"Here's the truth: We're totally going to kill you now."

-"No way!"

"Yes way, Ted! We're fully programmed to do it."

"Yeah! And we wanna do it, too."

- Evil Robot Bill and Evil Robot Ted to Bill and Ted, Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey


"Get out."

- T-1000, Terminator 2: Judgment Day


Yuuri stood at the edge of the lake in the Unfathomable Forest. The night air was filled with sound of raindrops pelting down on wet leaves. Ripples broke on the surface of the lake, slightly distorting Yuuri's reflection in the water.

She and Fuyuhi had come to the forest looking for Haruka. Now Fuyuhi had gotten lost in the darkness and Yuuri had to find two missing persons.

Where could they be?

An uneasy feeling crept up Yuuri's spine. She saw something white moving behind her reflection. The filament in the Camera Obscura began to resonate, and she cautiously pressed her thumb against the charger before she turned around.

It was Fuyuhi. Or rather, it was her ghastly specter, slowly lurching closer toward Yuuri on pale transparent feet with her mouth hanging agape. Colorless blood dyed the front of her blouse black. The illusory knife in her hands and the grotesque wound on her neck left no question toward the cause of her death. The knife had cut all the way to the bone, severing the muscles in her throat and leaving her head dangling sideways.

Yuuri hesitated, overwhelmed by a combination of fear and remorse. She regretfully started to raise the camera so she could at least put her friend to rest.

"Fuy-…"

Yuuri was cut off when Fuyuhi's arm lashed toward her in a quick jerking motion. The phantom knife flicked across the front of her throat, leaving a glowing white mark on her skin. Yuuri dropped the camera into the shallow riverbank and covered her throat with her hands. Her eyes grew wide with terror as Fuyuhi hovered a few inches closer.

The knife didn't slash into Yuuri's neck the way a real knife would. There was no physical wound, and Yuuri never lost a drop of blood. This knife had opened a rift in her neck, a spiritual portal into her body.

The delayed charge on the Camera Obscura suddenly went off at Yuuri's feet, sending a blinding flash of light straight up at her face. Yuuri winced and instinctively moved her hands from her neck to cover her eyes.

The ghost used this opportunity to touch the vulnerable mark on Yuuri's throat.

The dead envied the living, especially when it was the ghost of someone who had been forced into their demise before it was their time. Fuyuhi had been driven to commit suicide by slashing her own throat while one of crazed forest phantoms controlled her like a puppet. In her twisted ghostly form, she was jealous of Yuuri and would do anything to have her warm, living flesh.

Fuyuhi's fingers disappeared into the gap in Yuuri's neck. Then the rest of her hand was absorbed, followed by part of her forearm. Her entire ghostly visage dissolved into fog and was drawn into the vortex. Yuuri arched her back and gasped for breath as supernatural forces swirled around her and invaded her body.

The mark on Yuuri's neck disappeared, along with all trace of Fuyuhi's spirit. Yuuri crossed her arms and shivered as her entire body was overwhelmed by a sudden chill. Then Fuyuhi started to gain control.

Yuuri turned back toward the lake. She began wading deeper into the water, taking another reluctant footstep every few seconds. She whimpered at her approaching doom and frantically shook her head with each step, causing her damp, rain-soaked hair to cling to her face. Deeper and deeper she walked, until the calm and foreboding waters were a little past her ankles.

Yuuri stopped. Her hair completely covered her eyes as her head leaned forward. Her arms hung lifelessly at her sides. The only movements her body made were the gentle rising and falling of her chest and the small, steamy white clouds that left her lips as she breathed.

A sound like a soft howling wind began to move near the forest trees. But the trees weren't swaying, and the noise gradually became lower. The ripples in the water mysteriously reversed their flow and moved toward Yuuri, forming foamy rings around her legs.

The source of the noise steadily became clear. The lake itself was moaning in hundreds of tormented voices, and they were getting closer.

The first pair of ghostly arms shot up from the lake and tried to grab Yuuri by the backs of her knees. More of the horde reached the surface, swarming over Yuuri up her waist. Some of them continued clinging upward, revealing their gruesome faces as they rose out of the water. The apparitions of bloated temple servants and waterlogged shrine maidens surrounded Yuuri, pulling at her with their collective greed and malice.

Yuuri continued to stand in perfect eerie silence, seemingly oblivious to the spectral attack. Their incorporeal hands passed straight through her body without leaving a mark. They were grasping for something more valuable.

The ghosts soon won the struggle. Yuuri's body stumbled backward and nearly fell while her pale spirit was ripped forward. Her colorless spectral clothes looked like they had been torn to shreds, and her transparent white skin was covered with scratches. Yuuri's spirit reached up into the air and screamed for mercy as her ghostly captors dragged her into the lake, leaving her living body behind. The moaning gradually faded as the ghosts returned to the depths with their prize. Yuuri's pure soul needed to be washed in the mountain's vile, tainted waters in preparation for her wedding.

Now in complete control of her new body, Fuyuhi slowly walked out of the water and toward the forest path with sluggish footsteps. As she moved, her hair became covered in dark, slimy oil. Her pores exuded foulness and corruption in the form of greenish gray ectoplasm, staining her clothes and turning her skin a pale emerald color. She didn't know how long this body would be able to survive under her pestilent influence, but even a few days of dwindling life would be better than another second trapped as a wandering spirit. She was obsessed with resuming the life that had been cruelly taken away from her.

"Ha… ru… ka. Ha… ru… ka."

Fuyuhi mumbled in Yuuri's weak, raspy voice as she lurched into the woods, leaving the Camera Obscura abandoned in the shallows of the lake.