Fatal Frame belongs to Tecmo. This should be obvious.

Bust The Mirror

They promised to always stay together, but in the end she had to fight alone.

A mansion that could have been at home in something written by Edgar Allen Poe, enough trick doors and secret passageways to satisfy James Bond, priests who were trained throughout their families' histories in a ritual of human sacrifice, diaries leftover from the twins who had murdered their brothers or sisters, magic glowing butterflies, and a nasty habit of abducting travelers for midnight murder rituals.

From everything Mio could tell, All Gods Village had been an ugly place even before Sae died, went fucknuts insane and had a happy killing spree.

However, the key part of that thought was the before bit; as in, before it was populated by see-through, insubstantial (except when they grabbed her, couldn't forget that), homicidal ghosts.

A village with traps, locked doors and no light was still a step up from a village with traps, locked doors, no light and dead people. As she ripped open the doors that Mayu had gone through –

- had to be this way there is no other door and sae helped me she wants me to come –

- and saw the first of the mourners swing a wispy head in her direction, Mio decided she could do without the ghosts, thank you very much.

The film from her fight with the ceremony master –

- it was her father –

- was type-61 and there was still plenty of it left. Mio had no idea how the Camera Obscura worked, why there was film for it scattered all around the village, or how the damn thing had survived all the tumbling she had gone through in the night, but she did have an idea of how quickly she could fight off a mourner with something better than type-14.

The camera hanging from the strap around her neck was still warm from her fight in the rope temple. She lifted it to her eye, aimed through the glass and pressed the button. There was an almost painful flash of stabbing white light, a thrum of heat that vibrated through the entire camera (and Mio wasn't sure what that was. No camera she'd ever used had done that before, but then, no camera she'd ever used had ever hurt a ghost before either), and then the ghost was staggering back with a low, sad cry that sent Mio's hair up along her neck.

She'd heard that noise more times than she could remember in a night that stretched back behind her like the ocean, but it still scared her. It scared her white.

The ring in the viewfinder flashed red and Mio clicked the shutter button again, choosing her moment like a veteran sniper. Click flash whirl click flash whirl, and then the mourner was falling to the ground, becoming more foggy and less there even as Mio ran past it, down the stairs and into the cavern tunnel that ran beneath All Gods Village. She didn't bother looking at the picture that had fluttered to the ground after she had preformed her third shot. She knew by now what she would see – a triple image of the mourner, three shuttered moments chained together and crammed into one picture.

Mio ran through the tunnel, feeling strangely light as she did. There was a word for it, she knew, when your body was so past the point of feeling from stress and weariness that you no longer noticed little things like hunger or pain. There was a word for it, but she could not remember it and it didn't really matter, not with something cold and dead and not kind lunging at her from behind, its cold, airy fingers stroking her back, pushing through her back and Mio could feel it touching her heart.

For a moment Mio forgot Mayu, forgot the camera hanging around her neck, forgot everything but the need to run, and she screamed, bursting forward with a show of speed that she did not know she the adrenaline reserves left to create. Even then, even with her scream still cutting the air with its sharpness –

- oh god i sound like a police whistle i didn't know i could scream like that -

- Mio could still hear the mourner's frustrated moaning, growling, snarling as it groped along behind, trying to reach the warmth it had felt under its fingers only a moment earlier. The pain that came from their touch, from the touch of what was dead, was like frostbite. Mio could still feel her heart hammering away at triple overtime, but it hurt. It was as though the organ had been left in a freezer for several hours before being unceremoniously shoved back into her body. It would pass, she knew it would, just as soon as a few minutes went by.

And if it were any other time that night, if it were any other place in the village, she might have stopped to rest and wait for that to happen.

Not there.

Not then.

There were two mourners waiting for her in the next chamber, one on each side. She would have run right through them, but she had heard the low moaning of a third from the stairs ahead of her and she did not want to take the chance of being trapped between the three if she wasn't fast enough.

The camera was raised and Mio had the first one in her sights, a core shot in perfect line with its head. She watched the meter around the target circle slowly fill, far too slowly for her liking, and snapped off a picture when it was three-quarters full. There was the thrum, the heat, and the feeling of power that blasted loose from the camera (a goddamned camera) her sweaty, dirty hands. The mourner staggered back, falling halfway through the cave wall. She knew what it would do next, knew that she had two seconds, maybe, before it came at her swinging, and she quickly turned to the next one –

- and found it two steps away from her, raising its right arm for a swipe at her face. The air was chilled with its presence and it gave off a vibe, a feeling, an aura –

- i will never make fun of metaphysical phrases again, i swear –

- of the grave.

Mio, in that state of hyper awareness that comes only when you realize you are about to die, die, did not charge a shot, did not line it up with the ghost's core. She had the ghost in her frame of vision and that was enough for the Zero lens she had found in the Tachibana house to turn the ghost into a floating mass of nothing.

And then she was backing up even as she turned, the first mourner already coming at her, swinging its horrible arms at her and sending waves of deadly frigid air against her body with each pass. She backed into the tunnel she had come from, keeping the monster in her sights and letting the camera charge, charge, charge, charge –

- hurry up! –

- and pushed the shutter button, sending a wave of light and power and heat against the mourner and ending it. Blue light (the closest thing to ghostly remains, she guessed) gathered up where it had been and surged toward her camera. It no longer frightened her, not now that she knew each bit of blue filled up the little meter that would let her know when it was safe to use the Zero lens again.

Mio moved forward and started down the stairs, sighting the lone mourner that had indeed been waiting for her in the camera's lens and clicking the shutter button down. Once click whirl flash twice click whirl flash thrice click whirl flash and then she was moving down the cleared stairs. Even though she wanted to run, to find Mayu, to leave this hell, Mio made herself walk slowly. The steps were cave rock, and that meant old, uneven and hard. She wouldn't be anything but dead if she slipped and broke her leg.

She stepped off the last of the steps and found herself on level ground. The cave stretched on unendingly in front of her –

- mayu could not have made it ahead of me not this far she fucking limps she can't run where is she how –

- but Mio did not care, was beyond caring at that point. Her twin was somewhere up ahead and she. Was. Going. To. Find. Mayu.

Her black shoes (and why the hell had she worn them to a forest outing? Tennis shoes would have been so much better) clacked noisily on the stone floor and made her jumpy at the thought of more mourners rushing out at her from the shadows. The only noises they ever made were the moaning sounds and once those were gone, they could be a step behind her and she would not know until they struck.

Mio had thought it before, several times in fact, but it bore repeating.

- i hate this place -

The flashlight was not helping much. It gave her just enough light to see five feet ahead of her and then it just stopped, like something was sucking up the extra brightness. It had scared her before, but as with so many other things she had just accepted it because there were more frightening things.

"Yae?"

Like that.

I'm not Yae, she wanted to say.

My name is Mio, not Yae. I'm fourteen years old, not fifteen like Yae was when she lived here. I'm alive, not dead like Yae must be by now. I'm not going to leave my sister to die, like Yae did. I don't wear kimonos or yukatas, like Yae did. My father never wanted me to kill my sister, like Yae's did. I never grew up in a mansion, like Yae did. I never had a friend named Itsuki who died in misery, like Yae did. I never had to wonder if I was going to be white-haired and insane before I was twenty, like Yae almost certainly did.

But if there was one thing Mio had learned more than what film to use for what ghost, more than what key to use for what lock and more than what clue led to what puzzle, it was that Sae saw what Sae wanted to see and Sae wanted her sister and so Mio was her sister now, and that was that.

- bitch –

"You've finally come for me."

The words were faint and far away. They were coming from ahead, down the path Mio was taking (running). They were quiet, but carried so very well somehow. This was not Sae the monster, the bloodstained ghoul who stood in carnage of her own home's hall and laughed at her people's massacre. This was Sae the girl, who had never doubted that her sister would come back for her, that she would not be abandoned, that Yae would keep her promise.

Never doubted until the priests led her through the gate and down the stairs, and she wondered if, maybe, Yae was not coming back.

"You've finally come…."

She sounded so relaxed.

"We can be… one…."

Mio kept running, trying hard not to cry because she wanted Mayu now, and she did not want to keep going down the path that led to something so obscene that the people who lived above it dared not speak its name. That place where Azami and Akane had gone together and then her hands had gone around her sister's neck –

- 'her neck felt so warm and alive' –

- 'why kill? why kill? why kill? why kill?' –

- and what came out of that place was not a little girl anymore. It was something broken and mewling, something that Mio had shrunk away from when she had first put the blue crystal into the radio and heard that pathetic little voice from a girl long dead coming out in static bursts.

What she had not acknowledged then, she was beginning to now. The path was making her know it, see it, fear it and Mio knew that -

- i was afraid because what if that is me before this night ends –

- something horrible was waiting up ahead. It had been waiting for her and Mayu for years. Maybe not them in particular, any twins would likely do, but it had them now and she really did not see it letting them go without a fight. Whatever that XX was, it had ruined an entire village in one night and swallowed up anyone who wandered into it since.

"I knew you would come for me."

- I DID NOT COME FOR YOU! –

The thought surprised Mio with its intensity, the fierce rush of loathing that filled her at Sae's voice. On a conscious level, with all the documents and crystals she had found, Mio knew that something else came out of the caves with Sae and the Kusabi, something that turned them both from victims into monsters, but she did not care. She did not care because it was Sae's form that chased her through that tunnel, it was the Kusabi who scared her senseless in the great hall (she could not move for a full four and a half seconds, just staring at the screaming face with all the other screaming faces surrounding it and then the faint thought of, I just wet myself), but more than that she did not care because the dairy entries hinted at what the last piece of fluorite confirmed.

Sae was a goddamned lunatic.

"I kept waiting and waiting…."

There was more light now, light from more than her flashlight. It flickered. Fire?

"Let's continue the ritual…."

- no –

"Two shrine maidens… become as one…."

- i won't do it won't kill mayu no –

And that was the last thought Mio had for a few seconds as she turned a corner in the cave and just simply stared.

There was a chamber bigger than the great hall of the Kurosawa house, maybe bigger then the entire Kurosawa house itself. There were thousands upon thousands of candles piled to the sides and in the center. There was a painted or tiled design at the center of the floor. There was a torii gate straight across from her, with a black opening in its center. There were two glowing girls in the center of the room, one hugging the other.

Except….

Except her hands were….

Mio dimly realized that she had thrown up slightly, her throat stinging with the acid gargling against it.

"Killllll meeee…."

The little girl was strangling her sister.

"Don't killll meeee…."

She thought that maybe it was the Kiryu twins. It was likely just personal prejudice, as one of them had spent the better part of three hours trying to murder her. Still, the twins bore a definite resemblance to the longhaired, solemn little girls that Mio had photographed in the rotting Kiryu house. Except this was definitely not a possessed doll that she was staring at. Echoes (that was what she called them, the ghosts that were not. They were nearly everywhere, littered all over the village and a single snapshot of type-7 took care of them. They weren't the violent spirits that hunted her, they were just echoes of people that had been alive once) of two little girls had stayed in this chamber. They had stayed for decades, maybe centuries. They had stayed and now Mio was watching what they had stayed to do, over and over again, for a ritual that had been completed, but would not let them go.

"Killllll meeee…."

"Don't killll meeee…."

All Gods Village ate its children.

Mio raised the Camera Obscura and dispelled the remnants.

The photo that slid out of the slot on the camera's side brushed her fingers as it fell and she caught it. In it, the two girls still sat on the cold, hard floor. One of them choked the other. The second one did not raise a hand against the other. How could she? It was her twin. By the village's belief, striking her twin was to strike herself. How could you fight back when your executioner was your other half?

Maybe, Mio thought quietly, that was why the ritual had always gone on so smoothly before. No one ever tried to do more than run away.

Run.

Itsuki's voice came back to her.

- "you have to get out of the village." -

Letting the photo float to the floor, Mio moved around the center mound of candles and headed for the torii gate. If Mayu was not here, then she had to be there. And maybe, no, definitely Sae too, but Mio would deal with whatever came when it would. She was too drained to do anything else.

The flashlight in her hand illuminated the narrow, old steps leading down the tunnel. Mio started down them, her free hand against the cave wall for balance. Her hands were scraped, cut, bruised and filthy, and the hysterical thought came to her that her mother was going to have a field day with their next manicure session, but Mio stamped it down before she could let out the Sae-esque giggle that wanted to come out.

Ting.

The air chilled and twisted and Mio knew what was coming, but it still felt weird when –

- Sae stepped down the stairs, the priests in front and behind of her.

"Sae…?"

She was still alive. Not bloodstained or insane. When was this?

Priests chanting, moving with her, forcing her to keep moving. Something waited in the room ahead; something hungry and – Mio could feel it, somehow – nearly free.

There was only one twin. They would try it anyway.

She stepped down the stairs, the chiming of a bell somewhere in the air above the clanging of the priests' staffs. The altar awaited.

Mio thought, in a very distant way, that this could be taken for a wedding ceremony. The solemn bride in white, the escort to the altar, the joining of two souls for all eternity. Except that this was a cave a hundred feet below the ground, only westerners used white for weddings and the one Sae was supposed to spend eternity with was not there.

The frayed, broken red cord brushed the earth.

Sae stopped –

- and Mio knew what Sae was thinking as sure as if she had said it out loud –

- 'we have to wait for yae.' –

- and then a priest pushed her forward.

A mourner waited at the altar and Mio recognized the picture with a heart stopping clarity as the one she had seen when she had touched Mayu in the old tree.

"Forever…."

The world tilted, twisted, went static and loud and gray and then Sae was hanging - dead, limp meat - from a noose hung from the torii gate. There were priests crowding in front of her, watching her hang –

- oh god they stood by while she choked and kicked, Mio thinks –

- and then two mourners were throwing the empty shell of what had been Sae into the waiting pit. Her arms and legs flew up as her body plummeted and the red cord was the only bit of color in the world. It danced in the wind as Sae's body fell, her white kimono and red cord slowly fading from view, swallowed by the hungry abyss.

"I'll wait forever…."

Mio gasped as the earth rocked, no, heaved, in the way that a sick person does before they vomit. She stumbled and managed to grab the wall as the vision continued.

A brief flash and disorienting whirl of static, and then there were priests rushing up the steps past Mio, through Mio, and it took a moment for her to realize that she felt nothing when they did. They were not ghosts, just echoes.

From far below, where Mio could still see what was happening even while her eyes showed her that her hands were pressed up against the cave wall hard enough to turn them white, there were screams. The words were varied; "Repentance!" "The malice is coming!" "We must flee the village!"

They all meant the same thing.

The cage was open.

Mio saw the priest nearest the pit tear the veil from his face and –

- is that mr. kurosawa? Mio wonders –

- saw his face morph into a grotesque parody of terror that ordinarily would have sent her into peals of laughter, except that this was not funny and she knew what he was seeing even before the vision changed, even before it went from gray and black and white and static to a clarity that made her head hurt.

It was a vision and Mio knew it. It was like a broken record repeating something over and over again. God knew she had had enough of them lately to be an expert. There was nothing there that could hurt her.

It did not stop her from screaming loud enough to make her throat hurt when the vision gave her an image cast in a bloody ambient light of Sae Kurosawa, who had been strangled and dumped into the abyss moments earlier, sitting demurely on the altar where her body had lain not a minute before.

It lasted only half a moment.

But it was enough for Mio to see the black rope mark around her neck, to see the dark shadows under her eyes, to see the unhinged look on her face, to see that it. Was. Not. Just Sae Kurosawa who sat sweetly on that altar, to see that something had settled inside of her, and to see that what was about to happen next was something she did not want to see at all.

Something exploded out of the abyss with the force of a million cannons. Her other-sight grew exponentially and Mio could suddenly see the entire village, every bit of it, and she could see the black cloud that had erupted from Misono hill cover all of it in less time than it took for her to count to five.

And somewhere in that blackness, she could hear laughing –

- no, not laughing. If that were laughing, she would eat her shoes.

It was screaming and she had heard it before.

The feeling of being too light for her own body was back in full force and Mio nearly flew from the stairway as the first bit of fog touched the bottom step. Skipping every other rise, Mio was back in the sacrificial altar room in five leaps. She darted forward and got seven strides in before she dug her heels into the cave floor and spun around, yanking open the back of the Camera Obscura.

- my sister is down that way -

The first time she had seen the thing, she had had no idea what it was and no care for it. She had just run away as fast as she could the moment she found her legs again, and when she was on the second floor of the Kurosawa house, in the hallway outside the flickering room, she had finally stopped running, collapsed to her knees and spent a good three minutes crying.

Now she knew what it was, knew who it had been, knew what it could do, and she still had no care for any of it (except maybe that last, 'what it could do' part). Seijiro Makabe was dead and gone, and that thing floating up the stairwell was not him. That was the thing that had slaughtered at least half of All God's Village, maybe more if Sae had been feeling lazy. That was the thing that had cornered Masumi Makimura in a closet and savaged him to death. That was the thing that was currently standing between herself and Mayu. That was the thing that was coming to kill her and Mio was not going to let that happen.

Mio yanked out the type-61 film that was still loaded into her camera –

- take no chances, not with this one –

- and, for the first time, inserted a cartridge of type-91. She had no idea how powerful it was, but, after seeing the difference between type-7 and type 14, and then later type-14 and type-61, she had a pretty good feeling that the Kusabi would not like it.

The fog was roiling out of the torii gate now and the wailing had reached its pitch. From the gray mass reached a skeletal hand and arm, blindly reaching through the air for something (or someone) to grab hold of. The tattered robes hung loosely on the emaciated frame and the shock of floating white hair waved in a wind that Mio did not feel. Faces (souls of the ones it had killed, maybe) hung in the air around it, adding their own wails to the chorus. And somehow most horrible of all, the two empty eye sockets glared blindly at Mio as the Kusabi began making its way toward her.

Mio could still feel her panties sticking to her crotch at the point where her brief flood of urine had stained them the first time she had seen the Kusabi. Watching the monster come at her again, she was suddenly very aware that she had not gone to the bathroom for at least seven hours.

But more than that, more than the fear, the pain, the exhaustion, Mio could still remember that Mayu was waiting somewhere in the chamber below.

Mayu, who she had promised to always stay with after the time when she had not stayed, had run on ahead, and Mayu had paid the price for it.

Mayu, who was still paying the price for it with every step she took.

Mayu, who was relying on Mio for everything.

Because she was her sister.

- "are you leaving me again?" –

Mio raised the camera and sighted the Kusabi.

- I am not yae –

Click.