Epic Clash - COMPLETE!

Originally posted on MSPA by Wojjan.

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“...That went surprisingly well. I got Thomas, who has four minds inside of him, on the verge of collapsing, and have driven him to immobility. I should get on to the next player in this wretched thing. Where's Michelle?” Michelle wasn't far away. She was running – no, hopping from tower to tower, apparently exercising her skills for chasing zombies. It was time to turn the tables on her.
“Hello, my dear. Looking well, I see?”
“Oh no, not you! What do you want?”
“Hey, hey, hey. That's no proper greeting. You are as mean as that Thomas.”
“I'm warning you. Get back.” She readied her gun.
“Well, I'm afraid I can't do that. See, I need to practice aswell, and sadly, the joke's on you right now. Go on. Try and stop me from getting to your inside. From crushing your feebly resistant spirit like it were a paper tissue.”
She ran, but there wasn't a thing she could do. Asteira could always pick a short cut, straight through the walls and towers. As the chase went on, she begrudgingly greeted Glere, who was frankly not too happy on seeing her again. She reflected again, thinking she's been making quite the list of enemies since the contest started. Her drifting thoughts rejoined her as she saw Michelle jumping past.
“Well, well. Let's see what's troubling you.”
It was a very clear and plain mind, not perturbed by the crazy delusions of a mad fishbowl or a quartered spirit arguing with itself ad nauseam. If it came down to it, Michelle was most probably the sanest in the contest. Such a shame to see her go to waste, but what was there to be helped? She spoke up.
"What are you doing here?"
“You are a delusional freak, Michelle. Your mind is too clear.”
“Well sorry, demon girl, if I'm just making sense, unlike you. Now get out!”
"Hush now. I didn't say it was clear, it was too clear.”
“W-What do you mean?”
“You are a sole survivor of zombie carnage, and suddenly got plucked away from the battlefield. You can't be certain that you've won. There's no sign of you winning, but here you are, masking those worries with hope. What arguments do you use to bandage those wounds of the past?”
“Well… There's Thomas, right? And he is from beyond my time. That must mean life is possible.”
Asteira shook her head. “You are failing to realize one thing. Thomas was brought up in a synthetic world, encased in a fake perfection! What happened to all the rest of the world? I'll tell you what. You and all your other petty friends have failed. You saw it yourself. Nothing got killed. Death isn't a certainty anymore, as the reaper assigned for an infinite list of dying people just got terminated. And you know what? I think that we might be responsible for his death, and the resulting undead. You are stuck in a timeless field, with those who doomed your world for many years to come! How can you still be sane?”
“You… You're wrong! You can't be serious! I would know why there were zombies, and it had nothing to do with this! We're in my time, still! This is after the apocalypse!” As doubt continued to seep into her mind, the previously hospital-white walls began to reshape, and turn dark, grim, and splattered with blood and tears. It took the form of a shelter, with a raging terror just outside. The walls vibrated with the banging of her fear.
Michelle, back on the physical plane, collapsed. She was crushed and exhausted, and the torments of the dead, in more ways than one, stormed through her mind.
Exit Asteira, but her ideas and theories remained.