A Warrior?

Level 2 : Pipe Dreams

The heavy steel door groaned shut behind them, sealing away the nightmarish pursuit. Alan collapsed against the wall, his lungs burning as he gulped down stale air.

Handy leaned against a rusted control panel, his cracked mask reflecting the flickering fluorescent lights. "Welcome to the Pipe Dreams," he wheezed, "where the lights never turn off and the walls hum like a bad migraine." 

The corridor ahead split into two identical paths, both lined with dripping pipes and flickering emergency lights. Alan hesitated. 

"Which way?" 

Handy tilted his head, considering. "Doesn't matter. The Backrooms shuffles locations like a deck of cards. We could take the left path and end up right back here." 

Alan groaned. "So we just… wander?" 

"Until we find the exit door to Level 3, yeah." Handy patted a nearby pipe, listening to the hollow echo. "Or until something finds us." 

As they walked, Alan studied Handy's posture—the way his shoulders tensed at every distant clang, the way his gloved fingers curled into fists. 

"Why are you helping me? what's your purpose" Alan finally asked. 

"I Always help anybody who needs help, and about my purpose? ..."

Handy didn't answer at first. Then his voice turned hollow. "Revenge. Against them—the ones who slaughtered my squad."

Alan swallowed. "I'm… sorry." 

Handy waved him off. "Save the sympathy. We've got monsters to outrun." 

After a long time of walking, they found the H.D.F tape recorder in pieces, its casing crushed under what looked like deliberate force. 

Alan knelt, picking up a broken fragment. "What happened here?" 

Handy nudged the debris with his boot. "Either something didn't like the message… or didn't want us hearing it." 

Alan's stomach twisted. "Should we be worried?" 

Handy snorted. "Worrying's a luxury here. Clumps and Hounds are the usual pests in this level. Annoying, but not exactly apex predators." 

Yet Alan couldn't shake the unease crawling up his spine. 

"How big is this place?" Alan muttered, staring down yet another identical corridor. 

Handy exhaled through his mask's vents. "Imagine the real universe. Now imagine a funhouse mirror version where the laws of physics took a vacation. That's the Backrooms." 

Alan's voice cracked. "So… no way home?" 

Handy clapped him on the back. "If you got in, you can get out. The Backrooms is a maze, not a prison." 

The lights died without warning. 

One by one, the fluorescents winked out behind them, plunging the corridor into darkness. Handy's grip on Alan's arm tightened like a vice. 

"Shit. He followed us." 

"Who—?" 

"The Smiler," Handy hissed. 

Then—a roar shook the pipes. Not the eerie whisper of a Smiler, but something deeper. Hungrier. 

Handy yanked Alan into a sprint. "Move! That's not a Smiler—it's an Enjoyer!" 

Alan's legs burned as they fled. "What's the difference?!"

"Size. Speed. And it doesn't fear light!"

Alan's heart hammered. "Why does it sound like a freight train?!"

"Because it eats trains!"

The first impact shook the floor.

Alan barely registered Handy yanking him forward before the wall behind them exploded in a shower of concrete. He glimpsed it then—the Enjoyer—a hulking silhouette backlit by dying emergency lights. Seven feet tall at least, its elongated limbs scraped the ceiling as it moved, not with the Smiler's jerky twitches, but with the terrible precision of a predator that knew escape was impossible.

"Faster!" Handy roared.

Alan's lungs burned as they skidded around a corner, the Enjoyer's footsteps pounding closer with each second. Its breath hit Alan's neck—rancid and hot, like meat left to rot in a furnace.

They finally found the exit door and tried to reach it. Barely dove through the exit door as claws scraped metal behind them. 

Level 3 greeted them with the hum of live wires and the stench of ozone. 

Alan sagged against the wall, gasping. "We're not paid enough for this." 

Handy wheezed. "We're not paid at all." 

Alan smirked. "So, how do you fight?" 

Handy flexed his fingers. "Punch stuff. Works surprisingly well." 

A wet, guttural chittering answered. 

They turned. 

Nineteen Clumps oozed from the vents—pulsing mounds of flesh with too many teeth and limbs that twitched like broken puppets. 

Alan gagged. "Nineteen? Why not twenty? Feels personal." 

"Focus, comedian!"

Handy moved like a battering ram, fists cratering Clump skulls with sickening *crunches*. Alan swung his axe, but his sparks fizzled. 

"Come on!" He gritted his teeth. "My dad paid the damn electric bill!" 

A final swing—lightning crackled, frying a Clump into jerky. 

Handy dusted off his gloves. "Cute. But save the—" 

A lanky figure peeled from the shadows. 

Skin-Stealer.

Its "face" was a patchwork of stolen features—lips stitched with wire, eyes mismatched and weeping pus. 

Handy sighed. "I hate self-fulfilling prophecies." 

Alan's axe barely grazed the creature before it slashed his chest. He crumpled, blood soaking his shirt— 

A scythe flashed.

The Skin-Stealer's head tumbled, revealing a figure in a white cloak and rabbit mask, holding the scythe.

"Took you long enough," Handy huffed. 

The newcomer tilted her head. "You brought... a human?" 

Alan gaped. "Who—?" 

"I, am Rusha." She bowed, her blonde braid swaying. "Faceling. Warrior." 

Handy snorted. "Also the yellow rune stone user who choked on air that one time." 

Rusha's mask somehow glared. 

As they dragged Alan toward the Level 4 elevator, Rusha flexed her speed-enhanced wrists. "The yellow stone chose me. A warrior's bond." 

Handy adjusted Alan on his back. "I had a green stone and yellow stone once. But when i obtained the green one, my body were already on its limit." He tapped his mask. "So i gave the other one to her." 

Rusha's voice softened. "We facelings... we have no faces. But I'll carve my legend as a True Warrior." 

Alan blinked and confused with her personality.

Handy leaned in close, his voice dropping to a theatrical whisper to Alan that was somehow both amused and exasperated.

"Somehow her soul is filled with some weird fantasy thing, she has a chronic case of 'I'm the protagonist of an anime no one else can see', in human language it can be called 'Chuunibyou'."

The elevator doors opened. Level 4: Abandoned Office awaited.