"Once I take hold of you, I won't ever let go again." The prophet chuckled while walking down one of the colosseum's halls. He checked room after room, but did not find her anywhere. "Captain, where are you?" Each step was slow, deliberate and loud. He dragged his naked feet across the ground, making an ear piercing sound, having replaced his toenails with metal claws. It sounded as if he was scratching a chalk board.
He gazed into a dark room and sniffed the air. "I can smell it. You are fearing me. But please, don't. All I want is to take your freedom away, lock you away safely into a room with me. No one else will be able to interfere, maybe, once I have taken control of your impressive little citadel and killed everybody, you will be able to walk around freely, always under my watchful eyes."
The prophet entered the room he had gazed into, sealing off the door he used to enter, using the tentacles extending from the back of his neck. It was the colosseum's kitchen for their gladiators. Somewhere in this room, he knew she was here.
The kitchen was eerily silent, the only sounds heard were the nails of the prophet grinding against the floor tiles and his weirdly loud breathing, but he could swear he was hearing her breath, slow and ragged.
From the back of the prophet's neck grew new tentacles, each of them having an eye at the tip with which the prophet could see. The tentacles scattered through the kitchen, moving like underwater snakes, scanning each and every crevice they could possibly fit.
"You want to know what I think is weird?" He asked, crawling up onto a counter and looking into the shelves below him. "I've been thinking since you told me you knew about my consumption of the Lina. How is it that everyone, doesn't matter if it was a plushie copy or human clone, decided on that name? Lina?" He jumped from one counter to the next, "Why do we have that innate hatred for that name? It is weird, isn't it`?"
The prophet, thinking he had already looked through the entire kitchen, found that the door into the cafeteria was not locked, only closed. He walked through and saw the main entrance blocked by fallen rubble. No way Captain Teddy could have escaped through there. The blockade he made with his tentacles to block off the kitchen moved from kitchen door to cafeteria door.
"Come on out now. It isn't fun talking to myself anymore." He muttered angrily under his breath. His tentacles started to wrap around pieces of furniture they had already looked inside of and started to break them like a snake, strangling prey. "You know, it was a fun challenge capturing the 2 Linas of this citadel without killing them. I mean, it would have been easier just killing and eating them, but having them alive means I can use them. You know what that means? I can release them upon your citadel once I've captured you. Well, unless you surrender now, then they will get the chance to fight me, fair and square."
Noticing no new noises and movements coming from Captain Teddy, he started to get angry. "Where are you!" He asked. His voice was getting louder and more frustrated with every second, his movements accelerated and his tentacles stopped looking before breaking stuff. It was not fun anymore, searching.
22:58:59
22:58:58
22:58:57
He yelled in frustration: "HOW LONG ARE YOU GOING TO LET ME SEARCH FOR YOU?"
Captain Teddy dropped from the kitchen ceiling, hearing the prophet yelling in the cafeteria. He had not bothered checking the inside of the exhaust fan above the kitchen's stoves. While she was too big to crawl into the deeper parts and flee that way, she was small enough to hide in their entrances, right behind the fan.
"You're an idiot." She whispered with a gleeful smile before rushing out of the kitchen and equipping a cleaver.
What she hadn't noticed due to the darkness, the tentacles blocking the cafeteria door also had eyes.
⟪⚪⟫
Using his magic blowgun, Logi ran through the main floor of the citadel, shooting everyone that did not appear to be alive. Hundreds of the floating corpses—which he now knew did not float but hang by dried up and very thin tentacles—went up in flames, not even leaving ashes. But due to the newest upgrade of his blowgun which made the flames only burn up the shot at target, the tentacles survived and also started to attack the living clones. Some of the tentacles went to another corpse instead, giving them 2 tentacles and effectively buffing them.
"Those with good enough aim, focus on the free tentacles or shoot at the tentacles in general!" Logi screamed across the main floor, giving a small boost of confidence.
He saw how a tentacle took control of a fighting Lukas clone. For a moment the clone went rigid before lifting his weapon and shooting at the others. The face on the newly controlled Lukas clone was filled with terror as he was crying, sure of the fact that he was going to die.
"Where is the prophet?" Logi asked.
"The colosseum between the main floor and the floor below." The Lukas clone answered. It seemed that being connected to a tentacle had some benefits.
Logi shot the tentacle which took control of the Lukas clone, letting him fall down onto the ground, dead, and freeing him from the horrible future of being conscious while being unable to control your own body. "That was fast." He muttered while continuing his sprint. He knew that the tentacles killed and replaced all organs of their victims, but he did not know it would happen that fast.
He looked up at the update timer.
22:52:35
22:52:34
22:52:33
Fear filling his heart, he accelerated as adrenaline shot through his non-existend veins. "I need to hurry."
Not finding his way towards the stairs so he could enter the floor with the colosseum, he instead ran into the weapon chamber, searching for explosives. Since most of the ranged and melee weapons had been stolen and were being used to fight the corpses, it took only half a minute to find a handful of explosives.
Not knowing where to use them, he just brought them into an empty section of the weapon chamber and activated them all. Within seconds, the entire building exploded, throwing Logi across the main floor and killing hundreds of Lukas clones and Max clones.
"Who the fuck made such a strong explosive? These Max clones are mentally ill." He complained before standing up and running back.
The explosion created a crater tearing through multiple floors, revealing the old and abandoned floor in between floors. Logi, using a rope for support. Climbed down onto the floor. It was filled with scattered corpses and rubble, each intersection had a map of the entire floor, marking the position of the map and spots of interest. Using these maps, Logi made his way towards the colosseum as quickly as he was able to, finding it surrounded by hordes of tentacles trying to block off every exit and entrance into and out of the colosseum.
There was only one unprotected entrance up a flight of stairs, with a sign indicating that these stairs went up to the prophet's private box.