Come on you Vocaloid horrors! People are gijinka in this.
You are looking up at the ivy-covered building in wonder and fear as it loomed over you, barely visible in the trees. The faded letters in the stone just about read something like 'ORPHANAGE'. You have no clue why what you are looking for would be in such a place; an orphanage in the middle of a forest where the sun could hardly reach it.
So Nightmare had decided to look for the cure to mortality? Why in a dilapidated little orphanage, you ask yourself, approaching the doors. A rotting stench meets your nostrils, making you wrinkle your nose and cover it with your sleeve as you use your hand to gingerly push the door open. It creaks on its hinges and opens wide into darkness.
You snap on a flashlight you have with you, stepping into the building and leaving the festering oak entry open so you can leave later. Your goal is simple: Find Nightmare's research lab and report back to headquarters for a full on raid. But as you gaze along a long corridor with leaching walls and uneven floorboards, a chill comes over you.
There doesn't seem to be anyone there. There are no light bulbs in the lights when you look up and the windows are blotted out with black paper.
There is no sound in here but your own breathing. You slowly begin to walk down the corridor, the floor sighing and creaking with every step you make. You're nervous as you do, but you cannot fail this mission. If it is left till too late, Nightmare's research may very well bear fruit and that would spell doom for the Universe itself.
All of a sudden, you hear something. It sounds like… singing. Singing, or more like chanting. Laughter, somewhat happy but also eerie to the ear.
It seems to be coming from the room at the end of the corridor, the very back room of the building. And there is a door, a simple door. You pick up your pace but try not to make the boards creak so loudly that you will alert whoever may be inside that back room. The chanting continues.
You reach the door, and you can hear the chanting within. It's muffled, so you don't have a clue what is being said. More laughter follows, so you turn the handle and push your way in.
"Hooray! You're here!"
You startle back. The room is brightly lit and full of bright-eyed children, sitting on the floor and beaming at you. It's a playroom in here, with brightly painted walls and childish scribbles on the walls. The one who greets you is a blue-haired child in toy knight armour. His eyes are pure white, but not lifeless. He looks bubbly and eager, as if he was expecting your arrival. In fact, they all seem to be.
"Come on," he urges, taking your hand and pulling you towards the other children. "Come and sit with us so we can learn about each other. Everyone! Look who's come to see us!"
The other children watch as you are lead to sit in the circle they've formed on the floor. A couple shuffle over to give some room and the blue haired boy squeezes in on your left, between you and another child.
"Let's teach each other our names," he insists, patting your arm and giving a reassuring grin. "What's your name?"
You tell him. You tell them all.
"I'm Meta," the blue-haired child announces, pointing to himself. "Come on, everyone. Tell your names."
The child next to Meta, a girl with blonde hair and bright emerald eyes speaks next. "I'm Fumu." Her voice is sweet and innocent.
"I'm Bun, and I'm Fumu's brother," the next boy says. His hair is shaggy and mostly blue with hints of blond at the very tips. "He's Kirby, he can't talk yet and his head is hurt." Bun pats a small, pink haired blue-eyed child beside him. Kirby's head is covered in bandages on top and he shows you proudly.
"I'm Sword," a child with turquoise hair replies. He too is wearing knight armour and has a plastic sword by his side. A red-haired boy with a ponytail waves at you, also with armour and a sword on his back.
"I'm Sword's friend, Blade, and I don't have an arm," he tells you, shifting to let you see where is sleeve is pinned up due the absence of his left arm. You are quite shocked at this, but you assume that this is something to do with why he is now in the orphanage. It just seems that this place is full of children, not researchers or any laboratory related equipment.
The next child has lighter blue hair than Meta Knight and blue eyes. He's dressed in some sort of orange, red and yellow robe with a kimono like thing beneath.
"My name is Dedede," he informs you conceitedly, puffing out his chest and pointing to himself. "And this is my best, best friend Escargon." He headlocks the next child, who has lavender coloured hair, gray eyes and a gap-toothed grin. Escargon seems to be OK with his buddy's rough handling.
The penultimate child has tan-brown hair with two random, characteristic strands sticking up above his head. He too owns a toy sword and has an eye-patch over one of his purple eyes. You don't know if this is just an accessory or a cover for a wound.
"My name is Waddle Doo," he says triumphantly. "I have two names!"
You laugh softly at the child's happiness at this fact and look at the last child, next to you, in the circle. You ask him his name.
He looks back at you with red hued eyes.
"I haven't got a name," he says sadly, shaking his head and purple-green hair out of his eyes. "No one named me. But still, you can know who I am."
The child doesn't get to dwell on his sadness for very long because Meta stands and declares what to do next.
"Let's play a game together now!" he whoops, jumping in the air. "We have all day. We can play the game all day!"
You are puzzled when all the others stand and cheer too, even the purple-haired one. He pulls you up to stand with him in the circle.
"We're going to play the very special game now," Meta tells you, pushing you into the middle of the ring. You watch as the children join hands and smile naively around you.
"It's very easy," Dedede says, putting a hand around Blade's shoulders since he cannot hold his hand.
Someone suddenly jumps on your back and slips a blindfold over your eyes, giggling in your ears. They jump off and return to their place, whoever they were.
"Crouch down now," one of them orders, pushing you down to squat in the centre of the circle. They too trot back to their position.
"We're going to walk around you," a child explains.
"When we stop," another continues. "You must guess who is standing behind you."
"Now you know our names, it'll be easy," yet another tells you.
"But," the next one says. "If you don't guess correctly, you lose."
Before you can open your mouth to speak back, the soft pattering of bare feet on the floor starts and the children start to sing.
"Circle you, circle you,
Circle you, circle you,
Who surrounds you everywhere
Circle you, circle you,
Don't be afraid, you'll be missed!
Circle you, circle you,
Come play with us, we insist!"
You realise this is the very melody you heard being chanted when you approached the room at first. It sounds just as spooky as before, emanating around you like spirit voices from the children. They continue to circle you, until they stop.
"Well? Who is it?" they all say together, like one being. "Who is it? Who is it?"
You panic. Your muscles are frozen. You can hear them breathing as they wait for your response. You want to answer, but you don't know who is behind you. You can't move. You have a feeling that you won't be able to until you answer their question.
You guess blindly. You blurt out the first name that comes into your head.
Silence falls upon the playroom. You can't even hear the children breathing.
"You just lost the game," they hiss together.
Before you know it, you hear the bronze-toned ringing of swords being drawn from their scabbards at lightning speed, and children push you and hold your arms in an unnaturally strong grasp.
Your blindfold slips off.
The play room is no longer colourful, the children's eyes are no longer bright. The walls are leaching like the corridor outside, and their eyes have lost their colour. Their eyes are white like Meta's, but the same cloudy white that the eyes of a dead person goes.
All the same they are giggling, shrinking back in the corners with smiles on their faces. Meta is before you, a real, golden sword in his hands, smiling too. The sword is stained with dried redness on the tip of it. You shiver.
Sword, Blade and Waddle Doo are the ones restraining you. Sword has your right arm, Waddle Doo your left and Blade has his sword pressed against your back. The others are around you in a loose circle, smiles seeming to crack their innocent facades, making them into the faces of children abandoned and forgotten, driven to insanity by isolation.
You catch sight of the drawings on the wall and realise that they aren't the childish scribbles you thought they were.
They're plans.
The plans of the scientists who were researching for Nightmare. Researching immortality. Immortality made from the pain of children, gained by cutting off their heads as they cried and making the immortal elixir from their brains.
You gasp, and Blade jabs you with his weapon as Meta advances onto you. The other children sing.
"Even if your head's crushed in,
Even if your arm is taken,
We're the children who cannot die,
We will laugh at you sweetly…"
"They took my eye," Waddle Doo tells you, keeping your arm still as you struggle. "So I would cry very hard."
"Blade's arm too," Sword adds.
"They chopped off everyone else's heads," Blade whispers, "but we didn't let them take ours."
"So we played with them," Meta continues, still edging nearer to you. "And each time they lost, we punished them, because they did it to us."
"It was really fun," Waddle Doo smiles. "So we decided to change the rules and do it to everyone who lost the game."
"It's really fun," echoes Sword. "It's really so fun!" He wrenches and twists your arm in such a way that your head is forced to face downwards.
The other children chant:
"You should play come and play with us,
Play forever with us,
Before the moon sets again,
You can play with us till then!"
Meta smiles, shaking his head sadly. "But you just lost the game," he says, readying his sword for a mighty swing. "I'm afraid that you will have to be punished!"
You cry for him to stop as he raises the blade above his head. You cry for help.
The sword comes down upon your neck.