Time for the trauma boi to experience the Darkness :>

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[Sabre's POV]

It's been about a week since I got to this world.

I've been healing pretty fast, Orange Steve says it's probably because I'm not exerting myself while recovering. He also says I'm starting to look less like a tiny skeleton (his words, not mine). Now, it's pretty much only my leg and a small spot on my face that's still injured.

I head downstairs excited, because Orange said that I'm probably healed enough for him to take me around with him while he finds things for me. When I reach the living room, Orange has already set out some baked potatoes and a water bottle for me on the table. He's playing with Gerald nearby on the floor.

"Hey, Orange!" I greet my friend. "You got the pigs in here now?"

"Hi Sabre, and yep!" Orange smiles at me while Gerald headbutts his hand. "The rest of them are outside, in the pig pen. Gerald just wanted to hang out in here for a little bit."

I run over to the table and pick up one of the potatoes. Orange giggles as I eat, and I look over.

"What?" I ask, already picking up the second.

"Tiny vacuum." Orange says, laughing.

"Shush." I say, playfully acting annoyed while Orange laughs harder.

A little while later, I drink the water I was given after finishing the last potato, while Orange puts Gerald back in his pen. I find it a little weird that Gerald has a fancier pen than the rest of the pigs, but hey, he's probably just the favorite. Orange comes back into the house as I lay back on the couch, happily watching the spot outside of the window. Orange comes over and sits down next to me.

"You excited for today?" Orange asks me.

"Heck yeah." I answer.

"We're probably just going to pick up some more seeds for the farmland, but I can teach you more about the whole 'environment mechanization' thing." Orange continues. "Who knows, we could even find some animals. Biological or mechanized."

"Either would be pretty cool." I say.

Suddenly, we both hear lightning outside. Orange quickly runs out while I slowly climb off the couch, and when I catch up to him outside I see lightning striking the orange portal.

"What the..." Orange mumbles.

"What's going on?!" I ask, as the lightning dies down to reveal the portal has activated.

"The village is in trouble." Orange says, wrapping his arm around my torso and picking me up. "Come on, we gotta go!"

I don't have time to say anything, and Orange dashes into the swirling multicolored window of light. As we go through, I feel the same floating feeling I had when I entered the portal that led here.

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Jeez, teleporting by portal does not feel good.

I feel us land, and I open my eyes to the little spot of steel forest that Orange teleported us out of last time we were here. At a first look around, nothing seems out of the ordinary, but then I see a little spot of some black stuff and... bedrock?

"Uh, Orange?" I ask. "Is there supposed to be bedrock there?"

Orange looks to where I was pointing, and panics at the sight of whatever's on the ground.

"Oh no, no no no!" Orange whispers, and he runs over to a tree close to the exit of the wooded path.

"What? What is it?" I say.

"That's Darkness." Orange says, as he peers out from behind the tree. "It's attacking the village."

I hurriedly look out from behind the tree too, and I'm horrified. Dark patches and fire cover the street, the houses now broken-down and also covered in the black substance. A few of those skeletal-like robots are wandering the streets, some even crawling along the broken walls like spiders. There's two Orange Steves that look... wrong. They're walking as if they're mindless, their eyes glazed over and turned black. The Darkness is creeping along their steel bodies, like rust covering iron. Behind them, an orange bubble is covering the Leader's house, almost like a shield. I look up at Orange, and his expression is grim.

"What are we gonna do..." Orange mumbles, devastated at the wrecked sight of his friends' home.

"Looks like something is protecting the Leader's house." I say. "Maybe we can sneak behind the other houses and make our way there?"

Orange seems to follow the idea, looks for a clear path, and eventually finds one.

"Alright, let's go." Orange says.

Orange runs along the trees while still carrying me, making his way to the back of the first house. Creeping along behind the broken buildings, we carefully keep ourselves from being seen. While we're behind the second to last house, however, I see a figure inside the house from the window.

"Orange, there's someone in there!" I whisper, and Orange turns his head to peer inside the window too.

"Oh scrap, that's Shy!" Orange whispers, and he starts to wind his way along the house to get to the front door.

Hiding myself behind him, Orange eventually gets to the door and opens it, keeping himself out of sight of the infected and the Darkness. Once inside, we find Shy cowering in the corner of the house, out of sight of the front windows. Orange and I run over to him.

"Shy, are you okay?!" I ask.

"Did they get you?!" Orange says.

"N-no, they didn't get m-me. I'm alright." Shy says. "E-everyone else ran away except f-for me and two o-others, they hid with the Leader I-in his house. I ran here i-into my house because the Darkness c-cut me off from the rest o-of the group."

"Oh, thank goodness..." Orange says.

"We were about to get to the Leader to see what's going on in there." I say. "You wanna come with us? You'll probably be safer in there."

"O-okay..." Shy says.

The three of us sneak out of Shy's house, and we eventually get to the huge bubble surrounding the Leader's house. Turns out, the bubble is a shield. Orange seems to be trying to get it open, so we can go in. I'm hanging onto Orange's shoulder while looking out for the Darkness.

"C'mon, guys, it's getting closer!" I whisper, seeing a Darkness creature crawling on the destroyed rubble closer to us. They must have bad eyesight if it hasn't seen us yet.

"I'm trying, it's a strong shield!" Orange says. "Give me a minute!"

"Orange, it's r-right next to t-the house right of m-mine..." Shy says, clearly scared.

I look, and sure enough, one of the Darkness is at the house right in front of the Leader's. At that moment, it snaps its head upwards facing us rather than the ground, and its jaw unhinges in an unnatural way. It's almost like one of the monsters from my world, that would scream and hunt you down if you looked at it. The Darkness creature lets out a terrifying sound, and locks eyes with mine.

"Human!" It screeches, and all of the Darkness and infected look at us.

At that moment, Orange gets a spot in the shield open and runs through, dragging Shy behind him. The shield suddenly closes just as we get inside and the Darkness rushes at us, then it paces near the shield, scratching at its wall.

"Shoot, it saw you..." Orange says, holding me close. "Now the Darkness is gonna be looking for you everywhere once this is over."

"Seriously, why does it want me so bad?!" I say, but I'm ignored as we enter the Leader's house.

We head upstairs to see the two other Orange Steves, and the Leader surrounded in some kind of energy field. He must've been the one that put up the shield.

"Oh thank goodness, you're safe." The Leader says.

"Leader, are you alright?" Orange asks.

"He's been keeping the shield up for a while..." One of the other Orange Steves says. "We don't know how soon he's going to run out of power."

"What if one of us draws the Darkness away while the rest of you escape?" I say. Orange looks at me.

"Sabre, I know what you're thinking. No." Orange says.

"But then they could get out! Besides, I've outrun worse than a few metal skeletons." I say. "I ran from a bunch of monsters for an entire day, remember? This should be no problem."

Orange thinks for a second, he turns back to me.

"Are you sure about this?" He asks.

"Positive." I say.

"...Alright then. I can get the shield open again so we can get out, then the Leader can drop the shield once both us and the Darkness is far enough away." Orange says.

"Be careful..." The Leader says, straining to keep his powers going.

I run downstairs with Orange following me, ignoring my fears. As Orange opens the door, he looks at me while his hands start glowing again.

"You ready?" He says.

"Ready to make these punks get a taste of my dust." I smirk.

Orange laughs a little, appreciating the little joke. Then, the shield has another hole in it, and I bolt through. The Darkness chases after me, the infected slowly walking behind them. I keep running, weaving through the wreckage while keeping my eyes ahead of me.

"Try and catch me, suckers!" I yell, then look back to see how far the Darkness is.

To my horror, they're not that far. One of them slashes a clawed hand at me, and I speed up as much as I can. How are they so close behind?! Are they somehow faster than the monsters I know back in my world? But there's no way! I remember how fast those things were, there's no possible way that these Darkness things can catch up to one of them! Wait...

I realize that it's not that they're faster than the monsters; I've gotten slower than I remember.

I'm so stupid! I should've known that I don't have the advantage of being a living stick figure anymore! Since I haven't been on the brink of starvation since I got here, Orange finding me food an all, that means my own weight is slowing me down. And the four baked potatoes I had this morning definitely aren't helping...

I quickly weave through the wreckage around the area, hoping to make the Darkness get caught in it so I can get a little more distance on them. I jump through a hole in a wall, one of the Darkness creatures gets its claw stuck in the metallic wood. I jump over a pile of stone, another Darkness runs into the rubble and doesn't get back up. Now there's one left. I make my way through and around lots of different wreckage piles, but this thing is onto me like stripes on a tiger.

"C'mon, trip up, ya stupid fog-covered bunch of welded-together metal pipes!" I mumble. It seems to have heard that, as it gets madder and speeds up.

I'm in trouble. So, so much trouble. Why do I always drag myself into these types of things? This is like when I ticked off that group of raiders by throwing rocks at them... except I could outrun those lazy sons of guns. It feels like forever while I'm running from the Darkness, occasionally feeling the wind rush by my back as it slashes at me.

"Sabre! Over here!" I hear Orange call out. I see him in front of the Leader's house, still inside the shield, his arms outstretched towards me.

I don't even question it and run towards him, through the village street and past the infected, seeing something yellow out of the corner of my eye as I go. I'm almost there, when I suddenly hear lightning behind me, and Orange takes on an expression of shock. I collide with Orange, him catching me as I slam into him. I then just let myself go limp in his hold.

"Sabre, are you okay?!" Orange asks, sounding panicked. "You were running from those things for forty-five minutes!"

"Turns out... I'm not as... fast as I'm... used to being... anymore..." I answer him, in between breaths. "Man, I'm tired..."

Orange stands up, picking me up off the ground, and he looks out towards the village.

"Did you see what happened just now?" Orange asks.

"No..." I reply, worn out from running from the Darkness for so long.

"The Darkness was destroyed by lightning, and the infected disappeared." Orange says.

"What?!" I say, turning my head to look out to the town as the shield drops.

Orange is right, the Darkness is gone. The thing that was chasing me is now a melted pile of metal to the side, no longer covered in the dark fog, and the infected Orange Steves just vanished. No sign of them anywhere. I just place my head onto Orange's shoulder again, trying to catch my breath and calm down after all that. I see Shy, the two other Orange Steves, and the Leader watching through the windows.

"You think it's safe for them now...?" I ask Orange.

Orange turns back to look at his friends, as the Leader walks out from his house. He also looks tired out... heh, guess we're in the same boat, pal.

"Are they really gone?" The Leader asks.

"Yeah, they just... disappeared." Orange replies. "I think you can call back everyone else so you can start cleanup... you recharge first, though."

The Leader then looks at me, and I tiredly wave to him.

"Is Sabre alright?" The Leader asks.

"I used up a lot of my energy from that..." I answer. "I'm just tired."

"You and me both, bud." The Leader says, which gets a little laugh out of the three of us. "You guys can go ahead and head back, we can handle it from here."

"Thanks Leader, see you around." Orange says, and he walks through the battered path through the village.

We reach the wooded clearing soon enough, and Orange teleports us back to the Hub. I don't even care about the loud lightning surrounding us.

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We arrive in the gazebo in the middle of the Hub, and Orange immediately starts back towards the house.

"Can't believe it's only been two hours since we left..." Orange says, then he looks at me. "I know you just want to rest right now, so I'm taking you to your room."

"Mhm..." I mumble, already starting to nod off.

As soon as we enter the house, Orange heads upstairs while Gerald follows us.

"Gerald, careful!" Orange says, keeping himself from tripping while Gerald runs between his legs on the stairs. "I know you're excited, but if I fall right now Sabre is going down with me, and he's not nearly as damage resistant!"

I don't even acknowledge the 'damage resistance' remark, I just want to sleep. Eventually we get to the top of the stairs, and Orange sets me in my bed.

I don't even remember feeling my head hit the pillow before I'm out like a light.