Just Trying To Survive (A BFDI/BFB/TPOT and II au)

Suffering

Life's not fair. It's never been fair but right now everything feels hopeless.

Lightning flew around the canal, trying to find other people. So far he had found no one, but he still decided to stay by the canal as that's where he guessed most people would've went. He hadn't found anyone yet, although he did find a narrow hole in the ground which wasn't there in TPOT 5, so maybe someone was here but they left at some point.

Today had been terrible, probably the worst day in Lightning's entire existence. Firstly, the literal apocalypse started and tens of people got attacked and corrupted. Secondly, he hadn't managed to stick with anyone and was now alone. Thirdly, the best option right now was staying near to one of the only things which could kill him. If he wanted any hope of finding anyone else he had to.

He was considering taking a break for the night, he could barely see anything now. The small amount of light which he emitted was helpful, but he had to be quite close to anything to actually see it. Usually he would already be asleep by now.

But he really wanted to find other people, and he would be willing to give up a night's sleep just to find someone else. A couple of years back he wouldn't have cared if he was alone or not, as no one really knew or cared who he was. He had to hurt people just to find some friends, something which he still regrets to this day. Eventually though, he started to change. He found his people, his real friends, and right now he would do anything to get them back.

He still didn't know how bad things were going to get.

Also, he was a little scared of going to sleep. He would have to sleep in the forest, no other place would be able to hide his emitted light well enough and he would definitely be caught. But the forest was also extremely dark even with his emitted light, so it would be very easy for anyone to sneak up on him.

After a few seconds of consideration he eventually decided to continue to look for other people, and to pull an all-nighter if worse came to worse. He sighed a little before flying up to the clouds again. He felt safer up here, as even if another flyer got corrupted he could easily outfly them. Looking around, he lowered his eyes to look at the canal below. It was strangely peaceful at night, and you could see the water strangely well thanks to the moon.

If only he could get closer without being at risk of dying.

As he continued to stare down at the canal, something caught his eye. There was a small line which was slowly moving across the canal. He couldn't see the details of the line well, but he could tell it was above the canal as it quite literally cut it in two. At the bottom of the line was something relatively big, but he didn't quite know what it was. He could only see the outline of it, which was not helpful at all.

He scanned through his memory to see if he recognized anything or anyone which matched the description. His memory eventually came up with only one answer:

Bell.

Lightning resisted the urge to immediately fly over to her as his instincts kicked in. One on hand, he was ecstatic that he had found someone, especially someone who was his friend. On the other hand, he didn't actually know if she was corrupted or not. She probably wasn't, as she was a flyer and could easily get away. But then again, why was she moving so slowly?

Lightning considered his options, it was either leave and have no guarantee of ever finding someone else, or approach her and potentially get attacked and corrupted. Even though every electron is his body told him that it was some sort of trap, he decided to slowly approach her. He prayed that he made a right decision as he slowly approached her. 

-----

This is the worst.

Fanny sagged her eyes as she continued to walk at the forest's edge, silently cursing under her breathe. Her and the rest of her group decided that it would be safer here as if there was a threat, they could just run into the forest and easily lose the pursuer. While at the same time the edge of the forest was much easier to navigate than the forest, while also being hard to be sneaked up on.