Starring:
Date: Unknown (log received August 28, 2013)
Summary:
Summary goes here.
"The Adventures of Miyo and Midori: Ghosts Aren't Real!"
Unknown location
The rumors of a village several miles outside of the Land of Fire had begun drifting through the ranks of Genin and Students in Konoha… a whole village, perfectly inhabitable with houses that were still whole, if a bit run down with time. It was a strange place, located off a strage path where everything seemed to have died, and where the ground was gray and lifeless… Where mist clung to the earth at all times of the year. Some people suggested it was the work of a curse… others, an ancient monster… and a few even thought that there might be a secret Ninja village nearby.
But no, there was only the abandoned village of houses, their outsides run down and their furnishings left as if the owners would come back any minute from stepping out for the evening. That was the really odd thing. Whoever had lived in this village had left EVERYTHING. Plates, utensils, tools, blankets, chairs, tables… even clothes. Every single house was the same way, as if the residents just all stood up one day and walked away, never thinking to go back for their things.
It was in this village that Miyo would find a large house, almost a mansion, sitting on top of a hill overlooking the rest of the abandoned village. It was several stories, and covered at least 4000 square feet. Supposedly, the other genin claimed that a treasure could be found in this place, guarded by ghosts and evil spirits… Of course… that was preposterous! Ghosts didn't exist! Right? Of course not! And it was time for someone to prove to all those silly genin and students that they were just being … well… silly!
Miyo had accepted the challenges of the other genins, and perhaps even the prospect of treasure encouraged her to make the trek out to the village, and in particular, the mansion. However, Miyo would not admit to being afraid, not openly, but she was very easily intimidated by such things! And did not really enjoy haunted things, so, she had done what comes naturally. She invited a friend, and that friend was Midori, someone she felt was probably even more likely to be chicken than herself. So, as she stood outside the doors of the mansion, she turns back to look at Midori. "So, you read for this? I'm totally pumped!" She lied through her teeth about it, of course.
Midori wasn't sure what to think about an old, haunted house. She'd been told since she was very little that spirits and ghosts were real enough, although very rare and unlikely to hurt you. If they were so rare, she doubted there could be any hiding in such a spooky old place. After all, why would they want to hang around in scary places? The little girl, feeling much less apprehensive than Miyo, nods once and says, "Yeah, it'll be funny if there really -are- ghosts in that old house. I'd kinda like to meet one, as long as it isn't -too- scary." Her little face screws up in thoughtfulness as she appraises the house. "How do you think we should get in?" she asks, trying to work out the easiest way.
Miyo grins at her friends confidence and then turns back to the door and shivers a bit. She hoped Midori didn't notice. "Well, I think we should just go right in the front. Makes the most sense." So, she does try to, at least, and goes up to the door and sees if it will open. Of course, she does this with the most brave aura around her that she can manage, which isnt that convincing.
The door opens easily enough, creaking loudly on it's hinges, sending echoes through the big, empty house and sending up a cloud of dust from what had settled on the ground after so many years, the air swirling the cloud a little and blowing it further into the room.
The house quieted shortly after the door was openned, giving no signs that anyone was inside, waiting in the shadows… But it was dark, all the curtains were drawn, and what little light filtered through them didn't seem to help brighten any of the rooms.
Midori nods and follows Miyo up to the front door, trying to peer in some of the windows on the way for a hint as to what they might find inside. As the door opens she purses her lips and peers in. "Wow, it smells old in here," she says, taking a couple of steps inside and looking around, sniffing occasionally at the musty smell that comes from unoccupied houses after a while, "Heelloooooo? Ghosties?"
Miyo shivers so much that she practically leaps out of her boots when the doors creak. "Wooohooooho…" She squeaks, and then steps in alongside Midori. "Yeah, it does smell old. It's weird though, considering all the other houses look so new." She moves in a little further, past the doorway and into the room. "Don't…. don't provoke them or anything." She places her hands together in front of her, lacing her fingers together and fidgetting a bit.
For a moment there is no sound coming from the inside of the house… just the creaking of the house settling on it's own foundations, and a gentle thumping, coming from somewhere near the back of the house… Probably coming from someplace in the distance… certainly not the house itself!
A sudden gust of air came from the outside of the house, blowing through all of a sudden and kicking up a larger cloud of dust before carrying it further inside, toward what looked like a kitchen.
The stairs leading up to the second story sat off to the left hand side of the front door, a rug leading upward rotten and moth-eaten, riddled with holes in the fabric, and ready to fall apart at any minute… Another door led off beyond the stairs, shut tight with dust covering the doorknob… An old, unlit candle sat next to that door, dirty with grime from age, but otherwise, easily used if either of our two intrepid explorers had a way to light it!
"I'm not scared!" Miyo declares and puffs up, filling with fake confidence. "But, I suppose it doesn't hurt to… you know… be ready." She quickly concentrates and focuses a little chakra together just for emergencies. When Miyo hears the thumping, she looks to Midori. "What do you think that is? A ghost? A zombie!?" She turns a little paler, if that was even possible, "So… uhm, where do you think we should go?" She gestures towards the place that looks like a kitchen. "In there? Or upstairs?" She looks to Midori for guidance, basically the only time she's ever really needed to.. normally she was the one in charge!
"I don't know. The thumping sounds like it's a long way off," Midori says as she moves closer to the stairwell, "I think we should take a look around upstairs. Or should we go down to basement?" She turns to Miyo, seeming to get all excited as she says, "Whenever creepy things happen, its always in the basement! We should totally go down there first!" Then she blows a raspberry in the air as she starts searching for the entrance to the cellar, saying derisively, "Ghosts are real. Zombies are just a dumb superstition."
Another gust of air blows through the house, fluttering the clothes of Miyo and Midori, and slamming the door of the house shut, cutting off one of the largest sources of light for the pair of girls, and leaving them in almost complete darkness. From somewhere deeper in the house the barely audible sound of whispers began to fill the room… the voices clear, but too far away for any of the words to really be made out.
"Eep!" Miyo shouts as the winds pick up and the door slams shut, and she is immediatly latched onto Midori's arm for safety. "This… this is not good. I don't care if you say they are not really, this place is way tooo creepy." She looks to Midori, who she can hardly see in the darkness. "What is that…? Do you hear those voices? We are totally going to die!"
Midori jumps as well this time, her eyes shifting from side to side as she tries in vain to locate the source of the sound. Her heart pounding, the sound of it echoing in her ears, Midori says, "That's not a good thing." It takes a moment for her to regain her wits, and when she does Midori raises her hands into a seal and says, "I'm going to give us some light." Then she breathes out a small, flickering stream of fire that sheds some light into the room. Of course, the girl is careful to keep it away from the walls and floor, making sure not to set anything alight.
Sometime between the lights going out, and Midori lighting a small fire in the room… the furniture had been moved. Someone, or someTHING had soundlessly moved the kitchen table in front of the doorway into the kitchen, and stacked the chairs on top of it… And as soon as the light comes on and reveals it, the whispering is suddenly replaced by the quiet, giggling laughter of chilren, and the sudden sound of small feet running somewhere upstairs.
Literally the only thing that stopped Miyo from passing out when she notices the table and chairs piled up, and especially when the children sounds were made, was the even worse fear that if she passed out she would die and never really have anything to do about it… However, her cling to Midori gets a little more intense, practically leaping into her arms like Scooby Doo. "No kidding… I told you this place was not good.. and you said ghosts dont exist…" She looks around a bit. "At least we're not dead yet…"
"No, Miyo-chan, I said ghosts are real, but rare," Midori corrects the other girl, then gulps loudly, "I think we found one though." With a sigh, Midori tries to let her eyesight adjust to the low light in the room. "You're right, whatever it is hasn't attacked us yet, so we might manage to get through this. I mean, we don't even know if its one of those angry, haunting curse ghosts, or a friendly one," she starts yammering, then listens to the sound move off upstairs. "I think it went up there. Let's go and find it," the Uchiha says as she gathers her courage, and gently tries to extricate herself from Miyo's death grasp.
"They aren't rare enough for me…" Miyo grumbles, and when Midori suggests they go after it, Miyo has no choice but to think that Midori cannot be her best friend, because no best friend would try to get their other best friend killed by a ghost! Or possessed! Or even worse, cursed! But then she feels Midori try to slip away from her and she shakes her head wildly. "No,nnonononoono" she stammers repeatedly as she tries to get away, but concedes to removing her clinging from most of her body down to just her hand. She wasn't willing to let go and potentially get separated, especially in the low light. "Im not letting go…" She whispers to herself.
"Ok, Miyo-chan, you can hold on like that for a while," Midori says as she moves over to the stairs and looks up them. She can't see much up there, but with how dark it is inside the mansion, that's not saying much. The girl breathes another light stream of fire upwards, then decides that sooner or later this method of creating light is going to turn against her. Solving the problem, she draws out a tiny handheld torch from her pocket and flicks the switch over to the 'on' position. Hopefully this'll give them a better look at what they're dealing with.
The upstairs is just as dusty as the downstairs, with a long hallway covered in paintings and photographs… the first, was a round photograph of an old man, black and white, staring sternly out of the frame with an angry expression… The second, a painting of a girl in a dirty dress, standing in the rain and holding her teddybear against the ground. The the third was a painting of… well…. it was hard to tell, there was a lot of black and red in the picture…
There were three doors in the hallway, one leading straight ahead, one leading off to the left and another, closed door leading to the right. The sounds of giggling and thumping, as if someone was playing could be heard behind the door on the left… the ghost was close!
Miyo follows behind Midori, unwilling to let go of her friend. She laces her fingers together with hers, and then scoots up close to her for comfort, and to share the light. "I don't like this…" She states as she views the paintings. They were totally creepy… so creepy she couldnt even determine what the last one was! But it was bad! When she heard the sounds of giggling and thumping, she looks to Midori. "Let's go over there…" She indicates the furthest possible room from the sound of the ghost in an attept to steer her away from certain doom!
Midori listens to the sound, realising that its not coming from where Miyo is steering her, but allows herself to be steered anyway. "You know that the sound isn't coming from over here," she whispers, opening the door on the right and entering the vacant room, "This house sure is old and creepy. Did you see the picture of the girl in the rain? That ghost sounded like a little girl to me. I wonder if that's the girl who died?" She looks around the room, casually searching for clues about the ghost's identity.
As soon as Midori and Miyo entered the vacant room, the giggling all stopped… and a pair of candles in the room flickered to life, a blue flame, bright but only just enough to illuminate one more painting… It was the painting of the girl in the rain again!… Except… something was different. In this picture, the girl was faced toward the viewer, her head cast down, and her hair cascading down her shoulders and over her front. Her face was totally hidden… What made it worse though, was that, upon closer inspection, there were other differences… she was not holding her bear… she was holding a butcher knife… and it was not raining water in the image… Upon closer inspection, the rain was all red, and the puddle she was standing in had the severed, stuffed head of the girl's old bear in it.
The door then slammed shut, behind Miyo and Midori, and the sound of childlike laughter suddenly filled the room, the candles beginning to flicker a little, and then finally going out… but only to come right back on to illuminate the picture again. This time, the girl was not in the picture at all.
Miyo apparently cannot catch a break, and when the candles light up and expose the picture, Miyo's heart practically bursts from her chest. She'd have screamed, but the best she could manage was a strangled gasp as she grips Midori's hand tightly. "Nonononononoonoononoo!" She stammers, shaking her head wildly. "I don't want to diiiiie!" She then looks to Midori and grabs her by the shoulders, and then jumps when the door slams shut. Miyo immediatly begins shaking her. "Burn it to the ground! Gooo! Fuuuuu!" She attempts to breath fire and burn the place down by herself.
Midori doesn't speak, frozen in her tracks as she realises the ghost is in the room with them. She swallows nervously, no longer even bothering to hope that the ghost might be friendly. It had a freaking butcher's knife, for crying out loud! Taking a deep breath, her eyes begin scanning the walls and ceiling for any sign of the creepy girl-ghost. Her hands move slowly and purposefully through several handseals as she prepares to annihilate the spirit the moment it shows itself. It seems that in this moment of crisis her true Uchiha blood and killing instinct has come to a head. "I'm not afraid of you," she whispers, her eyebrows lowering in concentration. The statement is as much to convince herself as the ghost.
The sound of soft… wet footsteps came from behind Miyo and midori, followed by the sound of something metal scraping against the wood and wallpaper just outside the door…. then the footsteps stop… The sound of something dripping on the wood just outside remaining in it's place.
Another fit of giggling and the candle light starts to brighten, illuminating the room's walls, to reveal several words scratched into the walls with a thin, sharp edge, red smears and handprints seeming to punctuate each of the words…
Get Out…
Die…
I'm Coming For You…
Murder…
And then the handle of the door rattles… and slowly starts to turn, clicking a little with each slow, deliberate motion, as the giggling got louder… almost deafening, in fact.
Miyo is afraid of them, even if Midori isn't, and lets out a completely shocked gasp when Midori states that. "Nopenopenopenopenopenope!" She gives Midori another shake. "Don't encourage them!" She then turns and looks over her shoulder. What was that? It couldn't…it just couldn't! Miyo finally releases Midori for the first time, her hand darting up to the omnipresent sword upon her back, and in a flash she draws the blade, slashing out towards the door and wall with enough ferocity to fell an elephant, and with its chakra metal blade, the sword was a fearsome foe! But with the poor lighting in the room she misjudges her distance from the door and swings past it, causing herself to lose her balance and fall face-first onto the floor with an oomph. "Ah! Help!" She screams as if she has been attacked. She scrambles to her feet, returning the sword to her scabbard before she hurts herself, and then slams into the wall, putting her back to it. "So many nopes…"
Midori sees the words on the walls, but hardly registers their meaning as her eyes track the sound of the ghosts. As the door begins to rattle, the handle turning slowly, Midori puts an arm in front of Miyo to move her out of the way. She then focuses chakra into her chest as she makes a rapid string of handsigns, drawing in a deep breath and blowing a fireball at the door. The rush of fire is enormous, empowered by her fear, anger and protective nature. Its large enough that it could be mistaken with a Great Fireball Technique, even though Midori had never managed to actually master the technique in the past. Any normal door, or any normal wall for that matter, would likely explode from the sheer force of the explosion erupting from the little girl's mouth.
The fireball explodes, and the wood of the door and wall splinters! Flying outwards and rewarding Midori with an enraged shriek from the ghost on the other side! But instead of actually exploding outwards… Both door and wall freeze and slowly reassemble themselves, as if there had never been any damage at all… But now, at least the ghost on the other side wasn't there! This was probably their chance to open that door and get OUT of there!
Miyo has literally had enough. She runs her hands through a set of seals and then her body lights up like a lanter. With a roar of frustration and anger, she runs forward, scoops up Midori, and just as the door finishes reassembling it, she kicks the door hard enough to not only rip it from its hinges, but probably to fire it through into the room on the other side. "We're leaving!" She shouts at Midori, as well as the ghosts, and before the door gets a chance to reassemble itself, she takes off running with the full power of her enhancement seals lending her extra energy and physical prowess! Not only that, the adrenaline pumping through her body carried her out into the hallway and towards the stairway like a cheetah. Woe to anything that gets in her way now!
As the pair get down the stairs, Midori wriggles out of Miyo's arms, intent on getting out of the mansion alive. Before they get out the front door, the Uchiha decides that putting a deterrent between herself and the ghost is probably a good idea, so she spins around and lets loose with another massive torrent of fire. While it lacks the explosive power and huge size of her previous one, its still significantly better than any she'd managed to perform before today. The fire licks across the floor and ceiling toward the staircase, hopefully giving the ghost second thoughts about pursuing the fleeing Genin.
Miyo's bolt from the room goes over well enough, and she even makes it to the stairs! She could probably TASTE the freedom as she started running down the stairs, heading for the front door and back outside… But after a while of running down stairs… it becomes very clear that the stairs are much… longer than Miyo may have remembered. In fact, they just keep circling down and to the left… and didn't she just pass that black and red picture for the third time? At least this time it's a little more clear at least though… It's a girl… or the silhouette of a girl. Pure black, with a dark red eye positioned in the middle and across her face. There was no nose… no mouth… just the silhouette and the single red eye. It was creepy, to say the least… But it didn't change the fact that Miyo had passed it… like a dozen times heading downstairs. They weren't getting any closer to the ground floor by the looks of things!
Miyo eventually stops running shortly after Midori blows her fire all over the place. "Your fire is realy impressive today, Midori-chan…" She states. "But we're not making any freakin' progress!" She completely loses it and throws a whole stack of shuriken into the painting. "I hate you!" She screams. Her seals return to normal as she releases the chakra, not needing it for the moment snce they were unable to go anywhere. "What are we doing!?"
Midori narrows her eyes at the suspicious painting, then looks back up the stairs, then down again. "A never ending staircase would make an awesome Genjutsu," she says, trying to concentrate in order to dispel any illusion affecting her, "I've never wished that I had the Sharingan so hard before though. If I did I might be able to see through any illusions and work out where this ghost is." She bites her lip as she thinks about the problem, then turns to the painting and tries to pull it off the wall, shouting, "Let us go, or I'll burn the painting to a crisp!"
The giggling comes from all sides of the stairs, and the painting itself simply bursts into blue flame, getting rapidly consumed before the stairs seem to shift slightly… Maybe the ghost was letting them go? It was possible, maybe they finally got the better of it!
Miyo practically cheers as the freaky painting burns up, and then turns to Midori as she sees the blatantly visual change in the stairway. "Let's go! I want out of this place!" Miyo then reaches after Midori's hand to pull her down the stairs, hoping to get out as soon as possible with her friend in tow!
As the painting in her hands lights itself on fire, Midori throws it to the ground, tempted to stomp it out but thinking better of it. She nods to Miyo's suggestion and says, "Alright, let's get out of here." And she begins running down the stairs at full pelt, hoping to find the bottom of them shortly. If these ghosts mess with her much more, she'd be likely to try the 'burning the house down' scenarioagain.
The stair case finally did get to the bottom… and the mansion's exit was in plan view… and wide open, revealing the outside…. but… it was different. The ghost village wasn't there. It was just a misty plain. The places where the empty houses once were were totally bare patches of gray dirt and old, shrivelled trees. Did the house move?
