Deleted Girls Part 4

"What is up with Sayori?" Natsuki asked. "What did she learn?"

"We have no real evidence I suppose."

"By the way... what's the last thing you remember about her?"

"Hmmm... well... I can't remember. It doesn't make sense. They must have edited her out of our memories or something."

"I guess, but I remember throwing a cookie at her. And I also remember... something about her being sick on the day before the festival?"

"Ah... now that you mention it, those events do sound familiar. But... they also don't seem to fit, exactly."

They turned another corridor. The doors in this hallway were smaller and less imposing. Their labels were simply W followed by a Number

"Stand back." Yuri said, and she cautiously checked the door. A small warehouse. "Ah, good news. You might get to eat after all."

"Ah~! That's perfect!"

"Let's be careful though. I almost feel more uneasy if these rooms have value in them than just torture equipment. No reason to boobytrap the torture rooms."

"...I see your point."

Yuri carefully studied the floor for pressure plates. She prodded the wall with the dull end of a blade and studied the ceiling.

Slowly, she crept up to a crate. She poked a small hole inside with a tool. Medical supplies. And nothing particularly useful to their current predicament. She checked the next line of crates. Ah, stores of bread.

"Found it."

Yuri traced around the sides of the crate with a dagger. There was a pressure plate on the shelf beneath the crate.

"I don't think we can just pick it up. The crate is trapped, so if we remove too much, something bad might happen." Yuri said, disappointed

"There's gotta be something we can replace it with. Maybe we could go back into the Lascerate room and get enough knives."

"We don't know how much it weighs, what tolerance it has, and we don't have anything which will roughly approximate it."

"So that's it then? We're giving up?"

"I wonder if this was another kind of despair. There was nothing stopping us from coming in, but we probably won't be able to leave if we steal the food. And if we discover the trap..."

"What if it's a double bluff?" Natsuki said, looking for any excuse.

"A double bluff has no value in their position. They're capable of setting the trap, and unless you can think of a solid reason for why..."

"I don't care!" Natsuki teared up. "I'm in pain... I'd rather be trapped than have to suffer like this any longer... if there's food in there, you can wait outside and I'll trigger it myself!"

Yuri paused. She knew Natsuki had to put up with a lot of Yuri's issues for the past few hours, and there was still a lot Yuri owed her. It wasn't right to deny her this.

"Okay. We're in this together Natsuki. Let me see if I can figure out what the trap does. Maybe I can disarm it. Or at least, maybe we can prepare ourselves for the consequences."

Yuri studied the shelf. She could sort of make out the general direction of the output based on the design of the trap. However, once it reached the floor, it became a lot less certain. Besides, the shelf protected any output from the shelf's trap from the tools Yuri had in her arsenal. She studied the door a little bit more closely. There was clearly a space for a gate to emerge from the floor. Yuri might be able to jam it with something, but it would only buy her time.

The walls still appeared to be trapless, but Yuri wanted to check the ceiling. She made sure that there was nothing preventing her from scaling the shelf's empty corners, and then swiftly climed up to the ceiling.

The ceiling had small hidden panels at regular intervals. Something might come out of the ceiling if a trap was triggered. Gas? Needles? Bullets? However, Yuri had been smart to bring several redundant knives - even if she couldn't jam every single panel, she could at least jam the ones she might pass under.

These were all the traps Yuri could find.

"I think I'm ready. Let me instruct you how to do your part. You need to put pressure here, here and here." Yuri indicated specific points on the tools she had used. "I don't know how much time this will buy me, but hopefully it's enough."

Natsuki swallowed and nodded.

Yuri took a deep breath as she walked over to the closest crate of food. She gathered her focus.

In one motion she pulled the crate and began to bolt to the door. The panels that had not been jammed opened. Barbed blades on cables sprang out and shot in various directions. Unfortunately, those directions weren't necessarily straight down. Yuri could dodge a few of them, but one managed to graze her back, ripping her flesh open. However, she remained focused on the door.

Natsuki was struggling to keep pressure on the gate, but fortunately she had managed to keep it open- Yuri bounded through the door, andn the two girls fell aside. Eventually, the gate surpassed its jam and slammed shut.

"Yuri! Your back...!"

"Ah, I hope those barbs didn't have anything hazardous on them... I should have tried to grab the medical supplies as well."

"Let me see what I can do..."

Natsuki briefly forgot her stomach as she examined the wound. She cleaned it up as best she could, but it was a temporary measure.

"Okay, let's head back to the torture chambers. I imagine there's probably some form of cleaning supply we can use around there. Might not be as effective as the stuff here, but..."

"You should eat a bit first. Let's hope it's fresh. I have a hunch that it might be though."

While Natsuki was clearly concerned, she didn't need much convincing and began to dig in to some of the bread.

"How did you know?" She said, between bites.

"Well, traps of that nature need to be maintained. The whole idea of an Indiana Jones style trap that lasts for centuries is highly unrealistic, even if it is a cool idea. Since the traps worked flawlessly, aside from my sabotage, we can assume that they also maintain the bait."

Natsuki swallowed a big chunk of bread. "...so do you think they were specifically targetting us?"

"I'm not sure. This is either a routine thing they do even when they aren't actively torturing people, they are specifically targetting us for unknown reasons, or... and this is what I consider most likely - there are more prisoners we haven't run into yet."

"I'm good for now... I feel so much better already. Let's try to find something to clean out that wound, okay?"

Yuri nodded and moved towards the bread crate.

"Whoa, you're injured. I got this. Save your strength." Natsuki smiled reassuringly.

It was good to see her smile again.