"N-no! I was just searching for a quiet place to study!" Haruhi stammered, backing away from the older student confronting her.
Tamaki reached out a hand and stroked her cheek causing her face to blush as deep red and a tingle to run down her spine. He pulled her in close and whispered "Or maybe… You're into a guy like me? What do you say?"
Haruhi pulled away from his grasp. Whether the advance was mocking or sincere, she had no idea and no intention of finding out. Besides, he thinks she's a boy, so if it was serious, he wouldn't be interested when he found out the truth. All she wanted to do was study.
She leapt back to get away from the older student, but lost her balance and knocked directly into one of the many display stands around the large ballroom. The vase teetered precariously and tipped off of the stand, falling just past the tips of her outstretched fingers, shattering loudly as it hit the ground.
The twins, Kaoru and Hikaru, sighed together.
"We were going to feature that renaissance vase in an upcoming school auction," one of them bemoaned.
"Well, now you've done it, commoner. The bidding on that vase was supposed to start at eight million yen," chastised the other.
The door to Music Room #3 flew open and four adults rushed through. Not teachers though, they were wearing brown jumpsuits and had vacuums strapped to their backs.
"What the hell was that crash?" one of them yelled, the name tag sewn onto his jumpsuit read Spengler.
"You really screwed the pooch on this one, kids," another one, labelled Venkman, complained. He grabbed the nozzle of his backpack vacuum and pointed it toward the vase, prompting everyone to look back at the shards of ceramic.
From the shattered remains of the vase, a dense purple smoke swirled upwards. The students all stepped back from the display stand. The smoke rose in a tornado to a height of eight feet before dissipating instantaneously, leaving a massive, purple figure standing at the center.
"At long last, I have been released from my prison," a deep voice boomed, though the figure's mouth remained still. It surveyed its surroundings slowly with gleaming opal eyes, taking in each of the terrified students and the four Ghostbusters. "You too must learn what it is to be taken from your body and trapped somewhere you don't belong."
A throaty chuckle emanated from the paranormal figure as a bright purple light flashed, filling the entire room.
Haruhi looked around blindly for a moment but when her vision returned, every other person in the room was looking just as confused as she felt. She glanced down, she had man hands.
"Wha – Wha – What just happened?! I'm a boy now?!" Haruhi cried out in shock and confusion.
"What do you mean now? There are only boys in this room," shouted one of the other brown jumpsuit-clad strange men.
The ghost hissed as the figure was concealed in thick purple smoke once again and disappeared.
Venkman, or rather the body of Venkman with the mind of someone else, screamed like a little bitch. "WHY AM I SO OLD?" he cried, staring at his middle aged hands.
"Well, that's just uncalled for," replied a tired sounding Tamaki.
"So… I'm not the only one staring at myself then?" asked Winston, another of the Ghostbusters.
"You're always staring at yourself, dude. We're twins," Ray chortled.
"This is spectacular!" Haruhi heard her voice exclaim. She looked over to where her body stood to see herself pacing, scratching her chin, and muttering. "It would appear that this paranormal being has the ability to entangle a consciousness with another physical being…"
With another little bitch scream from the body of Venkman, which apparently held the mind of Tamaki, the doors to Music Room #3 swung open and a stream of girls filed in.
"We're supposed to be hosting! But I can't do that if I look like this…" Venkman whimpered.
"As we are in your bodies, we shall take the place of hosting these girls tonight. Meanwhile, you must hunt down the ghost and bust it so that we may return to our own bodies," Spengler in Haruhi's body explained.
"Oh good, I'm a riot at parties," Venkman, in the body of Tamaki, said with dry sarcasm.
The minds of the Host Club didn't have time to argue as the princesses strode in and made their way to their desired host. They gave dirty side eyes to the bodies of the older men, offering mutters of new foreign janitors. They backed out of the room slowly, watching as their party began without them.
The group of four teens in older men's bodies stood momentarily in the hall just outside of Music Room #3, listening to their counterparts attempt to chat with their princesses.
"Wow, this is one freaky Friday!" Koaru muttered to himself.
"Well, the faster we bust this ghost, the faster we get back into our own bodies and save our reputations from permanent damage," stated Tamaki.
"Yeah, let's do it!" shouted Koaru from the body of Winston.
"But where do we even start?" asked Hikaru, disheartened by the aggressively terrible flirting coming from his body on the other side of the door.
"Look!" called Haruhi from down the hall, "I found some purple stuff on the ground, the ghost must have gone this way!"
The four ran down the hall following the trail of purple ectoplasm, but their old man bodies barely made it down a single flight of stairs before they were all bent over and wheezing from the exertion. After a minute of recovery, they continued at a much more reasonable pace.
The purple ooze led them downwards, into the basement of the school, which was still very nice, due to the incredible wealth circulating around the school.
Meanwhile, in Music Room #3, this party would go down as one of the most peculiar in the history of the Host Club. Egon, in the body of Haruhi, stammered through a science lesson far beyond the high school physics the girls had been taught. Although, Haruhi was known across the student body as an intelligent honour student, and was more or less given a pass by her customers.
Peter Venkman, in the body of Tamaki, however, was faring much poorer. His sarcastic, self-degrading humour varied wildly from the usual chipper and excited personality of Tamaki, and many of his customers were concerned that he had fallen ill.
Ray and Winston, as the twins, had gone into separate groups, massively disappointing their clientele, who are drawn to the twins' chemistry and excessive brotherly love.
At the end of a dead end hall, the purple ghost huddled in a corner. The four teens in Ghostbuster bodies approached slowly, their proton packs ready to fire. They crept forward, inching ever closer until Haruhi held out an arm to tell the others to stop.
She tapped her ear, indicting for the others to listen closely. Following her lead, they each noticed that the ghost ahead of them was crying tears of purple smoke.
"Ghost," announced Tamaki through the mouth of Venkman, "I demand you return us to our original bodies so that we may entertain our princesses."
The ghost turned toward them and grew tall, purple smoke billowing from him and ghostly tendrils reaching out. "Be gone, pestilent children," it commanded with a booming voice.
"No!" shouted the twins, each letting loose a blast from their proton packs. They fired wildly, missing the ghost entirely. "Give us our bodies so we can talk to girls!"
"Calm down, little devils," Haruhi directed. "Ghost, why were you crying?"
"Each week, I am forced to listen to this Host Club make petty conversation, whilst I was trapped in that vase. All I yearned for was company, and I was surrounded by people, but I was utterly alone." The opal eyes of the ghost began to pour out purple smoke once again, and it quietly wept in front of the Host Club.
"Well, if that's all you want… I, Tamaki Suoh, President of the Host Club, offer you official membership as a host of the Ouran High School Host Club."
And with that, the Host Club gained two members that day. Haruhi, indentured servant for breaking the expensive vase, and the ghost. They all returned to the party, and with another yank from the ghost's tendrils, all of the souls were placed back in their original bodies.
The ghost would go on to be one of the most popular Hosts in the club, though never surpassing the popularity of Tamaki.