Carefully stepping one foot in front of the other, she cautiously looked back at a group of three young boys all fidgeting nervously.
"Wait! Maybe this isn't such a good idea! I take the dare back," said an obviously overly distressed voice for such a young boy.
Her cautious look turned into a thin-lipped scowl, and she turned back to the heavy laden door and with all her might pulled it back while slowly slipping inside the dark mansion.
The nervous fidgeting abruptly turned into a stiff bodied look of bewilderment on the three boys. Not knowing what else to do they broke out into a sprint back towards town.
The door slammed behind the little girl with a loud thud. 'No going back now….' Her little arms crept up around her small frame as she tried to warm herself from the very cold draft running through the old Shinra mansion. The floor boards seemed to creak louder and louder with ever step she took. After a couple of feet she stopped and took in her surroundings. The mansion was dark, not just because it was near dusk, but because the walls were a very dull and dark brown. Dust seemed to linger in the air perpetually, not only throughout the empty space in the mansion, but all over the possessions that lined the floor as well. That's when she noticed it: A small piece of yellow paper.
The child sat cross-legged on the ground and began the long and arduous task of deciphering the complicated message. Being only seven years old, she had just recently learned to read. Some of the words forced a crease of her brow as she attempted to figure them out. After she was done, the frown stayed on her forehead. 'Why would someone lock a man in the basement?' Looking at the clues that the sheet had to offer over and over again, the girl had no idea how to even begin.
At that same moment she heard a loud, high-pitched scream.
Her head whipped to the side to find a man seemingly attached to the ceiling by a long chain. The sight of a man suddenly so close to her was not the only thing that startled her…but the large guiotenesque blade that was attached to the end. With a frightened whimper, she sprang to her feet while simultaneously dropping the yellow slip of paper and let her miniature legs carry her at a fast pace out the door that she had not long ago walked so defiantly through.