Night 48: Church (Ruins)

[gald_digger]

[from here]The heavy door seemed to drag as Anise slowly pushed it open, and the girl cringed at the scraping noise it made. To add to her uneasiness, there was a familiar, repugnant smell in the air, though she couldn't recall what it was right away

Comments

[gald_digger]

Anise wished she could say this was the first time she'd seen so many dead bodies in one place. However, that didn't mean she was used to the sight. The girl backed away from the skeleton in front of her, worrying for a moment that it might jump up and attack, like the corpses in Doyleton had.

A sickening crack that sounded beneath Anise's foot caused the girl to freeze with dread. She pointed the flashlight, its beam unsteady, at the ground to reveal another body: this one laying on the floor with an arm stretched outward into the center aisle. She had just crushed a person's fingers, or what was left of them.

With a small gasp, the girl jumped away from the corpse. Pointing her light at the floor now, she noticed several more bodies had collapsed there. Careful not to step on any others, Anise hurried over to where Tenzen stood. The big guy looked like he wasn't fazed at all. How many times did a person need to see a scene like this before they got used to it? Anise didn't want to find out.

Tenzen seemed to have found something to look at other than the bodies, however, so Anise followed his gaze to the wall across from them...

'YOU WILL BOTH BURN'.

The shock of stumbling upon the corpses, as well as literally stumbling over one of them, had left Anise in a bit of a daze, and she stared at the wall for a few moments before the words registered in her mind. "Both...?" she read aloud, looking from the wall to Tenzen.

[should_be_dead]

The writing seemed to have been done in blood if it's color and the many stains upon the floor were anything to go by. He couldn't quite tell to whom it had been directed, however. Certainly, the one responsible for this...curious massacre.

It would seem Anise hadn't been able to tell either, and she gave him a look. Tenzen merely shook his head, as there was no shame in admitting that he didn't know. "Both could refer to various people," he said. "Perhaps they refer to the head doctor, though that still leaves another person."

[gald_digger]

If the first person was the Head Doctor, then the second could be...

"What about that man from the radio? The Head Doctor used to always talk like he knew him really well," Anise suggested. He said something about being betrayed by him, too... not that Anise believed anything either of those two said. The Head Doctor and the people on the radio both spent their time leading people into deadly traps. Neither of them could be trusted for anything.

After a moment, Anise sighed. "Well, that's if it has anything to do with them, anyway." It seemed like it'd be a little too convenient if the people referred to by the bloody message turned out to be two people Anise knew, but at the same time, she really wouldn't put it past the Head Doctor to do something this horrible. And while she still couldn't guess at how all these people were killed, she was sure that he was capable of doing it.

Now that Anise had calmed down a bit, the girl turned her head and shone her flashlight around the room, hoping to find some other clue about what happened here. Since the podium seemed like the most important part of the room, she slowly wandered in that direction, taking care not to trip over or brush against anything unpleasant on the way.

[should_be_dead]

Tenzen recalled a few mentions about a man of the radio. Though this man had obviously been replaced with a woman now, he heard read something along those lines on the bulletin board when it hadn't been censored. Additionally, he recalled the head doctor mentioning it once or twice as well.

"We cannot tell for certain right now," the ninja said matter-of-fact-ly, meaning that it would have to wait. Either way, there was no sense lingering on it for now; staring at such scribbles while making up theories obviously wouldn't provide them with any sort of information. The girl seemed to agree with this, considering she had began to move towards the platform with the candles. He decided to follow her.

[gald_digger]

There was a book on the podium, and when Anise came near, she shone her flashlight onto the open pages and took a peek. At a glance, it looked like it was a story of some kind, told using heavy, archaic language. It wasn't too difficult to understand, especially since Anise was used to hearing the same sort of vocabulary in Score readings and seeing them in some Order texts.

Curious, she picked the book up, disturbing a layer of dust that had formed all around it, and examined the cover. 'The Holy Bible.' If it was supposed to be 'holy,' then it was probably an important part of... whatever this church was for.

Since Tenzen was just nearby, she shifted a little to the side, showing him the book. "I guess this is some kind of holy book," she told him, though it wouldn't have taken long for him to reach the same conclusion. On the other hand... maybe he'd know something about it? When she thought about it, Anise didn't even know whether he was from Earth or not.

[should_be_dead]

Tenzen glanced at the open pages as well, also concluding it to be a story written in heavy, archaic language. The words upon the cover read 'The Holy Bible'. Concluding this to be 'some kind of holy book' was something Tenzen had indeed been quite capable of on his own.

However, if the girl hoped the ninja would be able to tell more about this particular subject, she was going to be disappointed. Though he indeed came from Earth, he also came from Japan during an era in which Christianity had been forbidden by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Along with that, the members of the Iga clan didn't frequently interact with outsiders (excluding the Kouga Clan and Hattori Hanzo). This even included Tenzen himself, who had 'only' been part of the Iga for 150 years.

"I doubt it'd be able to tell us of what has occurred here," he stated simply before continuing to glance over the podium. Below it there seemed to be some sort of collection plate with some foreign-looking money on it. Finding little else of interest, he turned around and noticed a door.

"Hnn. Perhaps that door hides something of interest," he said.

[gald_digger]

"I guess you're right..." Anise agreed somewhat hesitantly, placing the book back where she got it from. If it had been something like the Score, there was a chance that it really would have some kind of clue, but it wasn't like they had time to look through it. A book that size would take weeks to read all the way through.

Following Tenzen's gaze, Anise too noticed the collection plate under the podium. Curious, the girl knelt down to take a closer look. The money looked similar to what she had seen her doctor use once before, though it was covered in dust. She picked up one of the bills and looked it over, thinking.

Coming from a religious upbringing, Anise understood what kind of a crime it was to take money from a church offering plate, but the fact was that neither the church nor the people in it were going to use it. There was only a slim chance that Anise would have an opportunity to use it herself, but that was still a better chance than what they had. Besides, money was power, and power was something they didn't have nearly enough of right now.

Gathering the bills in her hands, Anise folded and tucked them into the side of her shoe, where she was sure they wouldn't fall out. She left the coins alone. Not only were they too heavy to take, but she'd done enough window shopping in Doyleton to understand a few things about Earth money; namely that 'dollars' were worth more than 'cents'. So even though the paper looked cheap, it was actually more valuable.

Finished with that, Anise picked up her equipment, which had been set aside briefly, and hopped back to her feet. She grinned apologetically at Tenzen, hoping he hadn't seen what she was just doing. "Ah! You might be right." The girl wandered back to the man's side, though she didn't make a move for the door right away. She didn't want to take the lead if there was going to be another pile of dead bodies ahead of them. "Okay, you first!"

[should_be_dead]

If Tenzen had seen what Anise had been doing, he made no outward indication of it. In all honestly, he couldn't care any less if the girl chose to take the money or not; such petty things were simply none of his concern.

"Very well," he responded before cautiously opening the door. He raised his axe in case the door would reveal an enemy; as a ninja of Iga, it would be more than foolish to be caught off guard like this. But nothing jumped from the darkness beyond the door, so the ninja lowered his weapon and swept his torch around the area.

The sight he met was...rather disappointing. It was a small room holding only the barest of foreign-looking furniture; a bed, a desk and a dresser. Additionally, there was a box that contained clothing from what he could see in the beam of his torch. Notably, there were no corpses.

He couldn't help but to scoff at this discovery, but he still moved inside to investigate the drawer.

[gald_digger]

Anise was hoping to be able to judge the state of the room by Tenzen's reaction to it, but then she remembered that he didn't actually react that strongly to anything. Damn it.

The girl followed as he stepped inside, and upon seeing the mostly empty room, she released a small breath she had been unconsciously holding. Okay, this she could deal with. Since Tenzen was checking out the drawers, Anise wandered over to the cardboard box to investigate. It looked fairly ordinary, but she didn't want to leave any stones unturned, mostly because she didn't ever want to come back here after tonight.

The clothes were pretty plain, some of it frumpy by Anise's standards, though she still wasn't all that familiar with Earth's fashion. Whose were these, anyway? Maybe they belonged to whoever lived at the church, or maybe they were donations. Whatever they were, there wasn't anything else in the box, so once Anise had gone through everything, she gave it one last glance and then stuffed it all back into the box again.

"Nothing over here," she called to Tenzen, hoping he was having better luck.

[should_be_dead]

"Only a handful of useless items," Tenzen answered once he had finished looking through the drawer. Pens...paper...none of them were quite worth taking as they could be easily acquired at the institute.

He hadn't expected anything useful in the box, an observation that had been right judging by Anise's reaction. The bed held little interest, though he spared it a small investigation for good measure. As expected, looking under the pillow, old sheets, mattress or the bed itself yielded nothing fruitful.

That still left the desk.

[gald_digger]

'Useless' described just about everything in this room. Anise was hoping to find a journal full of secret confessions, a hidden safe full of treasure, anything! And were there really no clues about the massacre in the previous room?

As Tenzen tore apart the bed, Anise looked to the last unexplored corner of the room. The desk still hadn't been examined, so the girl scanned the top of it and began rifling through the drawers. She pulled out several pens and a few sheets of paper, looking them over before setting them on top of the desk. In the back of one drawer, she found one unusual object, and upon pulling it out into the light she realized it was a flask of wine. That too joined the other objects on the desk, and after feeling around in the drawer one more time, Anise found nothing more inside.

Stepping back and looking over her findings, she sighed. "Just more junk," the girl mumbled, clearly disappointed. "I don't think anything in here's going to help us."