I took a break from my current story to write a one-shot. It's my take on what a good Fatal Frame 5 game could be. Centered around the Asou family. Rated T.

Fatal Frame 5: Corroding Haze

"Though discoveries are made by men every day of every week, merely a great few can earn their architects a permanent place in history. Cotton clothing, electricity, relativity.....

In the hay-days of my occult research, I thought that I would join such men. My invention was "the Camera Obscura", and it had the power to forever alter the manner in which people sought knowledge of the world after life.

But I was wrong; the scientific community shunned me, and now I am doomed to die unknown; a footnote in time. Of course, my worst regret is that I taught my son--a person whom I now wish that I had never conceived--everything I knew. To think, now, that he might go down in history as an infamous legend is more than I can bear. I have lived my life to the fullest extent possible, and now I must move on, and become a part of that world which I once studied. Goodbye, everyone."

--Kunihiko Asou, 1914, just before death

"Your experiment was a success, dear father! Come, now, embrace fate and be a part of it!"

--Miyami Asou, 1945, after death

WARNING: The contents of this document are of a very secretive and personal nature. The information contained within houses secrets previously lost to time, many of which should probably remain so. I may never understand why I wrote it to begin with, but I've learned a lot in my life, and I couldn't deny myself the opportunity to pass on my experiences and discoveries.

My Life:

My name is Mayame Takamine, and I was born to Junsei Takamine is 1965. In the distant past, I was a close friend and, ironically, a fierce rival of Kei Amakura and his "unique" research group, a group that actually worked under the advisement of my father. They were quite a quartet, always prattling on about what a mysterious world we lived in.

Kei and I, in particular, would mock each other's professions regularly. He was a researcher of paranormal conspiracies, I was a researcher of historical ones, and each of us thought that the other was completely insane. We didn't talk much about each other, but he and I still maintained what was the closest thing that I had to a friendship. When my father disappeared in 1986, he even tried to become a father figure, offering to share his apartment with me until I got back on my feet. I respectfully declined him, though. He was only three years older than me at the time (I was 21) and I was capable of taking care of myself.

A couple of years passed without word from him, and I continued my day to day work. However, when the year 1988 rolled around, I finally heard from him once more. When he told me that his niece, Mio, had been found in the middle of nowhere, I gave my immediate condolences but vigorously denied the possibility of the spirit world playing any part in it.

A few months later, I heard from him yet again, and this time he sounded worried. He briefly mentioned some of the findings in his research, something about a place called the "Manor of Sleep", and that he believed that he had been cursed. After briefing me on his strange situation, he requested that I pack my things and join him at his apartment, to help him with his work. When I told him that he was simply overreacting and refused to come, I never knew how much I would regret my choice. Nonetheless, I said my goodbye and hung up on him, sure that he would wind up admitting that he was wrong a few weeks later, if not sooner.

I never heard from him again. When my attempts to get in touch with him finally led me to a woman that I had never met before, all she gave me was awkward silence. I didn't need to think hard to know that he had died, but it still tore me apart, especially when I learned that his niece had died in the hospital not long after.

That was the day that I finally began taking Kei seriously. Too bad I was too late.

A couple more years passed after that, and I was sure at that point that I would be condemned to live and die alone, having learned what to value only after losing the most valuable person in my life. That is, until she called me.

It was Rei Kurosawa, the woman that I had met two years earlier. I could tell from the sound of her voice that she had been sobbing about something. She promptly asked me if she could visit my home and speak with me in person, to which I agreed. When she came, she swiftly asked me how much I knew about "Unit 731", and then asked me if I had ever heard of a man named "Sugiyama Asou" before. Being a historian, I had plenty to say about the first one.

Unit 731:

To be perfectly fair, Unit 731 was horrifying before Rei mentioned it. It was a covert biological and chemical warfare research department consisting of several facilities that operated in Japan and China during World War II, and yet it was so much more than that. Having specialized in torturous medical tests and acts of unimaginable cruelty that were performed without mercy on POW's taken from all over the Pacific, Unit 731 had been an embodiment of wartime atrocity when it was operational. Being sent to one of their facilities as a prisoner was always a death sentence.

And yet I had never heard of Sugiyama Asou before. When I told her this, Rei cut to the chase and informed me that she had found information suggesting that, of all the Unit 731 facilities during World War II, he had led and operated the most secretive, and most ill-fated of them all, one that I apparently had not heard of. When she mentioned to me that it had allegedly been the site of a supernatural cataclysm that plunged the entire building into darkness (not unlike the repentance and unleashing events that Kei tried to lecture me about), I immediately knew that this venture would turn into a ghost hunt.

Before I could respond, though, Rei admitted that this alone was not enough motive to drive her back into the field of paranormal study, let alone a motive to request that I join her. No, the real reason that she had come was that she believed that Sugiyama had legally changed his last name from Asou....to Kurosawa.

If this were true, it would not only mean that a war criminal of terrible proportions was at the center of her family tree, but it could also mean that her romantic relationship (with a friend of Kei's named Yuu Asou, now deceased) may have been with a man that was actually her cousin, or even her brother. The thought of her only great love in life actually being incestuous drove her to depression, and she had come hoping that I would brave the corroded halls of Unit 731 with her, to clear her family's name, or find out for sure if her suspicions were correct.

I agreed to help her, without a second thought. How could I not, after what I had done to Kei? Ever since that day two years ago, his death had given me such grief, that I had actually felt as if I should have been the one to die that day. The least I could do for him now was help his only other surviving friend.

Strange....right after Rei and I had set two weeks as the time before we would visit the war facility, I confessed my feelings to her, the feeling that I should have died instead of Kei. When I did, Rei immediately looked over the skin on my neck and arm, as if looking for some engraved pattern that just wasn't there. When she didn't see anything, she simply said "you're welcome" and left, without another word.

I'm not sure what she meant, but I have a feeling that Kei would've known.

The Asou Family:

I had two weeks to prepare for my journey with Rei. We would be heading south to Nagoya, the city that had likely housed Sugiyama's facility during World War II. At first I was confident. Even if the "spirits" that we might confront had been similar to the ones that killed Kei, I was lucky to be in the company of a seasoned veteran. Rei had been afflicted by the same curse that befell Kei, Mio, and countless others in the years 1988 and before. Yet, unlike all of them, Rei had actually overcome her curse and lifted it from the world. Initially, I had no doubt that she could do it again.

However, as Rei and I scoured the shadowed building and collected notes outlining the details of Sugiyama's existence, I could not imagine a more dangerous enemy in life or death. Not only was he notoriously cruel and even psychotic, but he was the only son of Kunihiko Asou, a man so nearly gone from known history that not even Rei knew much about him. From what I can tell, he was the original inventor of the "Camera Obscura", the antique camera possessed by Rei that has the ability to banish restless spirits to the afterlife with a flash of its shutter. If occult research is an art, then Kunihiko Asou (and, probably, his son as well) was a master.

The earliest record that we found of him started in 1850, where he had been listed as an child that had been orphaned in the southern city of Osaka. His file stated that his small town of origin had been destroyed, and his parents along with it. He often complained to his caretakers that he was desperate to speak to them again, and his missed parents became a motive for him to expose his untapped genius. He began building small instruments out of whatever materials he could get his hands on. By the time he was twelve, it was clear to the orphanage's ward that it might pay off to help his mind develop, so the institution tried its best to find materials for him. As he got smarter, the materials found and bought for him became comparatively complex, but he never slowed down. By the time he was seventeen, Kunihiko had actually designed primitive receivers that transmitted human voices, meaning that he had matched the work of some of the most brilliant scientists of his time. Yet still he was not satisfied, as evidenced by the entries in his first diary that I had collected. He had merely created a manner in which the living could talk to each other, which wouldn't help him talk to his parents again.

Eventually Kunihiko Asou left the orphanage and tried to make a living for himself in the city, but he was forced to flee north to the more secluded Mutsu region in 1868 when the Boshin war began. After he fled, he disappeared until 1874, at which point he had already invented prototypes of the Camera Obscura, Spirit Projector, and Spirit Stone Radio. He had also made a new friend--Seijiro Makabe, a fellow folklorist.

Seijiro had come to Kunihiko mentioning that he wanted to photograph a forbidden ritual in a distant village named "Minakami" (it is worth noting that this is the same village that Kei's nieces supposedly disappeared in). Kunihiko gave him the invention prototypes and wished him good luck on his journey, but what interested me more was his unusual decline to come and test his inventions in person. Asou wrote a personal note about the conversation that I found quite intriguing:

"I wish that I could have accompanied Seijiro and his assistant myself, but I'm far too busy these days to play games. I may be fairly young now, but from what I can tell, the scientific community isn't going to warm up to my research propositions anytime soon, and I can't live forever. I need someone to carry on my work. I need an heir. I need....a son.

At any rate, I heard of the disaster that befell the Minakami area in the springtime. Perhaps it is best that I did not go, but still I feel the guilt.

Seijiro, my friend.....I'm sorry."

--Kunihiko Asou, 1874

In fact, it would take Kunihiko a full four years to get around to this goal, but by 1878, he had finally conceived (with who I do not know) and claimed the right to his son, who he named Sugiyama. It was the beginning of a disaster to come--he just didn't know it yet.

Discredited by other scientists at this point, Kunihiko dropped back out of the public eye. He neglected the improvement of his inventions, instead spending his time to raise Sugiyama and teach him everything that he knew. Kunihiko's son proved to be as smart as he was, and the two seemed to get along. However, sometime around 1900, the two began arguing and fighting over an issue that would eventually separate them. They both adored the field of occult research, but Sugiyama had grown up with some strange thoughts, and he now disagreed with his father over the ultimate goals of their work. Not content to simply observe the souls of the deceased, Sugiyama wanted to increase the scope of their work and find a way to use their discoveries for his own benefit, or at least the benefit of other living people. Kunihiko argued back, saying that the spirits shouldn't be trifled with. He believed that knowledge was its own reward, but Sugiyama was more than convinced that it didn't have to be the only reward.

Eventually, the dispute turned hateful, and in 1901, Kunihiko and Sugiyama disowned each other and went their separate ways. Kunihiko Asou was aging by this point and suffering from an inexplicable loss of sleep, but he still had enough life left in him to resume his studies and travel throughout Japan, seeking ways in which to improve his Obscura inventions until he died in 1914. The exact cause remained unknown, but a slight clue as to how he died came to me when I found a photo of him that had been taken with his own camera. There were blue tattoos lining his body.

Sugiyama, on the other hand, was leading a much less interesting life. He hadn't been able to continue his occult research due to his reluctant obligation to raise his daughter, Miyami, who he conceived some years earlier, and the depression of the 1930's eventually reduced him to a simple mechanic. He stayed afloat financially, but the bitter rage of not being able to pursue his preferred studies wore away at him like a rocky shore resisting the tide. He became mentally unstable as years passed.

Finally, in 1942, Sugiyama got his chance. It was the height of Japan's power in World War II, a war that allowed the proliferation of such abstract cruelty that it was no surprise that Sugiyama would find true power in that era.

He had been working as a scientist for the imperial army, and had recently been promoted and put in charge of his own Unit 731 facility. Yet he was unsure of what direction to take it in. That is, until he remembered his father's teachings. There had been a village, the Minakami village, where the entire population had been massacred by none other than the dead themselves. The tormented spirit of one young woman, Sae, was said to have led the massacre.

Sugiyama thought his options over. He knew that, should American forces gain the upper hand in the war, the Japanese strategy would be to try to intimidate them, to scare them away. Then he thought of how scared any person would be if they saw someone like Sae literally fighting for their enemies.

It was a dream that would become the inspiration for his studies up until his death. The "Obscura division" had been born.

Project Zero:

It was the irritating nickname given to his division due to the fact that he had built his research facility in Nagoya, a major city expected to be ground zero for an American bombing should they ever get the chance. But he had to build in that city, on that specific location, for one important reason:

Sugiyama remembered from decades of folklore and study that one element was key in bending people and spirits toward malevolence and evil. It had no set name, having been called the "darkness" by some and the "malice" by others. It was a torrent of pitch-black haze that was terrifying to behold.

Whatever it was called, Sugiyama needed a source of it before his experiments could begin. He sent a few workers up north to the sites of the former Kuze, Kurosawa, and Himuro shrines, hoping that at least one of the sites could host a laboratory. Alas, no one ever came back alive.

He had a backup plan, though. A few months earlier, about two dozen miners working in Nagoya had exposed themselves to some unknown poison buried deep within the ground. A few of them had gone insane, and most hadn't survived at all. Though he wasn't sure, Sugiyama suspected that the so called "poison" that killed the miners was actually the otherworldly essence that he desired.

So he ordered that his facility be built. Though countless other workers died in the process, eventually the underground cavern containing the darkness was sealed by a steel barrier that was six feet thick, and surrounded by the new Unit 731 building. It was large enough to contain the prison cells for POW's, the laboratories, and quarters for him, his workers and scientists, and his daughter.

Sugiyama wasted no time in beginning. Connected to the steel barrier at the edge of the cavern was a small chamber just large enough for one person to fit. Attached to this chamber was a valve that ran directly into the cavern, and it could be opened or closed for any length of time. Sugiyama was hoping that, by exposing a test subject to the right amount of darkness, he could find the key to creating a spirit that would follow his orders. Once he had such a spirit, he would send it to the Pacific front and watch as invading Allied forces turned in terror and fled. In his mind, he was a hero. In reality, he was a developing madman.

It was at this point that he swore that he would surpass his father's work in every conceivable way, and was also the point that he allegedly changed his last name to Kurosawa, in honor of the Minakami Kurosawas.

But his goals were easier said than done. The main Unit 731 complex in Northern China was able to provide scores of prisoners to Sugiyama's facility, but none of them ever survived the procedure, and it didn't take long for "Project Zero" to become a living hell for anyone working in it. Prisoners quickly became aware of what "the chamber" meant for them, and the screams of agony and terror that reverberated through the halls before and during their exposure to the darkness became unbearable for the scientists working in the division. It was especially taxing for the "sweeper", a low level employee tasked with cleaning the blood out of the chamber after each test. Occasionally, prisoners tried to rebel against their captors, resulting in injuries and crackdowns that terrified them all. Darkness would sometimes seep out of the chamber in small amounts, causing hallucinations and panic attacks for anyone nearby. Even the steel wall became an object of horror. It would shock or burn anyone who touched it, and people could often hear voices calling to them from the other side.

Once it had become clear how dangerous their jobs were, a new rule was enforced requiring employees to carry cyanide vials at all times. They were listed in the employee manual as being part of the worker equipment "just in case".

As years passed, some progress was made. Sugiyama, growing more unstable as he struggled to keep his division under control, was held in one piece by Miyami's enduring love. He tried altering the level of darkness that prisoners were exposed to. Eventually they began emerging from the chamber alive, but they were always insane and uncontrollable. At times, spirits would emerge from the chamber, but they would fall apart into clouds of smoke after a few minutes of trying to take revenge on their tormentors. Before too long, Sugiyama stopped using POW's and started using Japanese volunteers instead, hoping that their loyalty to Japan would affect their controllability.

In 1945, Sugiyama's time ran out. Japan, on the verge of losing the war by that point, had been the target of repeated bombing. On January 3rd, Nagoya was hit so vigorously that a firestorm consumed the upper levels of Sugiyama's building, killing most of the people inside. Fortunately for him, when the fire inside the building eventually died, a few people were still alive. Even then, though, they were sealed in by the much larger fire outside of the building, which was still very much alive.

But that wasn't the worst part. The enormous shockwaves from the bombs hadn't just damaged the building--they had also provided enough impact to tear a crevice in the steel barrier holding back the darkness. Now it was seeping out rapidly, and Sugiyama knew that it was just a matter of time before they all perished.

But he was far too obsessed with his work to abandon it so easily. He had at least enough time to run his trial once more. But who could he use? All of the scientists still alive were necessary to help him monitor and operate the test chamber, and the only other person alive besides him was...........

......his daughter, Miyami.

I don't know what was going through Sugiyama's head when he made his decision. His mental stability had been deteriorating as his obsession over his plans had increased, and when he was faced with the last remaining person that he could test, the 18 years of love that she had shown him were forgotten as quickly as a puff of acrid smoke mingling in the air. To him, the correct choice was clear. He immediately ordered his scientists to force her into the chamber. She was his daughter, so he imagined that, if no one else, he could control her spirit after she died.

Throwing all caution to the wind, Sugiyama subjected his daughter to the largest amount of darkness possible, and her cries of misery reached his ears from the test chamber. When she finally fell silent, he made his way to the rapidly clouding atrium that contained the now-broken steel barrier and chamber. He had to see the result for himself.

Trying his best to ignore the disconsolate feeling that the wisps of leaking darkness enforced upon him, Sugiyama moved slowly to the doorway of the chamber, calling his daughter's name. No answer. The inside of the chamber was dark.

Then he opened the doorway of the chamber, and when he did a ghastly arm shot out and grabbed his. As the metallic door creaked open, the remains of his daughter's spirit presented themselves.

I remember from my encounters with her what she looked like, and Rei and I both know that we'll be seeing her in our nightmares for the rest of our days. Her black hair was long and stringy, and had fallen over her face. Her eyes were green and her body was gaunt and pale. Her clothes had been replaced by an amalgamation of runic robes and tattered rags that trailed off of her as she moved. Her nails and teeth were both jagged and sharp. Worst of all, from her eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and even out of the pores of her skin billowed a foul black haze, creating the illusion that she was traveling in the depths of a roiling storm cloud. The look on her face always matched the terror of her appearance; a soulless, malevolent grin that occasionally opened into a twisted laugh.

She was everything that Sugiyama had wanted, and more. Too bad he hadn't been correct about his ability to control her.

Rei saw what happened in those moments due to a vision that her sixth sense granted her. Sugiyama had been far too weak in his old age to resist his former daughter's grip, and she dragged him into the test chamber and sealed the door. Seemingly acting of its own will, the valve opened automatically. When the chamber opened, Sugiyama was still alive, but what little sanity he had left had been stripped away.

Miyami simply watched and waited as Sugiyama sealed his own fate, and that of the rest of his division. His madness had given him a new obsession: preventing people from discovering his work. He became delusionally worried that someone else would use his invention for their own ends, and he wouldn't have that. It was his work; if he could not command it, then no one would.

So he set about sabotaging his own facility. Not giving his scientists the choice to take their chances with the fire outside, Sugiyama activated the building's lockdown procedures while everyone was still trapped. Once that had been done, Miyami finally began her trip through the Project Zero building, killing her former father, and then massacring everyone else inside (or at least those who had forgotten to use their cyanide vials).

That day, looking more like night since the clouds of smoke rising from the city had blocked out the sun, was the day that Project Zero, and the Asou legacy with it, were lost. The entire building disappeared from the living world. It had been located in a large city, yet few people ever knew that it had even existed, since it had been located on the city's edge and kept a secret by the Japanese government. Still, the rumor persisted in the post-war period that anyone to step foot into the outskirts of the city just might find themselves trapped in a world where the events that took place that day repeated themselves over and over again; an endless cycle of consuming flames, crushing darkness, and agonizing death.

Concluding Thoughts:

People say that you can never understand someone until you walk in their shoes. This is certainly true of myself as I came to understand what Kei went through in the last moments of his life. Rei and I went to Nagoya, as planned, and most of the above information wasn't learned without great risk. The two of us felt like we were on the brink of death through most of our time in the building, and some of the apparitions that we saw were beyond description.

But we endured, we put the curse to rest, and we survived to become much closer. In the end, Rei found a note from Sugiyama stating that the name "Kurosawa" had merely been a nickname that he bestowed on himself, rather than a legal name change. It lifted Rei's spirit to know that she had never been related to him, and that her family name was cleared.

I'm not so sure how I should feel about all of this. I nearly died, just so I could make someone that I barely knew happy. Yet, I feel like it was worth it, even though I chose not to publish my findings. The attention or money that it might give me doesn't seem to matter anymore. I finally have someone in my life that I can depend on and trust, and the memories of Kei have stopped hurting me. That's enough to make me happy, plain and simple.

But I've wasted enough time writing this. For now, I owe Rei a phone call. I don't have anything specific to say to her--I'm just eager to seize the opportunity to talk to a good friend.

Sincerely,

Mayame Takamine

Well, that's my take on FF5. This is intended to be cannonly possible, and I don't think I made any mistakes. The only place that I think I could've messed up is the fact that Kunihiko visited Rogetsu Island before he died, and I have no idea what he did or said while he was there.

Also, my sincerest apologies if this seems too extreme to anyone. These game are already scary, but the fact that Unit 731 was a real place might lead people to think that I was being insensitive. Please know that this was not my intent, and I am very sorry if I have harmed anyone.

Reviews will be appreciated.