I don't remember how I came up with this, but it had something to do with spectres. And Zacharie peddling his wares to someone different.
When he wakes, the first thing he sees is the mask of the merchant.
"Hello, amigo," Zacharie says as he climbs to his feet, wiping dust from his pants, "Without strings, I see."
The Batter grunts in response. He doesn't recognize this place; it's dark and damp and the ground crunches under his feet, too uneven to be plastic. Despite this, the Batter is not overwhelmed by sensations. He knows it is cold, but he does not feel it. He is not a sensing creature but one that operates under osmosis, moving from an area of less corruption to one with more. Though he has no puppeteer, he trusts in his instincts and begins to walk.
"Leaving so soon?" Zacharie asks, "What's your hurry? Don't you have any questions?"
"This land is impure," the Batter says, his feet carrying him down the path. "That's all that matters."
He feels the merchant's eyes on his back and hears words like, "You never learn," carried away on the wind.
The spectres here look like men, but the Batter is not deceived. He can sense the corruption all around him, oozing out of the earth and filling the air like smoke from the mines. The first one is garbed in black and it holds a staff that it strikes against the ground while chanting, speaking of ritual sacrifice. His bat is salvation, and though the spectre screams like a man rather than a beast, he knows that what he is doing is right.
When the spectre gives in at last and vanishes in the light of purification, it leaves behind a faintly-glowing gemstone. The Batter holds it to his ear and he hears whispering coming from within and a gasp from without. He turns to see a flash of light, and squints as his vision again adjusts to the darkness. A young girl fades into view, dark-haired and fair-skinned, trembling and holding a worn box with a lens in front of her face. He glances at it, and then at her, and he does not sense any impurity. "What are you doing?" he asks and she startles from behind her box, finally moving it out of the way.
"Y-you're not a ghost?" she stammers.
"No. I am the Batter."
"Oh." She nods. "I'm Mio."
"What is that?" he asks, gesturing towards the device in her hands.
"The Camera Obscura. It gets rid of ghosts. Somehow." As he purifies with a bat, she purifies with a camera. He doesn't question it. If she is also on a holy mission, then he will not stand in her way. As he turns to leave, she calls out to him and he glances at her. "Wait, please. C-can we go together? I'm looking for my sister."
So she has lost someone. The Batter looks to the camera again and nods, and both purifiers begin walking again.
The girl purifier has another box that she calls a radio, and she places one of the glowing spectre stones into it and pushes a button. A voice comes from the box, strangled and soft, saying the things that the spectre said to the Batter."The ritual," it crackles, "Must be completed...only one...will have to do."
"What are they talking about?" the Batter asks, but she knows no more than he does.
When he next sees Zacharie, the merchant has set up shop outside in the village, though the Batter is certain he did not see him there minutes ago when they last passed through. The girl freezes when she notices him there, holding onto her camera like she intends to use it on him, and the Batter stops her.
"It's only Zacharie," he tells her.
"Hello, again," the merchant says, and the Batter walks past the girl, hoping to find a new tunic. Zacharie shakes his head. "Sorry, amigo. I don't have anything for you." He looks pointedly at his companion. "I only have things for her."
"What?" she asks anxiously, and the Batter pulls her over by the arm impatiently when she refuses to move.
"Buy something," he tells her, and she looks at him in confusion.
"Buy?" She looks uneasily at Zacharie, who produces several brightly-colored containers of film. "But I don't have any money."
"I'll gladly take whatever you've gotten from the ghosts," he says, "Five of them for this." He holds up the golden container. The girl seems reluctant, but reaches into her pocket and pulls out the pile of small stones, sifting through them. Zacharie's extended hand pulls back slightly. "Or," he says, and gestures towards a stone that is not glowing, a red amulet on a broken string, "Just that one."
"No," she says, eyes wide in horror at just the suggestion and she holds it protectively to her chest. "That's not...I'm sorry, I can't give you this one."
"Suit yourself," the merchant says with a shrug. "Five stones, then."
The Batter watches the exchange curiously. "You have nothing for me?" he asks, just to be certain, and Zacharie turns to him with a sigh.
"You don't need anything, Batter," he says, "She does."
They come to a fork in the road. The girl suggests they part ways for now and meet again later in the village. "If you see my sister," she says, already starting up the hill, "Please help her." And then she's gone, and the Batter is alone. He doesn't mind. The girl was not very good at purifying; she was afraid of the spectres, and her fear made her inefficient. The Batter does not fear them, however. Even alone, he does not tremble at the sight of three spectres closing in on him, sickles and torches in their wispy hands. There are things that the Batter fears, but spectres are not among them, and his purification comes swiftly.
He does find the girl's sister first in one of the shrine buildings, but she is not herself. She looks like her, almost exactly like her, and he mistakes her for the purifier until she laughs. She laughs, and the sound is terrible like corruption, and he knows-he feels it in his bones-that she is impure. "Yae," the sister mutters, "Yae, we need to finish this." The spectres never speak to him, lost in their own worlds imagining people who are no longer here.
The Batter advances. "Impure soul," he says, "I am your salvation."
She laughs in his face.
He swings.
It's like purifying a guardian rather than a spectre, he thinks, raising the bat over his head and bringing it down with all the force he can muster. It's like something that he can't quite remember but hasn't completely forgotten, fighting something so small yet so powerful and yet so very weak, something that curls up on the floor with its hands over its head and just defends, just protects itself, doesn't even fight back, doesn't even try. It's like that, the Batter thinks, it's just like that. It's the right thing to do. It's the only thing to do.
"Sister," she cries, "Help me, help me! Help me..." Only when she is silenced does he stop. But the world does not fade to white. The impurity does not leave this place. No, everything remains stagnant and tainted, and the Batter looks at all the red in the room and on his bat and on his clothes and on the girl purifier's sister. She is red, so red that she's painful to look at, and from the liquid red that pools around her comes a new creature, a butterfly, flying away on an invisible breeze.
What has he done, he wonders, not in horror but in genuine confusion, and what does he do next?
He needs to go back, he thinks, back to the nothingness, because he cannot stay in a world so corrupt. He leaves the shrine, the red room, the child god impure sister who laughs and defends and cries, he leaves and passes the girl on his way. The earth beneath them rumbles and heaves a deep sigh, like it is waking from a long slumber. Butterflies swarm the skies and spectres roam the streets. "My sister," the girl stammers as he passes, not noticing as the ground cracks around her, "Did you find my sister?"
The Batter pauses only a moment to tell her, "No," and he continues on his way, hearing her still murmuring, still calling for her, like quiet, fruitless animal cries that echo in a gray world, never to be heard by anyone. He can't stand this place any longer.
He passes buildings as they splinter apart, over bridges and under gates as hellish darkness seeps from the cracks and the moans of the dead come with it. Zacharie is waiting for him at the edge of the village, and they stand side by side, watching as everything-spectres and houses and shrines and girl-everything is engulfed in something darker than night and vanishes without a trace, like it was never there, like a switch was pulled and everything turned off.
Zacharie glances up at the Batter and the Batter looks at him, and they just stand there a moment longer. Watching the village vanish makes him lonesome, makes him wonder, makes him think, What now?, and there's no answer, none at all, because the answer is nothing.
The answer is nothing.
All he is left with is his regrets.
I'm not sure this fandom (OFF and Project Zero crossovers) even exists. But if it does, I like it.