The Loser | by Isaac7525

The duo froze in their spots when the illusory footprints stopped in front of an old wooden door. In the crimson moonlight that filtered through the curtains, the duo saw that the old door had been left ajar. They turned to each other, Shinso swallowed the lump in his throat as he made his way and opened it more. 

In front of the opened door was a long staircase that descended downwards into an inscrutable darkness. Along the wooden walls on either side of the staircase, they saw numerous candles that appeared a few eons past their date. 

As he took another step into the space, Shinso felt the floorboards quake underneath his boots, causing him to habitually step back and carefully analyze the situation. 

"The last thing we want to do is inform the creature of our location."

At that moment, a deafening roar echoed in their ears. The duo quickly raised their arms and defended their hearing. In the dim lighting, Shinso and Aizawa caught sight of the wooden and marble surfaces of the manor rippling as if they were composed of a thin, runny liquid. 

Underneath their feet, the floors rippled too, causing them to stumble back. 

"What the…" Shinso appeared at a loss for words. 

Aizawa, on the contrary, assumed a more skeptical opposition. 

"Did that creature do that? The walls and floors only reacted in such a way because of her roar."

Shinso fell silent, gazing back at the open door. "I think so."

He took another step forward. This time, Aizawa noticed a few changes in his posture and demeanor. 

Shinso's foot tapped the ground gently, and his shoulders stiffened as he gazed down into the darkness. The darkness before the boy was deep and foreboding, something he assumed even a candle's light couldn't penetrate. 

"Are you ok?" Aizawa asked, stepping forward next to him. 

Shinso slowly drew a shaky breath as he gazed at Aizawa. "What if he's…not down there?"

Aizawa felt a small tinge of empathy. He raised a hand, which also seemed to tremble, and placed it gently on the boy's stiff shoulder. 

"If he and Oboro aren't down there, if they've been taken by whatever that beast is, we'll get its head."

Hearing his words, the boy's attitude silently shifted. His shoulders relaxed, and the tiny quivering in his top lip slowly faded away. 

"We need light though. When we tried to light the candles with Wilfred they didn't activate. Perhaps it was that demon's fault."

Suddenly, Aizawa seemed to get an idea, as his brows arched upwards. Letting out a shaky breath from his lungs, he stepped forward, one foot landing on the first step descending. His trembling hands reached out and grasped the candle which was suspended in the doorway. 

The moment he did so, it activated with a small flame! 

"How did you know that would work?" Shinso's eyes widened in slight astonishment. 

Aizawa's lips curled up into a somewhat smug smile as he led the boy down the stairs. This smile wasn't one of total smugness, but rather alleviation of the current mood. 

"I thought of my erasure quirk. It only works when I'm in someone's field of view. Once they run away or hide, they can use their quirk."

"So, you suspected surfaces outside of the demon's domain wouldn't suffer negative effects?" Shinso's breath hitched in his throat as the walls gradually receded in their respective directions, and the space around them enlarged. 

"Just a logical dedication," Aizawa continued forward, holding up the candle in his hand. In his other hand, he dove into his pocket. 

The air around them was cold and clammy, accompanied by a foul smell of what appeared to be mold. The wooden floors beneath them were wet, some panels rotted away entirely from the excess moisture hanging in the air. Somewhere in the room, they heard the faint sound of rustling, though they didn't pay much attention to it, blaming it on a small rodent. 

The man raised the candle even more, exposing the stone ceiling above them. Some sections were caved in entirely, chunks of the stone surface falling to the floor. 

Suddenly, Shinso let out a yelp as he tripped on a block of stone that had been dislodged from the ceiling. He landed on the rotten wooden floor with a clatter, the force of the impact dislodging even more of the wooden panels and sending them up into the air. As one of the floor tiles flew into the darkness, an obscene sound of squishing filtered through the musky air. 

Hearing this, the duo instantly paused in their tracks. The candle's light seemed to flicker slightly from the air current in their direction, but it didn't burst out. Aizawa extended his hand, offering Shinso assistance in getting back up. 

"What was that noise?" Shinso rubbed the back of his head where he had landed, gritting his teeth at the numb, aching pain that began to swell like a blister. 

Aizawa didn't reply, his posture straightening as his eyes narrowed vigilantly. His grip on the candle tightened as he began to walk forward into the darkness, and towards the source of the sound. 

As the duo made their way deeper into the abnormally large cellar, the stench of rotting materials filtered through their noses at an uncomfortable degree. Shinso gripped his collar with whitened knuckles, pulling it up past his nose to block out the smell.

The dark-haired man didn't react. He continued walking forward without paying the stench much mind. 

At that moment, Aizawa paused in his tracks when the roof of his head brushed against something above him. Its texture was cold, wet, and slimy. He felt a frigid, thick substance that resembled a sort of gelatin splash down onto his head with a sickening squish. 

The man's eyes darted up to the ceiling, taking an instinctive step back. When he raised the candle to get a better view, he saw a massive object suspected from the ceiling by a thick black tendril that resembled a rope. It appeared to be a mixture between an egg sac and a cocoon. 

Its surface was black with a slight purplish accent within the scale-like schisms in the surface of the object. Its surface slowly writhed and crawled in a sickening way that made both Shinso and Aizawa's skin crawl. Within this sac-like object, they spotted a silhouette of a figure bobbing up and down slowly in a translucent liquid. Within the liquid, they could see what appeared to be small bugs.

Suddenly, a muffled yell tore through the sac as the figure's limbs began to tug and push away at the edges of the sac. Within the translucent liquid, the tiny bugs began to scatter and crawl around frantically at the sudden environmental changes. 

Aizawa didn't waste time, he leapt up into the air and wove the torch around the rope-like appendage connecting this sac-like structure to the ceiling. Following that, the sac fell to the floor with a sickening pop as it exploded in all directions. The thick black shell of the sac-like object was splayed out across the walls and floors of the cellar.

The small bugs that had crawled within the translucent liquid quickly scurried away into the small gaps in the wooden floorboards. And the semi-translucent liquid within the sac spread out across the floor, sticking to Aizawa and Shinso's boots like a macabre imitation of glue. 

"D-don't hurt me!" A voice sounded in the darkness in the spot where the sac had dropped. Aizawa lowered his candle to properly see the figures' form and features. He was coated in the translucent liquid. Wearing black pajamas, he had medium length brown hair with black ends, a pair of messy, glossy glasses were halfway on his face, and a bandage was wrapped around his forehead. 

It was me!

"Oh my god," Shinso's voice rang with an uncharacteristic relief as he bent down and held my form. My eyes were half lidded as they adjusted to the faint light of the torch. My ears had been clogged by the liquid, and I was currently engaged in a fierce battle of not vomiting from what I had experienced. 

"Shinso?" Within the darkness I caught sight of the faint outline of the boy, his indigo tufts almost instantly recognizable. I didn't recognize the figure behind him who was holding the torch, but I was glad he had assistance with seeing in the dark. 

"Yeah, yeah, it's me," Shinso said with a smile, his grip around my body tightening a little as if afraid to let me go again. Beneath my silk pajamas, I could feel his hands trembling as they clutched the fabric. 

My entire body reeked of the liquid within the cocoon, but that didn't seem to bother Shinso in the slightest. He even lowered his head, pressing his forehead against mine as he whispered. 

"Tell me before you leave next time."

We then heard another crash. It was similar to the sound of my cocoon falling to the floor. Me and Shinso turned our heads in unison, catching sight of another sac-like structure falling to the floor with a splatter. 

Instead of begging for mercy, we were greeted by course and ragged coughing. Whoever it was didn't seem to hesitate in embracing the person within the sac, even if their body had been ruined by the transparent liquid inside and making their form all sticky and vile to the touch. 

"Oboro…" Aizawa's voice lowered to a whisper as he held the coughing man in his grasp. The blue-haired man seemed taken aback by the somewhat intimate contact, but he refrained from any sudden ministrations. 

"Let's get you out of here!" Shinso quickly picked me up, hoisting me over his shoulders like a sick dog as he darted towards the stairs beside Oboro and Aizawa. The moment they opened the door, Aizawa reacted in time to dodge the Tremebrus's attack. 

In my blurry vision, this creature appeared like a shadow rather than a female figure. Oboro and Aizawa stood ready for battle. What shocked me the most was that Oboro recovered so quickly. 

"Get away, as far as possible!" Aizawa turned in our direction and gave an order. 

At that moment Shinso looked down at me, his brows furrowing in blatant concern. 

"C'mon, let's get you outside."

He ran down the hallways with almost inhuman speed, dashing into the foyer. The boy suddenly froze in his spot as his feet glided slightly against the polished marble floor. In my blurry vision, I saw what appeared to be a bloodied figure on the floor, a small pool of blood forming around their limp body. 

"Shit!" Shinso cried out, twisting his body in time to dodge the attack from the Tremebrus. 

The shadowy lady turned back around in a flash, cocking her head in an instant. She extended her right hand, ready to unleash more rope-like attacks.

Suddenly, the floor beneath us began to tremble violently. In my blurry vision, I watched as what seemed to be like vines protruded from the marble floors, wrapping around the arms and neck of the Tremebrus.

She let out a deafening shriek as the vines bloomed colorful flowers. The flowers smelled of radiant scents, filling the air with an atmosphere that deeply contrasted the current situation.

The perks of the flowers begs to rotate as they emitted a thin pink mist into the air around the figure. She writhed and barked helplessly in the restraints.

I watched with curiosity as her eyes slowly drifted close, her body falling slack as she succumbed to a forced state of slumber.

The front door suddenly opened, and a man with long blonde hair, a broad forehead, and a wooden box in hand stepped inside. The surface of the box was inscribed with numerous patterns that resembled plants.

"Restrain her," His voice was cold yet collected. 

He watched with an impassive look as two men suddenly burst into the room, carrying small hand guns. They quickly undid the Tremebrus from her vine-like restraints and let her body fall slack to the ground.

The blonde man turned to the two of us as the men prepared her for travel.

"A Tremebrus, eh?"

Judging by the way his lips curled up faintly, he had great difficulty concealing his amazement.