Chasing Ghosts

The crew had stopped by Mal's home to check in with Jory and Morkine and let them know of the events that had transpired.

"Jory, I think we're going to need you to come with us. We're going to need an extra sword arm just in case," Halcen said.

"You want me to come with you to the haunted forest?" Jory said, nervously.

"Forbidden Swamp," Mal corrected him.

Jory gulped. "Is there any way I could just pass?" he asked. "I mean, Morkine's gonna need company while you're all gone. I'd hate for him to be here alone, you know?"

"There are plenty of medical textbooks here I could take a look at," Morkine said, calmly. "Having some time alone would not be so bad."

"Are you saying I'm annoying?" Jory asked, offended.

"No. You are just loud."

"Wow, fine then. I'll go, if that's what you want."

"You're interested in medical knowledge?" Mal asked Morkine.

"Not particularly, but I do enjoy reading. There are not many books on the ship and I've read all the ones I have a few times. I would like to expand."

"Hm, fair enough," Mal said.

"So, we're chasing a lead that's at least a month old, right?" Fein asked. "How do we know we're actually going to find anything?"

"He's got a good point," Jory said. "Maybe we should just cancel the whole thing."

"We don't, but this is the only lead we have, so we have to follow it," Halcen said.

"But do we even know how far in this man went?" Kazuki asked. "Not to sound like a downer, but this swamp is huge right? How do we know which direction he took when he got in there? We know he went north from the village, but that really doesn't tell us too much."

"Another good point," Jory said.

"No, we don't have much to go on," Halcen said. "But we don't have a choice. We're going to do this the old-fashioned way; look with our eyes. It's gonna be tedious and it'll probably take some time, but that's what we're doing."

"Ugh, fine," Jory ceded.

The rest of the crew gave up their arguments because they knew there was no point.

They headed up through the village into the Forbidden Swamp past the north part of the village. They began walking through the regular swamp and took their time, with Halcen and Mal up at the front, leading the way.

"Now the trickiest thing about this is going to be that we don't know exactly where the guy went," Halcen said.

"Unfortunately so," Mal said. "We only know that he headed into the Forbidden Swamp."

"So how are we supposed to find this guy?" Bo asked.

"Well, neither mine nor Grey's Observation Haki are working right on this island. But we do still have Fein and Shira to sense anything out there. But basically, the plan is to keep moving north, slowly, and keep our eyes out for any clues or anything suspicious. We'll fan out a little bit to cover a bit more ground. If any of us see anything, we'll all take a look."

"So long as we get through the haunted forest alive," Jory said.

"Forbidden Swamp," Mal corrected him again.

"Potato, potah-to."

After they had been out in the swamp for some time, the sky darkened and the sun began to set. It was going to be a dark night in the Forbidden Swamp.

"What do we do now?" Grey asked.

"Well, we're too far in already to go back. We have to keep going," Halcen said.

Halcen pulled out a lantern, as did Jin, Kazuki and Mal. They lit the way for the others to see the trails they were following. As the sky grew dark, the natural sounds of the swamp seemed to amplify. All the daytime white noise was put to rest, and nerves began to rise.

"I don't like this," Jory said. "Why can't we just do this during the day?"

"Every moment we wait, another person in the village dies," Mal said.

Jory sighed. "Okay." He tried to steel himself, but this was not something he was comfortable with.

After they had walked a couple miles from the northern tip of the village, Mal stopped. "This is it."

Halcen stood next to her and peered out into the darkness. There were no markings to note the difference between the regular swamp and what lay ahead. "How can you tell?"

"I can feel it."

Halcen looked at the woman again. Maybe she really can use Observation Haki. But does she realize that's what it is? How much exactly does she know about it? How much do I even know about her? Have I made a mistake risking so much for a woman I know nothing about? Halcen shook it off. He couldn't think like that. If he questioned every single decision he had to make on the fly, he'd go mad. He had to resolve that he knew what he was doing. But there was something different about this woman. Something had made him want to save her for no reason. Why was she so special?

"So, this is where we cross into our deaths?" Jory asked.

"Oh, my god, shut up," Fein said. He took a step across the line where Mal stood before. "Nothing gonna happen. We're not gonna- ugh!" His body froze and his eyes grew wide. Then he shouted out as if in agony and fell to the ground, on his back, shaking as if having a seizure.

"Fein!" Bo shouted.

"Fein?" Jin asked, his voice high.

"Somebody do something!"

Kazuki wanted to rush to his side to help, but he didn't want to risk anything happening to him either.

"I KNEW IT!" Jory screamed. "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!"

Then Fein began laughing uncontrollably. He tried to stand back up, but keeled over on his knees pointing and laughing. "I-can't-believe-you-bought it," he said through bursts of laughter.

"So not funny!" Jory shouted.

"It was hilarious to me."

"You dick!" Bo said, then rushed over and tackled the guy. "I was actually worried about you!" He wrapped his arm around Fein's neck and started giving him a noogie.

"AH! Stop it! That hurts." Fein slipped out of Bo's grip and stood up, ready to pounce.

"Enough horsing around," Grey said.

Everyone dropped it and stood up in respectable form.

"We are here to stop a plague from taking people's lives, not to screw around."

"Sorry," Fein said.

"Aww, we were just having fun," Bo said.

"There's a time and a place, gentleman," Grey said.

"Alright, alright," Bo shrugged off the scolding.

"Wow, Grey," Halcen said, "way to play 'Dad.'"

"You know what mister?" Grey said.

Halcen laughed. "Alright. Let's get going." He looked over the spot where Mal had stopped. "Fein seems to be fine."

"Well, 'fine' is a loose term," Jin said.

"Hey!" Fein shouted, looking ruffled.

"Let's go," Halcen said, and he took a step forward. And then another. Nothing seems to be happening. I knew this haunted stuff was all a crock of shit.

They continued into the Forbidden Swamp for some time without any trouble. Their biggest issue was the lighting. There being nine of them and only four lights, it was difficult to see. Though Shira had the advantage of being able to see much more clearly in the dark than the others. The path ahead was especially hard being that there was little moonlight under the treetops and fog. Pulling closer together seemed to help, even if only a little.

After another hour or so, Jin stopped walking and everyone looked back at him.

"What's going on?" Halcen asked.

"I've seen that rock before," he said nodding at a boulder to their left side. It was quite large and there was a culmination of moss on the side.

"Excuse me?"

"I've seen that rock before," he said repeating himself.

"Oh, come on, it's a swamp," Halcen said. "There are thousands of moss-covered boulders. There's no way in hell this is the exact same one."

"It is though, because I remember thinking the first time that the moss looked like Garganzola, that cartoon cat from the newspapers."

Halcen walked over to the rock and inspected the moss. "Son of a bitch, it does."

"So, we're walking in circles," Kazuki stated.

"We're lost?!" Jory began panicking.

"We're not lost," Halcen said, "Calm down." He looked over to Mal and looked into her eyes, trying to gauge if she knew what was going on without spreading panic.

"It's the Forbidden Swamp," she stated without any remorse. "I warned you it was haunted."

"I told you this was a bad idea!" Jory shouted.

"Calm down," Bo said, annoyed.

"So, spirits are interfering with the paths we're going?" Halcen said, cockily. "Don't make me laugh."

As if on cue, a far-off sound of children's laughter echoed loudly across their spot.

That's a bit on the nose, Halcen thought to himself.

Jory froze in fear.

"Well fuck," Fein said. "That's never a good sign."

"That's spooky," Bo said.

Kazuki began looking about, trying to somehow see through the darkness to see the source of the laugh to no avail.

"So now what?" Jin asked.

Grey looked at Halcen as if saying "I told you so."

"There's still no evidence this is some kind of phantasma," Halcen said. "We're fine. We keep going."

"Halcen, I don't know if this is wise," Grey said.

"Why?"

"I'm… sensing something, disturbing. There's something here, in the swamp."

Halcen took a moment to feel things out. He could still primarily feel the hazy static he had when they arrived. But underneath it, there was something else faint. But there wasn't enough to tell what it was. He knew Grey would have a better picture though, but Grey wasn't always the most logical. "We don't have any choice. We're already this deep. If we don't keep going, we can't figure out where this man went."

"We're not very likely to find anything at this point," Jin said. "It's been about a month right? All trace of this guy is probably gone."

"Actually," Fein said, his nose in the air. "That's not entirely correct." He looked down to Shira who growled.

"What do you mean?"

"There's… an odor. I don't know what exactly it is, but it's not just swamp." He sniffed the air again. "It almost smells… metallic."

"Where is it coming from?" Halcen asked.

Fein looked around, then finally settle on a northwestern direction. "This way."

"Alright, you heard him. Let's go." Halcen pressed forward, forcing the others to follow.

They crept along quietly, peering through the darkness. As they drew closer to Fein's smell, they began to hear more noises than the simple sounds of swamp life. The sounds of cooing owls were silenced by gnashing and growling sounds.

"Those don't sound like regular swamp animals," Fein said as it became louder.

"What the hell is happening here?" Kazuki said low to himself.

And then a high-pitched shriek began blaring from nearby.

"What the fuck is that?" Halcen said.

"It's a ghost!" Jory shouted.

The sound continued to get louder and louder. They all groaned in discomfort, put their hands over their ears, and stopped walking.

Then a huge gust of wind began billowing where they stood and extinguished their lanterns. Everyone knelt down, with their hands still over their heads, trying to keep themselves from being blown down. They noise continued to shriek and the wind continued tearing through the brush.

Begone, whispered a soft voice in their heads. And then all at once, everything died down. It was pitch black.

"Fuck," Halcen said, fiddling with a match in the dark. It finally lit and he got his lantern going again. He went around to the others getting their lights back on too.

"Now do you see?" Mal said to Halcen. "This place is very dangerous. It's not to be taken lightly."

"Well," Halcen said, trying to rationalize in his brain, "I do have to admit that was pretty weird. But still not entirely outside the realm of human-making."

"Halcen," Grey said, annoyed.

"Okay fine, that was fucking spooky. What do you want me to say? 'I don't have an explanation?' Because I don't. Okay. There was weird fucking things happening here and I don't know what's causing it."

"I do," Jory said. "It's a goddamn ghost. We have to get out of here."

"We can't just leave after having come so far," Halcen said.

"Well, we have to do something! I'm not dying out here."

Halcen slapped Jory across the face. "Calm the fuck down."

Jory looked at Halcen in shock.

"We are here to do a job," Halcen said calmly, but sternly. "We are going to do that job. Ghosts, Devil Fruits, whatever may come; we don't back down just because it's difficult."

"Okay," Jory said, feeling a little calmer.

Halcen forced the group to continue moving. They had no choice at this point. There was no going back. They were still on mission. They walked through the night in the dark swamp, their eyes alert.

A small mouse darted in front of them and stopped. It looked up and stared at them, eyes glistening off the fire light. It began chattering to itself, then bounded off again.

"This place is freaky," Bo said.

As they continued another low hum began to reverberate through the area. It grew louder as time went on, but it wasn't painful. It only began to annoy after a time. It felt like a warning, but they did not know of what.

Fein continued to lead them, until finally they came to a clearing where there were no trees. There was a simple white stone wall about three feet high in front of the clearing that circled a large area.

"What is this?" Halcen said, inspecting the area.

"It's a graveyard," Mal said.

As they peered inside past the wall, they could see gravestones scattered in the darkness.

"Oh God," Jory said.

"Why is there a graveyard out here in the middle of the Forbidden Swamp?" Halcen asked. "How did it get here?"

"It wasn't always forbidden," Mal said. "Once upon a time, people used to live here in droves. There's a town likely close by as well. But that's when the ghosts came." She shivered. "We should leave."

"This is where the smell led us," Fein said.

"We can't just abandon the trail now. We have to continue though."

"This place should not be disturbed," Mal warned.

"We're not going to disturb anything; we're just passing through."

"I think we should go around," Grey said.

"Going around isn't going to do anything," Fein said. "It's coming from inside. We're gonna have to go in there."

"You're saying the source of the smell is inside the graveyard?" Kazuki asked.

"Yes, it is."

"Crap."

"Well, let's go on in."

Halcen was the first to pass though the threshold. He had to show them there was nothing to fear. He walked further and further in, his lantern in front of him. There was so little around that he could actually make out, but once he got to the gravestones, he turned to the others and waved for them to join him.

They filed in slowly and cautiously. There was a nervous energy in the air. Walking into an abandoned cemetery in the middle of a haunted swamp in the middle of the night seemed like a bad idea. But here they were so they had to just roll with it.

Halcen walked in the front with Fein right behind him, followed by Mal. Grey brought up the rear behind the rest of the crew. They pushed in further and further.

Suddenly Grey's senses began flaring. "Wait!" he turned around to see a flash of light behind him.

A shimmering floating force with an intense aura about the size of a man stood in between him and the exit.

"We gotta go!" Grey shouted.

Halcen looked back at the lighted being. "A fucking ghost!? Ah, shit." I'm never going to hear the end of this.

It began flashing with vibrant ferocity and the light brighter and brighter.

The crew began running in the opposite direction.

Fein kept his senses calm and kept sniffing for their way out.

As they continued another phantasm appeared ahead of them, blocking their way. This one began shrieking as it tried to block them.

Halcen dodged it and continued running. The others followed suit.

"Shit!"

A third thing came at them from their right side as they ran through the cemetery. This one began bellowing with gusts of wind, blasting at them with ferocity.

"Where the hell are we going?!" Halcen shouted at Fein.

"This way!" Fein shouted, taking the lead. He began sprinting. The others would just have to keep up.

Kazuki made sure Mal kept up as the others ran full force. He had the extra mental capacity while the others struggled with their senses.

They were finally making strides. They rushed through the graveyard to where Fein's nose led them.

Suddenly he stopped. "Here!"

They began looking around to no avail.

"What's here?!" Halcen asked. "I don't see anything."

Fein sniffed around. "It's in the ground," Fein said, panting.

"In the… son of a bitch. How do we get down there?"

"Should we try that hatch?" Bo asked.

"What hatch?" Jory said.

"That one," Bo said, pointing.

And there was a piece of metal laid down on the ground like a cellar door.

Halcen rushed to it and tried to pull on the handle. "It won't budge," he said, yanking on it repeatedly.

"There's gotta be some way to get it. We can't just stay out here."

Halcen took a closer look. There was small keypad over the side of the door. "Jin! Come here!"

Jin rushed over to him.

"Do you think you can, you know, hack it?"

"Oh, yeah, like hacking things is just that easy," he said sarcastically.

"We don't have time for this, can you do it or not?"

"Yeah, just give me some time."

"How much?" Grey asked.

"Maybe a minute."

"We don't have that long."

They all looked up where Grey stood.

There was a fourth and final apparition that appeared before them. It hovered there, not moving. It was waiting, while the other three began moving closer toward them. As they moved with their, shrieking, blowing, and flashing; the one above began to grow, as if engorging itself.

"Shit."

"HURRY!"

Jin got down at the pin pad and began tapping away at it.

BEEP! It shouted at him in anger when he messed up.

"They're getting closer!" Halcen shouted.

BEEP!

"It's getting bigger!" Grey said.

BEEP!

"SHUT UP!" Jin yelled.

He looked up to see the one floating above was now absorbing the other three ghosts, combining into one giant, floating, swirling, shrieking, wind-blowing super phantasm.

He looked back down and tried one more time.

PING!

The hatch opened, and Jin shouted "LET'S GO!"

They all jumped inside one by one into a small crapped space in the dark. Grey was the last one in and closed the hatch behind him. The last thing they saw was the ghost explode across the sky and they felt the breeze echo down to them before the door closed and they were encompassed by darkness.