morethanmyth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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ya_assemble2015-03-20 02:51 am
morethanmyth) wrote in ya_assemble2015-03-20 02:51 am
Entry tags:
[LN] Snapshots of the Damned
They thought it was relatively safe. The twins were being sent out with a group of people that were essentially adults. Even Raph was an older teen and probably more experienced at fighting than all of them put together. The fearling they were looking for wasn't even that powerful, if the mini-fairies were to be believed. It was a construct, several fearlings reconfigured into something new, but not that powerful.
It needed to be hunted down and destroyed but it was something that Mabel alone could've handled. Between the five of them, they made short work of it and it looked to be a nice little on-the-job lesson for the twins, where they got to fight while under the protection and guidance of the others.
The problem was the fear. Fear was always the problem. That fear was just a coincidence but as coincidences sometimes went, it was a dangerous coincidence.
Not far from where they'd destroyed the fearling, there was a little girl who had played one of her older sister's video games and it had frightened her. As she went to bed that night with the fear clutching at her heart, the only thought that helped her fight the fear was the thought of two of her favorite cartoon characters - ones that fought scary things like ghosts all the time - fighting the scary ghosts in the game.
She knew they were the kind of twins that could beat the ghosts. That was the thought she fell asleep to, a thought that gained power in that twilight between waking and sleeping.
Where they were in the woods, that thought - and that fear - temporarily took on a life of its own, reshaping reality and assigning them all roles in the story it was trying to mold. A sudden mist swept through the dark woods and every myth in the group found themselves powerless. They still had their gear and their skill and wit but their myth powers were gone.
Even worse than that, as the mist obscured them from each other and they suddenly found themselves separated. They were suddenly all in different sections of an ancient, decrepit Japanese village, one that was caught in a strange and eerie twilight. Dancing around them in the breeze were glowing crimson butterflies that fluttered off, as if they were showing them which way they should go.
Whether it was safe to follow them or not was the question at hand.
It needed to be hunted down and destroyed but it was something that Mabel alone could've handled. Between the five of them, they made short work of it and it looked to be a nice little on-the-job lesson for the twins, where they got to fight while under the protection and guidance of the others.
The problem was the fear. Fear was always the problem. That fear was just a coincidence but as coincidences sometimes went, it was a dangerous coincidence.
Not far from where they'd destroyed the fearling, there was a little girl who had played one of her older sister's video games and it had frightened her. As she went to bed that night with the fear clutching at her heart, the only thought that helped her fight the fear was the thought of two of her favorite cartoon characters - ones that fought scary things like ghosts all the time - fighting the scary ghosts in the game.
She knew they were the kind of twins that could beat the ghosts. That was the thought she fell asleep to, a thought that gained power in that twilight between waking and sleeping.
Where they were in the woods, that thought - and that fear - temporarily took on a life of its own, reshaping reality and assigning them all roles in the story it was trying to mold. A sudden mist swept through the dark woods and every myth in the group found themselves powerless. They still had their gear and their skill and wit but their myth powers were gone.
Even worse than that, as the mist obscured them from each other and they suddenly found themselves separated. They were suddenly all in different sections of an ancient, decrepit Japanese village, one that was caught in a strange and eerie twilight. Dancing around them in the breeze were glowing crimson butterflies that fluttered off, as if they were showing them which way they should go.
Whether it was safe to follow them or not was the question at hand.
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"This is so sad," she commented, her camera fun forgotten. "These were all supposed to be toys and now they'll never find a kid to make happy."
There was a doll-less kid for every unmade doll in the room, and something about that made Mabel very sad.
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The filament was glowing red.
"Uuh guys, I think we have company!" Dipper cried out, lifting his camera up and peering through the viewfinder, trying to find the threat.
Nothing in front of him.
He turned around to look behind him, only to find the ghost staring right at him at eye level. The spirit's hands plunged into his chest, making it so there was the sensation of icy hands painfully squeezing his heart.
He yelped in surprise and fear as he staggered back, the camera flash going off wildly in the ghost's face, causing it to recoil away from him. Dipper tripped and fell back as well, slamming into a shelf full of doll heads on the wall, causing doll heads to clatter to the ground with him as he fell.
"There's a ghost!" he gasped out with lips that had temporarily gone too pale. "Don't let it touch you!"
When Mabel and Hiccup looked through their cameras they'd be able to see it, the translucent gray shape of a spindly little man staggering around the room, his head lolling on a neck that looked strangled or broken, his body swollen and blackened in death in a way that might remind Hiccup of stories about draugr.
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"That's a draugr. That is definitely a draugr."
He forced himself to get a grip. Terrifying as the concept of draugr actually existing was, he'd faced worse. And there were kids counting on him.
"Hey! Ugly! Over here!" He shouted, snapping a photo and doing his best to channel Snotlout as he did so. "What, too much of a coward to go after the Viking first?"
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"Dipper! What kills it?" she shouted, because heck if she knew which doll arm was the magic doll arm to take the creepy dead guy out of the picture. "Then again, if he's already dead, is it really killing him?"
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That meant they could keep it in a cycle of lunging and recoiling and never quite catching one of them.
Dipper lifted his camera and looked through the viewfinder and the moment it recoiled in his direction from one of Hiccup's photos, he took a picture of its face, making it recoil back again.
If they could just keep it stumbling until it was worn down...
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"Is it just me or does this seem a little too easy?"
The fight looked like they was going well, all things considered. In Hiccup's experience that was when things were most likely to go to Hel.
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Left in the ghost's place was a small purple crystal.
"Do you think that's one of the crystals we're supposed to put in the radios?" asked Dipper nervously.
On the one hand, it would probably give them important info. On the other, it'd probably be really creepy important info.
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That thing... it's not a doll.
But it's not my daughter either.
I have to kill it...
Just like my daughter did...
Made her kill...
For the ritual...
It has to die...
Its arms...
Its head...
Where did I hide them...?
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Not a doll but not a daughter either?
"Who would put their daughter in a doll?"
Way to make broken lost dolls more creepy than sad, weird ghost!
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The hair was standing up on the back of his neck as he thought back to the image of the hanging twins in the hallway.
"He thought a doll was his daughter and said his other daughter had to kill it - oh man, I hope that ritual isn't what I think it is. It sounds like something where one daughter had to kill the other. And there's a haunted doll involved in it?"
Which would make sense if one daughter killed the other and if the doll was his daughter and not his daughter.
"Maybe the daughter that died haunted a doll or something."
He didn't like where this was going. At all.
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Families trying to beat the hell out of each other thanks to holiday stress and potential food poisoning from Yaknog were common threats to one's health around that time of year.
"It sounds like it may have been something else that haunted the doll. And I'm not sure I want to find out what."
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Mabel looked around, aiming her camera at the doll fragments. She wanted to make some sort of "the film glows blue when nerds are near," but she was also a little unsettled for jokes.
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He paused.
"...and also watch our ankles."
Because that was probably where the possessed doll would be scuttling.
Since the filaments weren't glowing and the only way was forward, Dipper walked over to peer around around a sliding door. He didn't plan on going ahead - for once he was perfectly content to let a grown up take the lead, with how scary this place was - but he wanted to see if it was the right way to go and -
"Nope. Nope, we're leaving. Time to go," Dipper said abruptly, walking over and grabbing Hiccup by the hand, tugging him back in the other direction that they'd come from. "Forget the creepy house, forget the rules, let's try to find another way out of this thing. We're leaving."
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"Look, at least let me just see what it is before we run off. If only so I know what to look for in case it starts chasing us out of here."
Hiccup slid the door open slightly and peered past it.
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Standing next to it a few feet away was another life-sized doll in a kimono facing the door.
But this one's head and arms were missing.
Neither was moving and the filaments on their cameras weren't glowing but who knew if that would last.
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"...okay, you were right, time to go."
He might not have the benefit of knowing anything about horror games, but even he could tell that going through that door wasn't going to lead anywhere good. Going back the way they came, he found other door stuck shut. Any attempts to cut through it ended with Inferno bounce off of it, despite it being paper and thin wood.
"You have to be kidding me. That's just cheating."
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Mabel's shrieks were possibly alerting the ghost doll of their proximity.
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He drew in a deep breath and let it out, trying to quell his own panic.
"It's almost definitely based off a game, judging from the mechanics we're working with. In games, there's usually a best ending, a vaguely good or sort of mediocre ending, and a bad ending." He let go of his sister's mouth. "Usually what makes people lose is they panic and don't pay attention to things and either an enemy gets them or they miss something important and get the bad ending. But Mabel, we've faced stuff this scary before. And if it's like a game, games can be beaten. We have one huge advantage over the characters in most games."
He caught Mabel's gaze and then looked up at Hiccup again. "The heroes in games - barring totally annoying escort quests - are almost always alone. We're not. We have each other."
And it wasn't an escort quest if they all could fight back. And it wasn't entirely like a game if they weren't locked into a few set possible actions and were capable of being clever and brave and thinking outside the box.
It also wasn't entirely like a game if they were real people and they all cared about helping each other get out alive.
"So let's go find ourselves a creepy undead doll and glamour shot the stupid thing to death."
They had to have faith. He had it. Mabel was here and she was always the person he trusted most at his side when things got really bad. And Hiccup, so far, clearly cared about keeping the two of them safe. He was a good guy.
They could do this.
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The room with the dolls was creepy as anything but the filaments didn't glow and the dolls didn't move.
"I think this is a puzzle. The voice in the stone talked about hiding the arms and legs, right?"
He thought about it.
"Even if putting them back on the doll might cause something creepy to happen, it might be a trigger for something. Maybe it'll make a door or tunnel open somewhere. That's usually how these things work."
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"And I'm not seeing any in here. I think we're in for a search."