A Casa Monstro

 The Charred Remnants of Black Forest represented a dark time in Kumogakure's past. It was the embodiment of the type of grim despair and unimaginable horrors that were characteristic features of the Hidden Cloud before the time of the eleventh Raikage. It was the peace that he had thus far maintained since that made many troops devote their allegiance and servitude to his rule. A divided nation came together under the common idealism of patriotism, holding out hope for Kumon glory and strived towards salvation from the eternal Plague that haunted the country, leaving rotten corpses in Its Wake. And thus, the tyranny of Noboru Kaito became acceptable. Nobles would quite literally - gladly - cut their hands and fingers off of their own bodies upon his command. For the most trivial of missteps, nobles would often get away with only losing a finger but the common folk would be lucky to only forfeit a hand in repentance. 

It was under the rule of this same tyrant that Saturn Sentobi found himself at the footing of an ancient rundown mansion at the outer edge of the Black Forest. An ominous moon oversaw the mansion that night. It had risen in its crescent state, and storm clouds perpetually characteristic of Lighting country zipped past its dimensions, making it play peek a boo in the sky. The tall - enormous - aged residence stood between the local village and the foot of the forest. Evidently, it once oversaw what was once the lush green woods up ahead. The endless charred remnants of the black forest were only a short walk away from the site, though one or two black stubs of bark remained within a few feet from its rusted gates. Perhaps, servants once made trips to the forest to gather rations for the family that used to dwell in this mansion, and wood for their fire. Yet now, the land was lifeless and no trees seemed to sprout. Looking around, Saturn could not sense any birds that he could use his powers on to scout ahead, nor could he hear the clicking sounds that crickets and worms made in trees at this time of the hour.  Looking at the site in front of him, the two glass windows facing him from the second floor seemed like eyes, and the stacked gates below seemed to rumble and snarl like the jaws of a cursed beast or a jinchuuriki with two rows of sharp, pillar like teeth. A Casa Monstro Saturn thought to himself as he swigged dark rum from his metal flask and wondered why he had chosen the middle of the night to come and investigate.

 As he had recalled, the Genin had first visited the site in the middle of the day and he was received by the contractor. The contractor was an older man with greyed hair and wrinkles on his face - contrasting the eternal youth that radiated from the blonde haired shinobi at all times. He was hunched over, and bore a look on his face as though he had seen a cursed, forbidden sight. His voice was shaky as he clutched onto Saturn's bicep and begged him to do something about the haunted mansion. Saturn would learn that the contractor was once a butler in this very same mansion, and was on his annual leave when it was burned down along with the Black Forest by some anarchist scum by the name of Haju Yayate or something like that. When he returned, the whole family had been wiped out and as the man who was their butler for over four decades, he was rightfully given the rights to the land by the authorities. Using his savings, he tried several times to renovate the burned down remains of what was once his own home just as much as his employers', but construction workers that he hired would time and again refuse to work on the project. It did not help that the last two teams that tried to help the pitiful butler went missing entirely.

 During the day time, Saturn could not sense anything unusual from outside the mansion. The contractor was reluctant to step any closer than fifty feet from the compound, so the calm rational shinobi figured it would be more considerate to revisit at a later time on his own, without having the butler slow him down. He was assigned to the mission with at least one other Genin - perhaps two or more. They were to meet the contractor in the middle of the night, right about now, but Saturn who was loitering about closer to the scene by chance when the messenger raven brought him the mission scroll describing their task thought for himself. Why would we go into a haunted mansion at night time? He questioned the instructions and took the initiative to go ahead and take a look. Upon sensing nothing paranormal from outside at daytime, the young man decided all was well and good to revisit at night since he suspected that the case was nothing but a hoax. After meeting the contractor, he had told him not to bother returning at the night time and that he would relay the useful information to the other shinobi that were assigned to the mission along with him without his assistance, and report back to him after they had concluded their investigation. Until the shroud of darkness emerged, the man had decided to hit the local pubs to kill the time. As he went from one pub to the next, they were each dull and dreadful. It would seem that the Kumon people did not like to loiter around the Charred Remnants to be reminded of their dark misfortunes. As the shots went down Saturn's throat one by one, he grew increasingly restless and impatient.

 Once again arriving early at the scene, Saturn looked around and saw that there were no signs of the others. Did they chicken out? He chuckled as he wondered in his tipsy faze. There really were no birds around that he could use. Perhaps I should buy one from the pet store, he thought, as that could be useful for how he operates. The mansion that seemed uneventful and unassuming in the daytime now radiated a dark, ominous presence. Staring it down, Saturn cracked a shaky grin. "Good grief..." He muttered as he took a swig and a step. Up ahead, one of the glass windows on the second floor of the mansion briefly lit up in a bright orange as though someone turned on a light before dimming back out into darkness. Squinting his eyes as the light flashed, he peered into the window from below and thought he saw a figure standing in its frame, appearing to send a signal. He never did check the mission scroll beyond a brief glimpse at the key points. He did not know which of his compatriots and how many of them were assigned with him. "Must be one of the others." He speculated that he might have been late to the party, and continued to step towards the gates that were crumbled and peaked open wide enough for most shinobi to hop through.

 As Saturn approached the deformed door - it was skewed and bent - at the entrance of the grand residence, a pressure seemed to forcibly push him away, like a strong mountain gale that he had to lean forwards into in order to march on and resist. Turning the knob, he creaked the door open into a pitch black hall. The faint moonlight that entered through the door showed the shadow of a spiralling staircase up ahead, and revealed a large dusty carpet in the middle of the room on which a large antique sofa remained uncannily aligned compared to the uncountable remains of crumbled and incinerated furniture laid around the floor on one side of the same room. 

 "Riz? Is that you?" Saturn called out towards the higher floors, venturing deeper into the ground floor. The figure in the window had seemed too large to be Goro, and too small to be Duncan. He doubted that either Yagi or Hiroki would be assigned to a task like this, as the two Chuunin that he was familiar with were likely assigned to more serious duties and not a case like this that at first seemed to be a hoax. It had to be one of the Genin.. Perhaps that dark haired guy, what was his name.. He wondered as he approached the staircase. As he made his first step, he sensed a foul stench before he heard a flurry of thuds from the floor above, like the feet of a child sprinting across the floor. He stopped in his tracks.

 "Who's there?" Saturn called out to the upper floors vindictively, feeling as though someone was messing with him. The creaking main door slammed shut immediately, sounding off a loud echoing thud and shrouding the room in complete darkness. The hair on the bronzed shinobi's body stood up as he felt chills down his spine. Reaching into his pocket, he took out his flint stone lighter and sparked its flames to cast a faint light. As the fire left the metal bound crevice on his priced possession, a bloodcurdling scream ripped into the halls. It was a vicious scream, incessant in its stretched out sorrowful cry and loud enough to disorient the bold adventurer in the ground floor. Stumbling backwards, he saw flames all around him as the scream continued, he shut his ears, but the warm hues of the flame shrouded his icy cold blue eyes in his vision till they could feel its heat. The hall was illuminated fully by the flames. In a last ditch effort to shut his ears, he let go of the lever on his lighter that kept his fire aflame, letting it die while he pressed his palms into his ears.

 As the flame died, the scream ceased and the flames around him vanished seamlessly into thin air, returning the interior to pitch black darkness. Saturn's heart pounded in his chest as he panted and coughed while he struggled to catch his breath after the mansion's stressful threat to him of utter asphyxiation by the strange scorching flames. Outside, there was no sign of a fresh fire, only the old one that had first plagued the land.

---

WC: 1731

As the door swung open, Saturn's cold icy blue eyes locked with the dark eyes that his beloved teammate bore. The blonde shinobi typically liked to know as much as he could beforehand about circumstances that may prevail in situations he should find himself in. Yet, as their eyes locked, he was clueless. It seemed as though there were no leads. There was nothing more terrifying than being in the dark. The darkness that struck fear in Saturn's heart was not the type of darkness brought on by the scarcity of light. Being in the dark about his circumstances when his life and his teammate's were on the line was far more frightful. Thinking ahead and also scared for his friend's life as well as his own, the Genin tried to cry out to warn his teammate. No, don't come in here! He wanted to tell Rizuke. In his eyes, having one man standing outside the building in this situation was far more beneficial than having all of the infantry trapped inside the dark mansion without any leads. That way, at least Rizuke could go call for backup if Saturn does not emerge back out into the world. Yet, as he saw his friend come to his rescue, only for a second, he felt relieved and gratuitous. He had slipped up. Terrified from the bloodcurdling scream that had paralyzed him in fear, he was delighted to see the familiar face of the young Uchiha clansman coming to his rescue right after. In that moment when Rizuke followed up with his request to be brought up to speed on what Saturn had learned about the case, he missed the small window of time that could have potentially saved them both. The door from which Rizuke barged in slammed shut once again, even louder than before, shrouding them both in pitch black darkness.

It was in this darkness that Majima, Saturn's unofficial subordinate to whom he had delegated some of his menial tasks in days of recent past, bumped into his notorious deligator in his mad scramble down the stairs. It was an appropriate reaction to the horrifying scream that had rendered even Saturn useless for its duration. As the man passed him, Saturn positively recognized Majima from up close, and as a quick learner who was always one to aspire to be one step ahead of the 'game' as he called it, the fortune teller was quick to put 2 and 2 together to make the right assumption that this grunting, panting body that just hit him was on the squad assigned to the mission, and further it was likely that he was also the very same figure he had seen in the window earlier. Yet, as an above average conspiracist who only ever operates on the evidence presented to him, he had not yet decided that the figure on the window was without a doubt the same young man. He suspected that there could still be other entities in the mansion, and they may not all be so friendly. For now, gathering intel from the squad was his priority, and the best bet that the squad had at making it out of the mansion alive. Before he could press the equally horrified Genin for answers on what he saw upstairs, he had sprinted past the stairs at full speed. His footsteps quieted down as he made his move towards the door through the hall in the ground floor.  He was clearly headed for the entrance, yet from Saturn's (and presumably Rizuke's) perspective from inside the mansion, the skewed door that slammed shut on Rizuke's arrival never opened the second time.

"Shhh.." Saturn would silently and cautiously warn Rizuke, placing his hand on his teammate. In the eery, lifeless silence, the man held his lighter out once again and held his breath. His heart pounded in his chest. Here goes nothing... He thought to himself as he flicked the lighter. Its flame was broad, but not broad enough to engulf the entire mansion as Saturn had previously seen. The light from the flame illuminated a small orb of space in front of its user's face - basking his own and Rizuke's in the same light so that they may see the flame and each other's faces. As the flame stayed lit, in sync with its very manifestation, a dastardly sound ripped and echoed once again. It was a sound that would normally make Saturn cringe - the sound that was made when scratching a blackboard with nails. Grima., Saturn recalled the name given to this very sound, as told to him by a peculiar auditory masochist whom he studied with during his days in the Thunderpeak Campus.  The sound persisted, and increased in volume as time progressed and the flame stayed lit. It was sharply distinct in pitch from the screeching they had all heard moments prior. A different technique. This time, there were no scorching flames. The flames in question, he hypothesized, was an illusory technique - the kind of technique that had a cooldown and could not be used in quick succession. Majima had appeared to have no signs of burning although he was inside the mansion with him when the incident occurred. Thus, he theorized that he was solely targeted by that one powerful illusion. They were definitely dealing with an entity that followed the same rules as they themselves did. Saturn's face morphed from that of an extremely frightened man, to that of a man who was only frightened.[1] Then, as Saturn released his thumb the flame went out and the horrid sound ceased in unison.

 First, it was impossibly dark. Then, as Saturn touched Rizuke once again, the vantablack veil that shrouded them both was lifted. Moonlight seeped in through the glass paint from the slight cracks in the tall, artistic windows over the stairway that were previously hidden, deliberately concealed from view. The hall and the staircase were now visible, pupils having adjusted to the dark. But Saturn did not look around. He maintained strong eye contact with Rizuke, clenched his fist on his arm and subtly shook his head to coax him to follow suit and not to look around either. Somehow, the strange entity that Saturn sought to overcome with his teammates had snuck in a trigger into his own lighter. Not having used any hand seals when he released himself and one of his compatriots from the Genjutsu veil that they were both under, Saturn now aimed not to let their captor know that the two of them had broken free. There were too many unknown variables in the mix and the team could not afford a misstep. The powers and motives of the captor in the mansion with them were still unknown.

"Riz, is that you? Where are you? Where's your face?"

Saturn would say out loud and play pretend, holding his hands out feeling for his teammate's face. From his peripheral vision, he could see Majima bent over in the middle of the hall, panting as though he was out of breath.

"Should we free him?"

Saturn whispered at Rizuke, whilst covering his mouth and pretending to cough, suggesting to his teammate that perhaps keeping him under the captor's spell could help the squad locate the culprit.

"Wait a minute.." Saturn squinted before forming the seal of confrontation. He focused in his mind's eye to activate a certain technique - Mind's Eye of The Kagura. With his new heightened senses, he could clearly make out the chakra signature of Majima being present outside the mansion just as the Nara clansman had intended. In the hall, the figure that looked just like him bore a foreign signature. Glancing over at Rizuke before holding his finger to his lips, gesturing at his comrade to be quiet, he proceeded to sign hand seals in quick succession, first making himself invisible with Hiding with Camouflage before concealing his chakra signature with Chakra Nullification. Then, he proceeded to walk towards the unassuming figure who stood suspiciously still, facing a wall.

As he reached within three meters of the figure, his invisibility vanquished, causing the person to turn around and gasp. Saturn slapped the doppelganger across the face - Discipline - and erased his use of transformation technique to reveal an old homeless man with long grey hair, wrinkled skin and yellow rotten teeth. He was out cold. "Problem solved." Saturn declared, dusting his hands, "This case was no ghost, it was a hobo all along."

---

WC: 200

TWC: 3145

EXIT;

Claims: 

2x Mission Rewards with Beloved Presence: 8000 ryo, 40 AP +2000 ryo

3000 words towards mastery of Instant Transmission

145 words discarded

Stat Claims:

500 words to unlearn 5 speed

500 words to learn 5 chakra

2145 words; +2100 ryo