Vikktor's Marshland Fortress

[*~Nikkole~*]

Fituna nodded. "There were only a few of us left after Vikktor sent some away. The others we know are dead..." She looked to Cironia who nodded solemnly. The two woman looked back at him before Fituna spoke again. "There is no point in searching down here... she was only down here because she fled. Vikktor held his prisoners in the dungeon...."

Jeremy shook his head. "No... I don't advise you try that, Kadaj." He warned through the wall before getting to the door. He walked through the door before reaching into the blackness he couldn't see through. "Alright... now the fun part." He said sarcastically to himself as he searched around. "Hey Kadaj... can you see or reach me??" He had a feeling this was where Kadaj would be in a few minutes... but his eyes couldn't see him.

Kamen looked back and swore he saw something but... Lekki screeched and jumped back. "K-kuro!" He stammered as a shaded figure stood up in one of the cells. The figure looked at them before flashing a wry grin.

Kamen gasped before running over. "Kuro?! You're still alive??" He was shocked and amazed at the fact that a teen he thought to be dead for at least a year was still living and breathing.

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Loz watched from a fairly safe distance. "He better be." If it turns out there's two ghosts down here, I'm gone. To h**l with pride-- I'm a Remnant, not a Ghostbuster. The boy looked so pale, gaunt and thin, Loz couldn't avoid the possibility that maybe the kid wasn't quite alive after all.

Kadaj squinted... his infrared eyes were definitely picking up on something... It resolved into a human shape. He called back to Jeremy. "I think so... why, exactly, was blowing up the wall a bad idea?" He moved towards the boy, feeling not a little uneasy about following the kid's lead...

Yazoo nodded. "All right. Then to the dungeon we go." Killed them all, did he? Because he saw us coming? Hmph. Like the Shinras when they found out we were failures... who knows how many specimens didn't survive because they were covering their tracks... B*****d. He began lead the girls back out towards the main hall. "Mind the puddle," he warned Citronia. He glanced back to be sure Fituna was coming... He didn't want to leave her without coming to some understanding as to why she evoked such strange reactions in him...

[*~Nikkole~*]

Kamen ignored him and stopped in front of the cell. “Kuro?” The older boy stepped forward into the semi light, grinning slightly eerily. Kamen went to move back but the other lashed out at him with something sharp....

Kamen jumped back and stared at him, blinking slowly. A thin line of blood ran down the side of his cheek from a clean, but shallow, gash. Lekki gasped slightly. “Anai, you’re bleeding!”

Kamen touched the blood before snarling at Kuro. The other boy was jerked into the bars of his cell roughly as if something had pushed him. Kamen’s eyes narrowed. “So you do remember me…” He smirked uncharacteristically before stepping forward again.

Kuro glared at Kamen as he tried to fight off Kamen’s power, but the other boy was too strong to fight off. He stopped suddenly and stood rigid. Kamen opened the door and stood in front of him. “I’m not here to kill you… just free you.” Kuro weakly squirmed but said nothing. He couldn’t speak. The boy was muted just before he was put down here. The boy had fought the master and back talked him. So he was permanently muted.

Jeremy took a few more steps forward before hearing Kadaj and his breathing; he stopped and looked in his direction. “Those walls have bombs in them. Not big ones but if you come crashin’ through it’ll hurt to the point you don’t wanna move.” He turned. “Trust me. I tried a few years back…” He started walking back. “Come on. Lets get out of here before they move again.” He almost sounded friendly. Almost. He still didn’t like Kadaj….

Fituna nodded and followed him out, Cironia trailing behind. Cironia nodded and skirted around the puddle of blood as she walked behind the other two. Fituna caught him glance back at her but said nothing as they made their way back to the great hall….

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Kadaj followed quickly. If anyone else is stuck down here, it looks like they're on their own. I'm officially sick of this place. The more I see, the weirder I realize this master of Kamen's was. "I knew a place like this one once... that Forest on the Northern Continent? The trees changed around on you when you weren't paying attention. Unless you had a Lunar Harp on you. Easy to get lost in there, but a great place to hide."

Loz stood over thos Kuro kid... obviously he was a mortal, and as such he had no means of scaring Loz anymore. "I sense some bad blood here," he noted menacingly. "So, you gonna come quietly? Er, in the metaphorical sense, that is."

Yazoo and the girls stepped out into the main hall. "We can either wait here for the others to catch up, or you can show me the way to the dungeon," Yazoo suggested. "Either option is fine with me." He turned his eyes from the growing pool of blood spreading around Vikktor's corpse... He'll be left here to rot, or be eaten by whatever other animals he has lurking in here.

[*~Nikkole~*]

Jeremy laughed quietly. "Really, thats pretty cool. You must have been a lot of different places, then?" He glanced back as they walked down the slightly lighter corridor. He was curious, more so now, who this guy was...

Kuro glared at him but, of course, said nothing. He looked back at Kamen and made a lunge at him but was stopped. Kamen shook his head. "Seems you don't like me. You have reason to though..." He looked around before looking back. "I was the one who brought you down here...."

Lekki looked around but found no one... well, living. He made a little 'eep' at the dead bodies before running back over and clinging to Loz. "We-we should get out of here..." He looked around fearfully.

Fituna looked around. "Kamen most likely led them to the dungeon if he went up the stairs. Lekki was the only other one who knew the codes..." She looked around. "And none of them are back yet..." She looked worriedly at the way Jeremy and Kadaj went.

Cironia gasped at the dead body of Vikktor. "You guys... killed him!?" She was more frightened then happy.

Fituna looked over and sent her a look to calm her nerves. "You'll be safe, Cironia. Don't be too alarmed." The other girl nodded slowly.

[Amnesty Lazuli]

"He would have killed us if we hadn't," Yazoo replied, vindicating himself. "So long as you present no threat to us, we will have no reason to harm you. In fact... we may even elect to protect you." I have to get away from this Fituna girl. I don't know why... I just can't take being near her. He headed towards the stairs. "A dungeon on the second floor. That's what I call thinking outside the box."

Kadaj nodded to Jeremy's query. "Many. Though I haven't done a great deal of sight-seeing in my time." He shook his head. "But name a place, and the likelihood of my having been there at least once is rather high." Trying to get on my good side, are we... all right, I'll play along... "One place I'd like to be right now is on my way out of here. How much farther?"

Loz noticed Lekki's clinging this time. He got down on eye level with him. "Easy, kid... corpses ain't gonna hurt you." Ghosts might... and if any place is haunted, this place probably is... but I have my orders. "We've got to finish searching this place. Then we'll go back right away." He stood up again. "Let's get this d**n tea party over with." He headed farther into the gloom, getting more nervous by the second...

[*~Nikkole~*]

Jeremy rolled his eyes. "We're comin' up on the security trip, best put your coat back on. Unless you really want to be wet..." He kept walking, thinking about things. Hmmm... wonder where he met Kamen.... He could see the fading beams up ahead.

Fituna laughed a bit. "Vikktor always had a strange way of running this place..." Cironia scoffed but Fituna continued. "You want us to come too?? Or wait out here for the others?"

Lekki stared at him but nodded silently. Kamen looked at them before looking around. "Alright... lets see if there's anything down here." He looked to Kuro. "You. Stay." He almost laughed as he followed Loz, the boy frozen in his place. Lekki made a little noise before following them nervously.

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Loz kept finding nothing but carcasses in various stages of degradation. "Real hospitable guy, this Vikktor was," he said sarcastically, a bit of disgust and horror creeping its way into his voice. "Sure is big, this place... looks like he wasn't really a people person."

Yazoo paused on the steps, looking back at the girls. He shrugged, doing nothing to give away his hectic internal debate. "Do what you want," he answered, continuing on his way. Sure enough, his agitation was settling down the farther he got from Fituna... but the hyperactive state of his mind was hardly settling at all.

Kadaj slipped his arms back into his sleeves as the beams showed up ahead. "Jeremy, just out of sheer morbid curiosity... what exactly would happen were one to interrupt those beams?"

[*~Nikkole~*]

Jeremy stopped and turned to look at him, grinning a bit. He held up his knife and tossed it into the beams, going through a couple. An alarm went off. The ceiling fell and hit the floor, spikes sticking into it, it came faster then most could react to. The ceiling then went back up and back to normal, vicious spikes still present. "That would happen..." He stepped closer and ran his hand around the 6 in wide hole. "A friend of Vikktor's came down here one night... he fell for this trap." He stood and looked at Kadaj, shrugging a bit. "I had to clean up the mess...."

The two girls looked at each other before looking back at him, hearing the alarm. "We'll wait here to intercept any body who comes at the sound of that alarm." They nodded to each other before looking to Yazoo to see if he was okay with it.

Lekki laughed nervously. "Master Vikktor was never nice to people he didn't like all that much. If they said or did anything he didn't like, they were gone before goodbyes could be said."

Kamen nodded as he peeked into a few closed in cells. "Yeah, Vikktor hated company... and any one who defied him." He added quietly.

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Yazoo nodded back to the girls and carried on towards the upper floor. He started tracking Loz, unable to find him in any of the upper rooms... Where are you, brother?

Loz sent back a flash of the hidden door. [i]Hurry up and get down here. This place is a nine out of ten on the creepy-meter.[/i]

Yazoo complied, trying to focus on getting there faster instead of on his agitation. Just stop dwelling on it and it will go away.

Loz had to admit to considerable relief. There wasn't very much dungeon left to search, but the idea of having backup in this place of death was still comforting. Strong as he was, he felt aimless on his own. He started breathing through his coat... the smells down here were getting unbearable.

Kadaj held his ears when the alarm sounded... it irritated his acute hearing far more than it did Jeremy's. "Let's get out of here, he requested, gritting his teeth. He slid under the beams and waited on the other side for the boy to come through... in case the walls changed again, he didn't want to go far without someone close at hand.

[*~Nikkole~*]

Fituna and Cironia took up post on either side of the broken down door. They watched the grounds for any sort of movement.....

Jeremy followed him closely before getting the hint to pick of the pace. He jogged down the corridor, worried that alarm would attract something....

Lekki skirted about and skimmed over the dead things. Kamen glanced around, holding his shirt up to his nose. He wasn't seeing anything.... Lekki stopped at the last open cell, seeing another person. He squinted his eyes to see if the body was breathing or not....

Kamen looked around and then stopped. He paled slightly before reaching out and tapping Loz. "Uh... guys..." He swallowed. A few meters in front of him, in a cell all alone, was a translucent woman in a long tattered dress....

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Loz turned around and yelped. "HOLY H**L!" He swung a fist at the apparition, but it went right through her.

He froze in panic, absolutely stock still and dead silent. If anyone had tapped him, he likely would have toppled over like a mannequin. He then screamed bloody murder.

Yazoo, coming down the stairs, raced into the room at the sound of his brother howling. "What the h**l?!" He had his guns drawn and ready for action in seconds, all other thoughts driven out completely.

Kadaj heard the scream and didn't bother waiting around for Jeremy anymore... he sprinted heedlessly towards the terrified sound at superhuman speeds, without a word, prepared to light into anything that got in his way.

[*~Nikkole~*]

The two women at the door looked over but remained where they were as they saw Kadaj run by. Jeremy soon after, but he stopped and looked at them. "Um... hi." The girls laughed and went to greet him.

Kamen jumped at the sound of Yazoo. He looked over and stared at him before looking back at the ghost. Lekki made a muffled cry and another noise before backing into the cell behind him.

The woman ghost had stopped and was almost looking at Loz but then looked away and covered her face with her hands before half floating and half walking out of the dungeon through a wall....

Kamen gaped before looking to Yazoo. "Um... I think you can relax." He swallowed, some color coming back into his face. "It was just a... ghost." He said in almost disbelief. The stories were true... Kamen looked around for another ghost or anything creepy, unnerved and fearful now.

[Amnesty Lazuli]

Yazoo looked at Kamen as if staring through a magnifying glass at a beetle. "A ghost." He shook his head. "Answer me a couple of questions and be honest. First, did you take any blunt hits to the head in that fight back there?"

Loz looked back at Yazoo like a deer caught in headlights. He tried to talk, and affirm the boys' statement, but nothing came out.

Kadaj arrived in the dungeon, out of breath from the run and the adrenaline charge. "What happened? Yazoo? What's going on?"

Loz stuttered a bit. "I-- uh-- I..." He wavered slightly.

Kadaj came forward to brace him up. "Easy... Loz... look at me... don't cry, now, Loz..."

"I am not crying!" Loz snapped.

Yazoo scoffed. "There is certainly a logical explanation. Kadaj, take Loz and the little one there out of here. Kamen, you come with me. We're combing this place for the basic equipment: projectors, smoke screens, video pods, hallucingenic compound misters."

Kadaj went into the cell with Lekki and bent down. "Hey," he ventured. "You all right?"

[*~Nikkole~*]

Kamen would have found this whole thing laughable if it weren't for that fact that he was sure he saw a ghost. He barely nodded to Yazoo before looking around again.

Lekki stared at Kadaj before slowly narrowing his eyes into a childish glare. "I'm fine..." He said in the most threatening tone he could- which wasn't all that threatening- before biting his thumb a bit, nervous habit. "It just... erm, caught me off guard. Thats all." He added in his defense, still looking rather pale.

Kuro had taken this time to worm his way out of Kamen's magic. He looked to them all before walking out, thinking they were all on something. Kamen let him go, mentally telling him to meet Fituna and Jeremy at the door.