[center][color=aquamarine][h2]Aya[/h2][/color][/center]
The force of the collision sent Aya tumbling a few feet back, falling to the ground. She heard a grunt and a clatter, no doubt coming from whomever she'd run into. Catching herself on her hand before her head could hit the ground, she was instead treated to a flash of pain shooting from her thumb and up to her shoulder that threatened to bring tears to her eyes. She opened her eyes to inspect the damage, but before she could look down, bright red captured her attention. A man, one of the tallest she'd ever seen, and wearing a bizarre glowing mask was sprawled in front of her. A woman looking worse for wear was next to him. Both had crimson hair, the brightest she'd ever seen. Aya and the man looked at each other for a moment, as though still trying to process that they'd just knocked each other to the floor.

It was then the sound of footsteps crashing down the hallway that made them finally break eye-contact. Aya looked up to see a very colorful and irritated girl – one of the Reformists she remembered standing beside the mayor – come charging towards them. Right behind her was… Mario? Aya looked back at the red headed man in confusion when realization slammed into her: he was part of the Underground. He and this woman were the ones causing havoc. She remembered a flash of red on the corner of the screen before the smoke bomb went off. Then a glint of silver lying on the floor caught her attention, and her eyes fell on a gun. A gun, two Undergrounders, an anthropomorphic rainbow, and Mario the plumber. It was then that Aya began seriously questioning the choices in her life that had lead her to this moment.

But then reality snapped her back she saw everyone prepared for a brawl in the middle of the hallway. Aya's body reacted without her telling it to, and in the next instant she'd scrambled forward, ignoring her throbbing hand, and grabbed the two redheads by the naked skin of their wrists. There was a flash of instinct coiled inside her, some unknown reflex that snapped at her just before she pulled the two with her to the astral plane. 

[i][color=aquamarine]Don't.[/color][/i]

When she opened her eyes to see the constellations that made up her world, she understood. 

Aya had only brought other people to the astral plane twice before: her father, and the knight from the massacre. Both times, the men had more or less retained their physical appearances, though her dad's soul had looked healthier than his body. She supposed the Undergrounders looked roughly the same too, but there was something fundamentally [i]wrong[/i] with how their souls had manifested.

The man was darker, more sinister, as though he was merely the shadow his body cast. The lines of his body were hazy, plumes of thick smoke – or floating, moving clouds of sand – flowing to make his form, like some sort of solid cloud. His image rippled, multiple currents fighting for domination. They ebbed and flowed back and forth, almost completely consuming each other, but in the next moment, the currents would push back the other way. Tendrils of mist floated away from his body, escaping the battle only to dissolve the moment the connection broke.

The woman was completely drained of color. She ranged from a pearly grey to a deep smoke color, and seemed fragile as rice paper, as though a single touch could shatter her image, revealing it for the illusion it was. The only color on her body was a series of crimson runes seared into the skin of her wrists, ankles, and neck, like chains shackling a prisoner.

Something between a gasp and a scream escaped her as she tried to scramble back from the two. There was something dark and tainted about them, and if Aya's instincts had snapped at her before, they were all but screaming at her now. This was wrong. She needed to get away from them. She needed to scrub her skin raw and red if it meant getting clean of them.

[color=aquamarine]"What,"[/color] Aya whispered, almost to herself, [color=aquamarine]"did you do…"[/color]