House of Horrors Finale

Mission Info:

Kannagi detested the slums of Nikkousato. It wasn't that poverty was impossible to live with, or that squalor was determinable of quality of life in her eyes. It was the fact that the rest of the village was doing just fine. She couldn't stand the idea that only some suffered this plague of poverty, only some stood the misery that befell these people. If she had run the village herself, all people would have enough to live and nothing more. Her family might not have ever been rich or quite so poor off as those in the slums of Nikkousato, but the Irezumi all lived together. If they struggled, they struggled as a community, and if they triumphed, they would share the wealth and feasts together. It was some kind of wrong to exclude these people from the pleasures of what plenty called normal in this village. The number of missing children was greatest from the slums and even with the high number of shinobi in the area, patrolling frequently, it still didn't stop the missing numbers from rising.

Families were desperate and the poor businesses were suffering in turn and still the kage paid no mind. Just send another shinobi in to investigate, she thought, when instead a fleet of ANBU should have been handling the situation since it had begun and had been determined to be a pattern. The last time she had found helpful evidence, Kannagi had been with Sojiro. Even she hadn't been aware that the missing children was such a broad issue. The kunoichi had taken the next chance she had to help investigate the missing, understanding the sheer numbers were double what she had thought they were at the start. Even now, one would think that twenty missing children would have caused some stirrings at the higher levels in the village. She wandered the slums in her usual shinobi gear and attire, her head down as she walked, her ears open for rumors. She hadn't heard a thing that sparked her interest and so with a groan decided to go back to the old house she had examined nearly a week ago.

The old one story building had a graveyard like entrance to it, a wrought iron fence, and thick layers of dust upon the windows. The last time she was here, some weak shinobi bandits had thought to use the place to sell arms and used false claims of ghosts to scare people off. She handed a few ryo to Tobei along the way, using the money to help him with getting a decent meal. She hadn't believed his stories about the old abandoned place and after what took place in it, Tobei at least had earned a few meals from her when she was able. Kannagi figured it wouldn't be a complete waste of a day if she at least returned to the empty building and made sure that the arms and evidence of the bandits had been claimed and removed. If there were still bandits here, they would be surprised by her laying waste to them all again.

Kannagi thoroughly examined the rooms, the kitchen, the library, and everything was it had been left. Books still lay on the floor from where a shinobi using wind jutsu had thrown them at her, in hopes that she would think a poltergeist was after her. It hadn't worked. The fireplace was unused since the flames and the voice which had 'possessed' it previously had failed in scaring her out of her investigation. There was one place left to check: a hidden basement for a family to hide in during an emergency, perhaps an attack or a war. The kunoichi found the hidden lever in the staircase's hand rail, a carved wooden button on a baluster. The large stair case opened up, falling downward into a dark room below. Kannagi looked around for a source of light in the house, locating a matchbox and a candle with almost no wick to speak of. It would have to be enough for a quick check down there.

With a crackle, the blue eyed woman slid the head of the match into a small flame and lit the candle. She walked down the stairs into the room, a sour smell filling up her nose. She gagged and then gagged again, choking on the smell. It was familiar and yet, not. It gave her a sick foreboding feeling, but she just couldn't place such a strong and horrific scent. Kannagi used the candle to find the lights in the basement. She turned the light on and dropped the candle at her feet. Hot wax spilled over her feet and she didn't even flinch, barely feeling it as the pathetic wick burned out. The room was worse than her worse nightmares. Her mind couldn't come up with such a horrible sight to compare the basement room too.

A few small bedrolls, the size perfect only for children, a couple of buckets that had toppled and revealed filth upon the corners of this room. Kannagi had just been here. A week ago at most! How could this have happened in such a short time? How had nobody noticed!? The bandits shelves weren't empty of the weapons that they were supposed to be. Instead, there lay an entire shelf of kunai, daggers, and other strangely shaped hand blades, coated in a dark crusty substance. The smell that had been familiar aroused images of Genkumaru's destroyed and blood shoulder, but the amount of blood in this room was nothing like any injury she had ever seen. It was sprayed on the walls, smeared over the stairs, and even used like a paint to make the symbol of a triangle wrapped in circle upon the hard stone floor. The metal box that the bandits had used to hold her was still in this basement room. The streaks of blood and the small hand prints upon the outside of the tiny prison made her dizzy.

She couldn't catch her breath for gasping and choking, and gagging. She fell backwards onto the stairs and lay there staring at the scene, her eyes unable to blink, so wide they hurt and began to dry out. "Suns, stars, and all that is sacred," She murmured in a croak. It took her several minutes before she was able to find the strength to climb up out of the basement room. She didn't bother trying to shut the light off or cleaning up the candle wax she had spilled. Kannagi wavered and swayed on her feet, scrambling for the door of the building. Maybe Tobei was right after all, maybe this place really was cursed. All that the Irezumi woman knew was that she wasn't going to be able to sleep, she wasn't going to be able to eat, until these children were found. And there was only one person who would be able to understand and help her in this moment. She knew she should report this to the higher ups first, but instead, Kannagi sought out Sojiro in his clinic.

WC: 1183