Halloweenie Days 1-3

[seimeinotaka]

Day 1: Blood

Warning: This one features dead animals, specifically lab mice.

Aoyanagi Ayame finishes her package, carefully wrapped, and hands it to Kanesan, as Akita puts away the tape and Gokotai the remaining paper. She thinks for a moment before gathering all, Urashima and Aizen stop looking at the tubes full of colorful jelly-like substances, and even Maeda is taken along by Kogitsunemaru.

“Kids, do you know what day it is?”

“Tuesday?” Aizen replies, unsure, but Ayame just smiles as she shakes her head, messy blue hair flinging around.

“No, today is the first day of October. October is a special month, at the end it’s the day when the spirits freely roam the Earth. Monsters and the undead all gather together and… But I won’t tell you about it, I just recalled something that happened in my lab.”

“Before you became a Saniwa?” Akita asks, all of them fully aware that before then, Ayame was into science, even if she didn’t look like a scientist at first glance.

She nods. “You see, sometimes we have to work with mice and when we are done, we have to sacrifice them. We can’t keep them all, and some get injected with dangerous substances. But there are protocols to follow and after we put them to sleep, we wrap them in packages like these,” she points to the one next to her, “and put them in a freezer. When the freezer is full, they get cremated.” She smiles at them, as some young eyes look at each other with a stiff smile.

“So one time, a colleague was working with mice but he had to take out their hearts for later experiments. So he had to pile all of them up, poor little things, with their bellies open and a huge stench of blood. It was so much he had to use double wrapping because the blood kept flowing, but he paid no attention. When his paper no longer got stained, he thought it was good enough and left for the animal facility, which his poor 10 dead little mice in hand.”

Her cheerful expression doesn’t fade, even though Gokotai and Aizen’s faces have turned deadly white and Urashima forces himself to smile.

“So, he’s walking down the hall, all alone at night when he feels something moving inside the package. He stops immediately and looks down and he sees some tiny paws in blood through the paper…”

There is an eerie silence as all the swords are frozen in place until a cheerful laugh resonates.

“Master,” Kogitsunemaru lifts her chin and looks at her with a loving gaze. “You shouldn’t be such a tease. Your lab works with bacteria and not mice.”

“Awww, Kogi~” Ayame pouts and looks back with puppy eyes. “It was just a short story to begin October. Anyway, kids, please take this to the freezer.” Their eyes go to the package in Kanesan’s hands.

That night, Akita, Aizen, Gokotai, Maeda, Urashima and Kanesan struggle to keep nested in one bed.

No one can sleep.

 Day 2: Ghost 

Nikkari Aoe sat on his bed, rubbing his eyes as he let out a long, drawn sigh, one that he hadn’t done in a long time. He heard ruffling, turning to see the page of a magazine turning on its own.

He didn’t even raise an eyebrow, but instead laid down with a rather unelegant plop as he said, “Hey, can you at least do that somewhere else? Or show yourself when you are in my room?”

A faint laughter was audible as the figure of a young woman appeared right next to him. Marugame Shiyoko didn’t bother to look at Nikkari. “Right, right… I’ll take it you are just grumpy today~ Anniversary?”

Nikkari closed his eyes but didn’t respond. His lips formed, however, a thin, wary line across his face.

“I take it as a yes. Back when you were a good metal chunk?”

He couldn’t help but laugh aloud, not yet quite used to the terms of his previous life, but it was her rather casual way of talking that managed to make him smile in spite of everything.

“…Sometimes I wonder if you can read minds as well.”

“I’d not read yours, full of scenes of depravity and penises, thank you.” Shiyoko flips the magazine page, with a raised eyebrow of disapproval at the picture. “For such a terrible man, your tastes are very vanilla. All these men are in the same pose, it gets boring by page 5.”

“Give me a break,” Nikkari groaned and rolled to the side. When he opened his eyes, he met Shiyoko’s face, the same that Nikkari passed his hand through, with a slashing motion.

“Uh, I’m quite dead but I still have my feelings and that was very rude.”

“If I were still the same, you’d no longer be here.”

Shiyoko stared at him for a long time. Hundreds of years ago, a sword cut through a woman and a child. “Are you still upset by that?”

“Hmph.”

“Well, no clue what your priest thinks, but if you ask me, you did them a favor. Not every ghost is as chill as me, so many get warped in their grief.”

“You almost killed me.”

“Deeeetails. ANYWAY, you gave them peace and they could move on. That’s more divine and merciful, befitting of a holy sword chunk in my book. But you cut a lantern, that was very rude. You should be ashamed for that.”

“It was possessed.”

“How can lanterns move?”

Nikkari rolled his eyes and laughed again. “Shouldn’t you be sent as well?”

“No, because I’m a su-u-per friendly ghost who won’t harm anyone. I need no sending, I can watch your house.”

“Yes, because you’d go to hell.”

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll peep on you when you bathe next time, payback. Anyway, your personal priest is here. I might have phoned him and said ‘Seven days’, so don’t let him near me. He said he’d send me to heaven. But I like you, so I think I’ll pass.”

Day 3: Graveyard

Ueno Airi shivered as she held her jacket closer, not that she was lacking any warmth when Gokotai, Maeda, Akita, and Hakata stuck around her. They had said it was for her protection but they all knew that such a formation was ideal to visualize anything that would come for them, not that the tanto would be able to see above the large gravestones or that they dared to look at them. The lights of their flashlights trembled in the night, all due to unsteady hands shaking in terror as they all tried to walk across the graveyard. Meters ahead of them were Atsushi and Midare, both looking excited as it had been their idea to inspect the unusual noises in the graveyard that Midare had heard during a test of courage days ago.

“Hmmm, I could swear it was around there~” Midare chirped and inspected the nearby graves.

“C-can we just… go home? There’s nothing around…” Airi said, though her voice, instead of sounding convincing, came out as a desperate plea. “Y-yyour brother won’t be happy to know you are here late at night…” The other tanto nodded in unison.

Something cracked behind them, the small hairs on the back of their neck shot up in half a second as coldness flowed through their bodies. None of them turned immediately, needing a second broken branch even though there had been nothing there a minute ago…

“Yo…” An otherworldly voice resonated and all lights flew in the air, trying to pin point whatever it was until they all centered in something pale as a corpse and unhuman looking, with deep shadows and-

“Geeeneeeraaaaaal….”

There was a myriad of screams and shrieks ringing through the cemetery until a laugh that didn’t belong to Midare or Atsushi followed along. Immediately, all lanterns stopped trembling and pointed at the faces of Yagen and Ichigo.

“My apologies, but that terrified face was very endearing, Master,” Ichigo said with a soft smile to which Airi puffed her cheeks and glared in a failed menacing way. “We tried to get your attention, but…”

“Namazuo told us our younger brothers wanted to investigate noises and you had come along,” Yagen said in his calm voice and now that they weren’t in utter terror, all the siblings realized his face was kind of pale in the first place…

“Yo! Ichi-nii!” Atsushi waved and went further with Midare close. “I think there’s nothing here, what a-” Atsushi leaned next to a tombstone and something fell, something partially covered in mud, Atsushi picked it up and just as he realized two empty sockets stared at him.

“Sk-k-k-uuuullllll!” He screamed, dropping it as he rushed to Ichigo, who was now shielded by all of the Toushirous, but more by Airi holding his arm tightly.

“There is no-”

A long high-pitched noise resounded.

“Stop joking, Yagen.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

In less than a second, everyone ran away with Midare yelling to wait for him. Nakigitsune emerged from a bush and hung his head down.