Side Story: Night of Horrors.

This story starts on a cloudy day. The morning had brought light showers with an overcast sky. Thankfully while the clouds never fully cleared, the morning shower was all that they had released.

Throughout Fontaine, people were setting up stalls and signs, everyone excited about a new film being produced, one that needed all the extras they could get. The streets were bustling with crowds of people. kameras, microphones, and speakers were discretely set up on lamp posts and other structures.

Carman was in his workshop as usual and had been working on a long-term project. Thanks to his new Transmutation and Transformation circles he could make the parts that he needed without complex machinery. He had been working on this project over the past few days and would only leave his workstation to eat, and relive himself. Other than that he had spent all his awake time in his room working and sleeping when he was physically and mentally exhausted. Thankfully school had been called off for the next few days, something about dealing with corruption within the faculty.

Carman was using this time to try to formulate the special alloy Ryuzu's internals were made from. By chucking a ton of iron into a transfiguration circle, the found he was able to smash the atoms together roughly combining them until they were just above the proton count of Zuthercite, then he let his mental hold slip slightly, letting the unstable element decompose into Zuthercite and hydrogen. Oddly enough, neither fusing the atoms together or letting them split gave off any energy. Normally the fusion and fission of atoms in the quantity he was dealing with would have been off putting a massive amount of radiation. Thankfully there seemed to be a safeguard built into the transfiguration circle that prevented any radiation from occuring.

It had taken Carman a full day of fusing iron together to get the approximate amount of Zuthercite he would need to repair Ryuzu back up to her previous state. It had taken the morning of the next day to purify the melted slag of her previous components to get useable grade 5 Titanium.

Now was the process that was taking the bulk of Carman's time. Instead of just bringing Ryuzu back to her previous capacity, Carman wanted to boost her abilities, mainly by improving her gears' resistance to the heat generated from the large amount of friction occuring when she used her special ability. While he did not know how her sister's zero-friction system worked he did have access to a material that was perpetually cold. Cryo silver.

Since he had a small amount of it, Carman had drawn up several ideas that he had on how to utilize this perpetually cool material. At first he had tried to incorporate some of it into a alloy with the Zuthercite and Titanium, however it more often than not interfered with the bond between the Zuthercite and Titanium atoms making it loose the alloy's passive self mending characteristic.

This brought him to his current idea, fitting a layer of Cryo Silver into the gears, cooling them off via contact rather than from being in the alloy itself.

This presented its own set of issues to solve, from the minimal amount of Cryo Silver needed to cool the alloy, the ideal placement of the alloy across multiple different components.

Dozens of papers had been crumpled and tossed into a corner of the room. Frustrated, Carman finally left the hidden space to get some fresh air. In all of his drawings he always requires more Cryo Silver than he actually had to use. While he knew that he would inevitably need more to fit all of Ryuzu's mechanisms with the cooling feature, he wanted to at least replace her current damaged parts with the newly designed components.

Walking out to the living room Carman stretched and walked around. He was tempted to go and laze on the couch, but after all the sitting he had done over the past few days, his lower back twinged in protest. Ryuzu had left to go on a commission in the morning, apparently, there was a problematic tribe of Hilichurls that had been pestering some of the aquabusses, chucking rocks at passengers as they went by, and being general nuisances. One particularly unlucky bus line was being harassed by a few Hydro Samachurls that caused rain clouds to form over the bus as it passed, soaking passengers. They had started resorting to passing out umbrellas at the start of each ride.

Taking an apple and a cooked chicken leg from the refrigerator, Carman chewed on them as he pondered what to do. He had another day to work on this before school was scheduled to restart.

At the moment he figured he might as well stretch his legs, so he left the apartment after cleaning up his small lunch.

Getting outside, Carman looked up at the grey sky. 'I hope that is natural and not a reflection of the Ludex's current mood. If it is a reflection, I wonder what caused this.' thought Carman.

It was chilly, a cool breeze blew past Carman. Causing him to wish he had added a few more layers to his clothes. Walking out to the main street and looking around, an eerie feeling came over Carman. The streets were empty save a few people walking in the distance, and it was quiet. Was the place under lockdown? What could possibly have happened?

As he passed by a both that had been set up, he looked at the merchandise, it all looked cheap, and the arrangement was all skewed from the tablecloth being pulled towards the back left hand corner, the fabric shifting the products left on it.

Carman felt a prickly sensation on the back of his neck, using his elemental sense he did not spot anyone nearby. Walking further down the main street, Carman could hear many slow footsteps. His gut telling him he did not want to be near the source of the sound, Carman detoured off the main street and walked over to Livre's workshop.

As he entered the shop, it was dark, the lights weren't on despite it being open hours. Sighing, Carman walked over and checked on the light activation system.it seemed to work, had Livre forgotten? Speaking of, where was Livre? He should have been behind the counter waiting for the next customer or in the back working on one of his commissions. And yet, the eerie quiet outside seemed to have infiltrated and permeated the atmosphere of the shop as well.

"Livre? Are you here?" Asked Carman as he walked over to the back of the shop. As he walked in calling for Livre, Carman heard a shuffling noise come from the back.

"Livre is that you? If you got caught up in an avalanche of the inventory it's your own fault. I've been telling you to organize it." Said Carman as he walked firther into the medium sized storage area, as he walked in Carman saw Livre standing in front of the opposite wall.

"Yo Livre, why didn't you answer?" Said Carman as he walked closer. It wasn't until he was 6 feet away from Livre that he noticed something was wrong. Livre's healthy pinkish tan skin had urned ashen grey and flakey around his ears. Carman stood frozen as Livre turned, a mumbling noise came from him. His mouth was wide open, yellow teeth plainly visible. But what chilled Carman were the eyes, they were white like the iris and pupil had been covered with cataracts.

Livre mumbled again and took an unsteady step towards Carman, his legs moved strangely as though he was relearning how to walk. He raised a hand and pointed at Carman, more muffled noises coming from him.

Carman turned pale white, his skin almost reaching the color of bleached bone as he stumbled backwards. "Zz-zz-zzombie!!!" He yelped, stuttering slightly as he shuffled back, trying to put more distance between him and Livre.

Turning around, Carman dashe dout of the storeroom and hall heading muffled sounds from Livre as he ran. Soon, Carman made it back out to the front of the building and swiftly opened and washed through the door.running back towards the main street, Carman was starting to wish he hadn't left the apartment.

The. From behind him, a muffled sound came, multiple muffled sounds infact. Slowly Turning around Carman nearly jumped out of his skin, a crowd of Zombies were behind him with three of them were just a foot behind him. Suddenly calling all his mental energy, Carman quickly manipulated the Hydro element in the air and formed his elemental skill, investing everything into the shield. Moving away from them they moved closer, making muffled sounds as they moved towards him with their hands outstretched.

Letting out a string of curses that would make a witch blush, Carman ran away from the crowd. They followed, some managed to run towards him. Panicking, Carman wove around objects, and jumped through stalls trying to loose his pursuers.

Just as he was confident he had lost them, looking behind him to see almost none of the zombies containing to chase him, some had even fallen to the ground it slumped onto something. Carman was surprised as a horde of zombies suddenly surrounded him in all sides, completely covering his shield in all directions except upwards.

"Damn it!" Yelled Carman. Finally losing his patience. As he stood there, the zombies crowding around him, he tried to think up of ways to escape. Anything explosive would wipe the out but it would likely damage his shield. He could wait it out, with how much Hydro energy was in the air, he could just keep pumping his construct with energy to keep the horde at bay. But as soon as he fell unconscious, his skill would disappear with his mind not actively guiding its shape. He could not move, as the shield would not even budge with how much weight was pressing in on the other side.

Steeling his nerves, Carman decided on the last option, fight his way out. He pulled his black tassel out of his storage and got into a beginning stance, his eye closed as he prepared mentally for what he was about to do. When he opened them. He was surprised to see the zombies backing away, their hands raised into the air. Of everything that could have happened, this is what Carman least expected.

What surprised him even more was when one of the zombies lowered one hand and put it on its top row of yellow and black teeth. With a tug, it was revealed to be a mouth accessory of some kind. Just as the woman was about to speak, a familiar voice made itself clear from the crowd.

"Get out of the way, I need to get to the kid. I'm one of his caretakers. Make way." And through the crowd, Ryuzu pushed her way over to Carman.

"Apologies for not getting back sooner Carman, I also got caught up in all of this, figured you'd be in your room tinkering again from most of the day. They are filming a movie, and all of the "monsters" you see before you are people playing the part of extras to give the monsters more presence and present more of a threat to the audience." She explained.

Carman felt the breath leave his body, as he relaxed and fell onto his knees, his hydro shield broke apart as he dropped his concentration on it.

"It was all for a film, Jesus F. Christ...."said Carman as he leaned back and looked towards the sky.

"Would you like to join? Your caretaker Ryuzu was saying she would consider joining us today after taking with you. She was about to set out to find you when one of the staff informed us that a kid was walking around, snooping on the booths set of for one of the scenes." Said the woman Ryuzu had interrupted.

Sighing again, Carman responded "Sure, why not."

And that is how Carman became an extra in a horror film that later won the award for best experience in the following film festival. His memory of how zombies moved in the horror movies of his world greatly helping out in the project, and the film that had been recorded of him being chased by the crowd was actually added to the final draft of the movie, with a minor change being that the zombies managed to break down his shield and bite him.