melodiesoflife | Player Plot - Haunted House 2

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Player Plot - Haunted House 2 - The Moogle Test of Courage

Characters: Moogles and Heroes who signed up. Latecomers welcome for a brief time
Where: An old run down shrine north of Aqures Ixen
When: October 20th
Summary: Mysterious letters have gone out, inviting moogles to come take part in a test of courage, and inviting Heroes to come and be the monsters for it.
Warning: 2SPOOKY It’s too late a skeleton is inside you

Throughout the month letters were arriving in mailboxes, though it was never clear who actually did the deliveries. This was further complicated by the fact that the letters addressed to the Heroes who received them were all requesting a level of secrecy from them for the sake of making this event go off without a hitch. The letters that came to the moogles on the other hand only spoke of a challenge, and a promise of prizes and glory to the bravest of moogles, if they could prove themselves. The letters were simply signed Kutan. No letters sent back to them would be replied to.

The Heroes were encouraged to show up early on the 20th, while the moogles were told to come at sundown.

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Duster unwrapped the cloth protecting the paper-mâché zombie mask and set it on the break room table. He has spend the past week painting blood on his torn outfit, creating the mask, and finding the right markers to color his exposed skin. Tamekichi was no help. The Moogle decided that haunted houses weren't work the time of cool, suave postal workers like him and left his Hero to his own devices. Duster, who had no clue how to do arts and crafts. Duster, who had wanted to come as a bedsheet ghost before convinced otherwise.

But they were right. Ghosts weren't that scary. Some where nice and partied all night with wine and rotten food. This was supposed to be a test of courage, not a test of hospitality.

At the very least, his limp helped sell the image of a zombie. He tests it out, wearing the mask and exaggerating his hobbling as he wanders from one edge of the room to the other. All was good, things were going to be good.

...Until he pulled off the mask five minutes later breathing heavily, his face flushed.

Ed decided to go with makeup over a mask, wearing a suit and hat he's properly worn down to look like he came fresh from the grave. Now that he sees Duster huffing and puffing, he'd glad he went this route, no matter how much of a pain it was to get the makeup looking right.

Making sure no moogles were coming, he walked up to Duster, grinning while trying to look sympathetic.

"You doing alright there?"

"Y-yeah..." He panted a few more times before he pushed himself off his knees. "I think I should've made bigger breathing holes."

He ran his thumb over the nose of the mask. Dried paper and glue stuck out everywhere on that part of the mask, and Duster let it me. Zombies were supposed to look ugly. Unfortunately, some of the material was blocking the small holes he pierced.

"Ah, typical mistake. Or I'm assuming. I mean, I have no idea how to make a good mask, so I'd probably overlook something like that too."

Ed felt around his jacket until he found what pocket he had a pen hiding in, and hands it over to Duster.

"Here. It's not much, but you might be able to poke bigger holes in it with that. Not going to be able to scare any if you can't breath in there, right?"

A nod of thanks, and Duster spread his fingers on the inside of the mask to provide support as he shifted the tip of the pen around the nose. When he found the exact hole he made, he pushed the pen in slowly in the hopes that it didn't tear up the entire nose. A zombie with busted nostrils only looked scary if it didn't have old newspapers falling out of it.

The head of the pen slid through, breaking up the glued paper around the nostrils. This should be good, Duster thought.

"Thanks," he said as he held out the pen with one hand and put the mask to his face with the other.

He nodded as he put the pen back in his jacket. He looked around at the currently empty woods.

"Not a problem. Though I realize, maybe we're not in so much of a rush after all. Do you think the moogles were too scared to try, or just can't take this seriously? My guess is the latter. Er, except in Mogrissa's case. She'd be the former."

Ed's own moogle helper was more than a little on the shy side. He wasn't sure she even got up the courage to show up to the event at all.

He shrugged, fingers on both hands spread out along the sides of the mask to hold it up without touching the paint job. "Tamekichi said he had better things to do. Maybe he was scared, but he's the kind of Moogle who cares about his image. He probably thought no one would take him seriously if he came."

"Too hip for this sort of thing, huh. I guess it's obvious I'm not too proud for this sort of thing, but I'm sure I was when I was younger, too. Now, I'm just some old weirdo running around in the woods covered in makeup."

Ed grinned and shrugged. No one should be above Halloween hijinks!

"You have haunted houses where you're from?" Duster had wondered how common this was in other worlds. He first heard of sending young people into specially-built spooky locations for fun a few weeks ago.

"Back on the Nowhere Islands, we already had a haunted castle. Only it was too dangerous for most of us to go in there alone."

"Do you mean the this kind, or the 'real' kind?" Because one we do, the other we don't, though maybe it depends on who you ask."

Ed comes from a world full of magic and supernatural creatures from other dimensions, but ghosts were surprisingly fictional.

"I've been to a lot of so-called haunted houses that have yet to give me any proof I'll believe, anyway. Scientifically or magically. Plenty of spooky funhouses around Halloween time, though, or at carnivals. This is much more elaborate, though."

"I guess if you don't have ghosts, you have to make up for it." He wasn't around last year when ghosts truly haunted Aqures Ixen, and in his mind they never existed.

"Whoever built this really went all the way. Did you see the paint job on the shrine? It looks like the one we had back home!"

"Whoa, you okay there?" Rialynn's costume still made her easily recognizable to those who knew her. White ragged clothes dappled with gray paint in the creases adorned her, like a tattered ballroom gown. Her hair and face were both powdered white, so that the ivory color even clung to her lashes.

It wouldn't be obvious until she started singing eerily at the Moogles, but she'd opted to go for banshee. Jumping out and scaring the Moogles up close just seemed way too mean, and she'd already advised Kunia not to participate in this. She was such a kind and sweet little thing, it would have broken Rialynn's heart to frighten her even for the sake of a holiday.

But for Duster to get winded that quickly didn't seem to bode well. She put a hand on his shoulder to steady him, her pale brow wrinkled with concern. "Is it the mask? I can do your makeup for you if you'd prefer that."

"Y..." Duster wheezed before opting to nod. He held his mask up, laying it horizontally so better take a look at the nose holes.

Just as he thought, they were too small. He was essentially covering his mouth and nose.

"No, you don't have to do that. I spent a week on this mask, but..." He held it out for Rialynn to check. "It looks like the breathing holes got covered up."

"You made this yourself?" Rialynn's pale eyebrows shot up. She looked at the mask again, really studying it this time. "Duster, this is really good. I would have thought it was something a craftsman would sell in his shop!"

She dropped to one knee, rolling up the tattered hem of her costume to draw a small throwing knife from the inside cuff of her boot, and passed it to Duster. "Here, will this help? Maybe you can widen the holes a little with the tip."

Hopefully he didn't plan on using this mask to scare her to death after the trial of courage for the Moogles, because she was pretty sure she would have fallen for it in a frantic heartbeat.

"What?" Duster leaned back, a crooked smile forming on his face. "I just followed the instructions the craftsman gave me, that's all." It was a mess, though mostly unintentional. If this were meant to be anything other than a decaying zombie, Rialynn would not have complimented it so.

Masterwork or not, he accepted the knife. Stabbing a hole was easy with something so sharp. He held the mask horizontally, closing one eye to better aim the knife.

"Hidden weapons are pretty good in a fight. You know how to throw knives?"

"Yeah. Don't tell, there's no point if the villains know I've got them," she winked, grinning, then looked at the mask as she watched him work. "I haven't really had to use them much since coming here. Most of the time if I get into a fight, the rapier does just fine. There aren't many places here that refuse you entry if they see you've got a weapon on you."

The libraries in her world wouldn't let any sword-bearing people inside, and also required a signed pass from a nobleman to gain entry. It was probably a good thing that Duster and the Gang never had to deal with any of those libraries, for they were hiding a great evil within their walls.

"Still," she shrugged. "It's good to have them if I need to keep a distance. Why, do you keep some too?"

"No, not daggers," he answered. "No one in Tazmily would let you in if you carried something like that. I had my Thief Tools, but they don't really hurt anyone. Just make it easier to me to fight."

He could ask Cid to bring them to this world, but that would involved talking to Cid. Or Biggs. Neither of which was a person Duster enjoyed talking to.

"Not that I'm having a hard time here. Back home, I didn't have any magic powers or a way to strike a bunch of monsters at the same time."

"...Huh?" Rialynn blinked at him, confused. "How do Thief Tools make it easier to fight?" She thought that was just a set of picks meant for unfastening locks, Rialynn wouldn't have imagined that they would have any use in combat.

Unless you had to fight while manacled which, to be fair, one of her friends had done when locked in the bastille.

But at the latter, she could agree and she relaxed a little with a short laugh. "No, neither did I. No magic, no supernatural abilities. And hopefully no monsters, but you can never really be sure of that."

Duster turned two wide, brown eyes at Rialynn. As a boy, he was taught in the art of lockpicking and breaking and entering, but those were not considered Tools with a capital t. They were tools, but not the Thief Tools.

"Things like...pinning an enemy down with Wall Staples. Those can also be used to climb a wall, so that makes them twice as useful." Duster readjusted the fold of his sleeve. "And my smoke bombs and hypno-pendulum and the mask that scares enemies from attacking. Without them, I'd lose every time I faced more than one monster."

"Really? Wow...sounds kind of like they've got some magical properties to them." Maybe she should look into getting one of those masks at the very least. Would that even work against the monsters here? It probably wasn't something she should test without decent backup, anyway.

Once he'd finished fixing his mask, she held out her hand to take her knife back, then dropped to her knee so she could replace it in its proper spot. "Are you going to ask Cid for a set?"

"They don't." The answer was obvious and trivial to Duster. His tools were no more magic than ghosts or walking gravestones or slugs that shot acid at intruders. Magic was the powers that Lucas and Kumatora wielded. The ability to heal or create lighting with their minds was incredible and almost unbelievable.

His mouth tightened at the mention of Cid. He had considered asking him, but after their first encounter, he wasn't sure about returning for another regain.

"I don't need them as much. I still have my Job to take care of it."

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Player Plot - Haunted House 2 - The Moogle Test of Courage

Duster | OTA

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