change Carlos himself, to not be afraid.  Only after completing one of the two he'll wake up."
"Oh okay."
We walked up the stairs into a hallway with five doors and to out right was another flight of stairs.  The lights went out and I heard a scream in one of the rooms.  Kiara and I burst in, Kiara with more urgency.  It was a bedroom with a bed and two dressers.  Carlos was seen crouching by the bed in fear.
"What was the scream?!  What happened!?" Said Kiara as she burst in the room.
Carlos seemed to scared to answer so I answered for him.
"He's scared of the dark."
Kiara waited a second before saying, "oh."
I heard a creak and turned around just in time to witness a grown, concealed, hooded man in black coming at me with a knife in hand.  I dodged to my right using a single step, letting the man run right by me.
"Now that's a fear I can semi-understand." She said.
The man ran to the wall and turned towards us.  Kiara didn't bring her blaster, so I guess I was more qualified to defeat him.  He ran at me and I stepped towards making my sword appear in hand.  I raised it to block the knife that he slashed to my left.  Instead of easily cutting through it, the knife was stopped by the sword and crackled with shadow.  I ducked and made the sword melt into my hand.  I didn't need it.  The knife flew above my head and I did a 360 wheel kick to the man's temple.  The hooded man stumbled to his right, and was too dazed to notice me coming in with a sweep.  I slid forward and swept my foot across the floor, taking his feet from under him.  He fell back, his head hit a dresser and he landed on his butt with a bang.  I was about to end it but the lights flicked off, and turned back on with the man standing.  He held the knife up high and stabbed down at me.  I high blocked his arm with one hand and chopped a pressure point at his neck with the other.  As his muscles numbed from the shock I stepped forward, bending his arm back.  I brought his hand with the knife behind his back and linked my hands together around his neck.  In karate, I learned that putting pressure to that certain part of his neck cut off an important artery or something.  And if the opponent was smart, they'd drop the knife and back off.  If not, they'd hold on to the knife, try and resist, and eventually pass out.  He let out some grunts as he tried to struggle out of my hold and by his face I could obviously tell he couldn't breathe.  I squeezed harder, and it only took a few seconds for the man to disappear into a cloud of shadow.  I turned back towards Kiara to see her beating up on a clown.  When done, she turned toward Carlos, cowering beside the bed.
"Clowns?  Really?  A fear from a teenager who stood up against dangerous, world-killing viruses.  Not gonna lie, that's pretty sad." Said Kiara.
She noticed me staring at my hands.
"What?"
"Oh, nothin," I responded looking back up, "just proud of myself.  I used immense and complete skilletz to defeat what looked like a sketchy, depressed middle-aged man!  I'm pretty awesome." I said, smiling.
Kiara laughed.
She walked toward Carlos and knelt down in front of him.  I followed, but stayed standing next to them, watching the door the man had come through just in case.
"Hey, Carlos, it's over.  The nightmare, it isn't real and it's over." Kiara said in a soothing voice.
He looked up and looked around.  We heard pans crashing and clashing from down the stairs.  Carlos put his head back down and shivered.
"Hm, let's bring him downstairs to show him nothing's down there, maybe that'll end his nightmare," I suggested, "come on."
I bent down and took Carlos's arm.  I pulled him to his feet and he didn't resist me bringing him along.  Kiara stood up, and together we walked out of the room.  The hallway changed, the other rooms were gone.  The walls  got closer and started closing in, but I dragged Carlos along as we made it to the stairs before the closed over it.  We ran down and saw the ground missing below us.
"How do we stop a nightmare like this?" I questioned.
I was hoping for Kiara to respond with an answer.  But she seemed to not know either.  We had to make him not afraid... To realise it's a nightmare... To beat the core, the thing holding the nightmare together.  I thought for a second as a wood stair in front of us fell inside the lava rising beneath us.
"Uh." I panicked, then straightened out my voice and got rid of the fear shown on my face.
Carlos and Kiara seemed to be looking at me, like they knew I was about to say something.
"Wait... So," I said, "It we're on stairs with nothing but lava below us, what's holding us up?"
"Stop with the irrelevant questions, this is serious.  I think maybe if we-"
"That's a," Carlos started, interrupting Kiara, "that's a good question actually."
"But the stairs are connected to the floor that just sealed up." Kiara reasoned.
"If that's true, the floor above us needs something to hold it up above the lava below.  This makes no sense," Carlos countered, ground started appearing and rising above the lava, "Where even are we?"
The ground passed through and now covered the lava, rose to the end it the stairs.
"And walls just can't move like that, unless it was all an optical illusion." I added.
"Yeah, an illusion.  That wasn't real." Carlos reassured to himself.
I looked at the top of the stairs and the sealed floor was gone, disappeared.
"Wha?" Questioned an astounded Kiara, "how are you doing this?"
I smiled at how good I did and turned towards Kiara.
"How can he be afraid of something," I said to her, "if the fear is not at all reasonable.  Carlos only believes in reasonable solutions, and events, and the fault in this nightmare, is how unreasonable it all is."
"Ah." Nodded Kiara.
Carlos stood thinking and the ground rose higher, up to our feet, as the stairs we were on had disappeared.  The red mist that surrounded the air due to the lava had been replaced with all black.  White, shining stars appeared and it was as if we were stranded on a flat, never-ending, grey concrete surface in space.  Me and Kiara stood, looking around for something to do next, and it appeared right in front of us.  An oval of swirling darkness grew in front of us, acting as what looked like a sketchy, scary portal that lead to our way out.  We watched Kiara walked up to it and she turned back to us and nodded.
"Another nightmare to stop, you guys ready?" She asked.
I looked at Carlos, who now seemed fine.  He shrugged, surprisingly no questions to ask.  Kiara looked at me for an answer.
"Why wouldn't I be?" I responded.  Kiara going first, we each leaped and disappeared into the portal of darkness.