Flip City

Flip City

By Cybra and spam

Cybra's A/N: You like us! You really like us! Well, here's Case #2 for you all! spam saw it on Real Scary Stories.

Disclaimer: Digimon is not ours. Lucas belongs to spam. Cybra came up with the idea for this story! P spam!

Case #2: Let Sleeping Sailors Lie

"Better beware of me, Lucas! I'm a warlock! Ooh!" mocked the senior before him.

Lucas Wolenczak cocked his head to one side and raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

Lucas' fellow senior slammed him against the locker. "Don't get smart with me!"

The American curled his fingers into a fist and delivered a punch to Fuma Iko's jaw. "What the hell was that for?!"

A teacher walking by yanked Fuma away from Lucas. "Knock it off, you two! Or you'll be spending your afternoon in detention!"

Lucas merely shrugged and walked away with Fuma fuming behind him. The American strolled casually into his first block class, hoping the rest of the day would turn out to be uneventful.

Lunchtime would prove him wrong (and leave him cursing the Lucas Fate Gods). Fuma and his group of friends deliberately sat down at the table next to Lucas and his friend and partner in crime Koushiro "Izzy" Izumi.

"Oh Mighty Math Guru, learn me the ways of calculus!" Lucas begged, bowing before the sophomore.

"'Learn' you? I think I better teach you grammar on top of that," Izzy responded, eyes twinkling.

"Hey," Lucas protested, indignant, "I said that on purpose!"

"Sure ya did."

Lucas reached into his navy blue side pack, pulling out a large stack of books and folders. . His friend waiting patiently as he sorted through the disheveled collection of school supplies. As he was searching for his calculus book and homework (that was due next block) his tome – a large, battered leather-bound book – fell to the floor at the feet of Fuma.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" Fuma asked himself loudly, picking up the tome. "A spell book? A book to ward off evil spirits?" He paused and added sarcastically, "Because we all know that evil spirits constantly lurk the halls of our school."

Fuma's friends laughed both at Fuma's comment and Lucas' scowling expression.

One of the other seniors asked teasingly, "Have you called the Psychic Friends Hotline lately?"

"I bet they give him a discount since he calls so often," another jeered.

"Do you have any tarot cards in there?" one laughed.

"Got a crucifix in there as well?" Fuma mocked. "Maybe you should add in garlic and a stake as well. You never know, one of our teachers could be a vampire!"

Lucas seethed and almost growled, "Give me back my tome."

The senior holding the tome asked, "You want your tome back? Come and get it."

"He's baiting you, Lucas," the redheaded sophomore warned. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"Okay!" Lucas cheerfully answered back, walking towards Fuma to retrieve the old book.

Fuma held the large book aloft so even the tall American couldn't reach it. "Why don't you use a spell to get it down?"

The American had just the right spell in mind. Before Fuma could react, he punched the Japanese teenager in the nose so hard that it resulted in a strange pop. Fuma pulled away, dropping the tome to the floor and holding his now broken nose.

"Lucas, I thought I told you not to do anything I wouldn't do!" Izzy exclaimed, eyes already scanning the room for teachers.

"Wouldn't you punch him in the face if he had something of yours?"

A beat of silence.

"That's beside the point!"

That was all the time Fuma's friends needed to rise to their feet. Izzy gulped, already knowing what was going to happen.

Lucas raised an eyebrow, unconcerned. "Japanese guys hit like girls anyway."

The first punch that connected with the American's right cheek convinced him otherwise. Lucas' left eyebrow twitched before he socked his assailant in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him and sending him to his knees.

Izzy decided it would not be wise for hi to remain. He held no desire to have bruises and/or a detention. Being smaller, Izzy easily slipped between the combatants, grabbed Lucas' precious tome, and sprinted away just before the principal arrived.

Returning home with a busted lip, a bruised ego, and two hours later than normal, Lucas plopped down in the nearest chair available.

"Curse the Lucas Fate Gods!" he muttered.

As upset as Lucas was over the fight and his inability to win the fight, he was more upset over the apparent loss of his battered tome.

"Lucas, is that you?" a familiar voice called from the redhead's bedroom.

"Nope. It's Al Capone, back from the dead, see?" Lucas replied grumpily, imitating a gangster's voice.

Hands behind his back, Izzy walked over to the sulking American. "Har har. Nice lip, Lucas."

"Yeah, so? At least I didn't chicken out and run away."

"I'm the one that didn't have a detention!"

Both teens stuck their tongues out at each other.

Then the younger teen laughed. "You'll never believe what I have!"

The blonde American looked up at his younger counterpart. "Is it mineral, animal, or vegetable?"

"Mineral – I guess."

"Tastes bad?"

"I supposed."

"Smells funny?"

"Kind of…"

"Looks weird?"

"Ye – "

"I know! Spam!" the American exclaimed proudly.

The Japanese teen nearly fell over. "No, no!"

"Then what could it be otherwise?"

Producing a large, battered book from behind his back, Izzy handed it to the surprised American. "You're welcome."

"Thank you!" was the happy reply.

The redhead smiled and received a pillow in his face. "What was that for?!"

Lucas shrugged and tried to look innocent. "I don't know. Somebody's throwing things! It wasn't me! Don't you have homework or something?"

"Mine's finished. Yours on the other hand…"

Lucas paused, carefully considering his answer. "Homework is for homeroom."

"Uh huh. Forgot it, huh?"

"No!" Lucas indignantly shouted. "I just don't understand it…as usual."

The redhead raised an eyebrow. "Need help?"

"I have an interesting proposition for you," the American stated suddenly, terminating the previous conversation.

The Japanese teenager blinked at the sudden change in topic. "What kind of proposition?" he warily asked.

"I was, uh, wondering if you would, uh, join me on a ghost hunting trip."

Slowly, Izzy raised the other eyebrow. "Why…?"

"Well, um, that's an interesting story in itself…so I'll tell you."

"Oh, yes. Do tell."

"Well, it's kinda on a dare…Those unbelievers want some proof, and I plan to give it to them."

"So what's the dare?"

"Well you know the Yakatori, the – "

"Supposedly haunted boat?"

The American exchange student gave Izzy a powerful death glare and punched him in the arm. "Well, I would get to the point, but you keep interrupting me." Before Izzy could say anything to that haughty statement, Lucas continued, "Anywho, I thought, uh, we could take over video cameras and stuff and spend the night."

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What's this 'we' stuff I'm hearing?"

"Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that little detail."

Glaring at Lucas, Izzy asked, "I'm going, aren't I?"

"Whether you like it or not!" the American told him.

"I'm calling Ken."

That weekend, three teenagers stood in front of the old navy vessel left over from World War II. Spots of rust decorated the hull of the Yakatori. Moans and creaks emitted from the bowels of the ship as she rocked slowly back and forth in the waves. The sun slowly slipped below the horizon. A light breeze wiped its cold fingers across the back of the teens' necks.

"Creeeepy," Ken Ichijouji stated, breaking the silence.

Lucas grinned up at the boat. "Dude, this is gonna be awesome! Twelve hours with this ship all to ourselves! Here, ghosty, ghosty, ghosty!"

Ken gave Izzy an amused expression. "Someone's having a good time."

"Like a kid at Christmas," came the grumbled reply.

The blue-haired teenager gave his friend an encouraging smile. It was obvious the redhead did not want to be there.

"What am I doing here again?" Ken asked.

"Because I have to come. And, Lucas, why did I have to come?"

"I'm older than you. There is…no…other…explanation," Lucas stated, slowing down near the end of his sentence. "Anyway, let's go!"

"Uh uh." The redhead grabbed the American's collar.

"Choking. Choking," Lucas croaked.

"I want a real explanation."

"You can turn back now, but I'll call you a chicken and a wuss for the rest of your life."

"No. I want an explanation. That's all."

"Because three people means more cameras and more proof!" was the hurried explanation.

"I don't think so."

"Are you just gonna stand here and complain all night or are you coming inside?"

"You got me into this to begin with. Didn't you?" Izzy calmly inquired.

Lucas gave his most charming smile. "Okay! Let's go!"

The redheaded Japanese teen released the American's collar, saying in a matter-of-fact voice, "I hate you."

Ken lay awake on his bunk at the ungodly hour of 10:47 at night. He stared up at the ceiling, wondering how many sailors had slept in that same bunk and how many of those had been killed.

Pushing these morbid thoughts aside, he attempted to peer through the darkness. He and his companions had checked the ship an hour ago with no incidents. After that, they had turned in for the night.

"Is anybody else awake?" Ken asked, breaking into the sounds of the ship rocking back and forth in the tide.

"Am I ever asleep?" came the voice of Lucas, answering the question with one of his own.

The third member of the group replied irritably, "No. I'm asleep. That's why I'm talking to you!"

Ken merely rolled his eyes in the dark. "Since we're all awake, I suggest we check the ship again."

"I suggest," Izzy sarcastically began, "that we just use the Ouija board Lucas brought."

"What? You too lazy to walk around the ship again?" Lucas inquired. A pause. "And no, I didn't bring it."

"My error."

"You're in a real fantastic mood today, Izzy," the youngest of the three noted. "I thought you were a night owl."

"I am, but this time it's not by choice. How can you be so…so…"

"Gullible?" Lucas supplied. He "helpfully" added more adjectives. "Naïve? Stupid? Ugly? Sissy?"

"I am not a sissy!" Ken protested.

"So everything else is true?"

"You woke me up to fight?!" Izzy roared angrily. "We might as well get up and search the stupid ship! Lucas, take one camera and check the bow of the ship! Ken, you and I will take the other one and check the aft part of the ship! Maybe then we can get some sleep!"

Ken and Lucas froze, staring at their angered friend. As one they saluted and shouted, "Yes, sir!"

"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get this done so we can get back to sleep!"

Ken and Izzy methodically walked the halls of the Yakatori. At the moment, Ken was carrying the video camera. The machine's weight was becoming quite uncomfortable on his shoulder.

"Next stop: the infirmary," Izzy reported, opening another of the heavy metal doors.

Ken shivered as he entered the room. "It's freezing in here!"

The redhead rubbed his upper arms with his hands. "Must be a draft somewhere."

"Whatever. Well, it looks like nothing's – "

"The wall! Point the camera towards the wall!" Izzy yelled, flailing his arms energetically.

Hastily, the blue-haired teen did so. There on the wall were several points of light not from any light source he could discern. The lights had not been there a moment ago.

"If I'm right," the younger teen began, "that's Lucas' proof."

Izzy's midnight black eyes slowly examined the room. None of the old lights had been switched on. The only two lights that could possibly cause it were the red light on the camera – only the lights on the wall weren't red, so the camera light was ruled out – and the light from his flashlight.

"I'm going to turn off the flashlight. It might be reflecting off of something."

With a click, the flashlight was switched off.

The lights on the wall were still there.

"Okay…That's almost the freakiest thing I ever saw…" the redhead muttered.

"What about the thing with Seiji?"

"I said 'almost'."

"Oh." Ken paused, still looking at the lights nervously. "Can we go now? We have some proof for Lucas, and this place gives me the creeps."

"Sure." Izzy clicked on the flashlight once more. "I'm gonna give you the flashlight, and you give me the camera."

"That's good. It's killing my shoulder!"

About a moment later, the two teens had reentered the hallway. Before Izzy could even turn around to do so, the door slammed shut by itself.

If Ken's eyes opened any wider, his eyeballs would've popped out of his head. He closed his eyes and opened them so that they looked normal.

The redheaded teen pointed the camera at his friend. "This ever happen to you before?"

The blue-haired teen shook his head slowly.

"Huh. First time?"

A nod from the redhead's companion. "Neither you nor I slammed that door shut. And before you even suggest it, I don't think the wind did it either. First off, there's no breeze in here. Second, that door is way too heavy for that kind of thing."

"Okay. Barometric pressure or something closed the door. Satisfied?"

A pause.

"You're not a skeptic, Izzy. You're in denial."

"Whatever. Let's just go find Lucas, okay?"

Ken gave an affirmative nod before leading the way back to the bunk.

Even though Izzy found it hard to admit it, he found it difficult to explain the lights and the door so that it was logical and reasonable enough for he himself to believe it. Perhaps it was time for him to take Lucas' obsession far more seriously.

"12 o'clock, and all is well!"

The statement bounced off the steel walls in the empty hallway in the bow of the ship. Hollow echoes amplified the volume of the speaker's voice.

"This is boring." Lucas hmph'd with disappointment.

The American had seen and heard nothing out of place for the last hour and thirteen minutes. There had been no ghostly figures, no lights, no slamming of doors, nothing that was typical of sightings seen by workers on the ship.

Instead of methodically searching like his two younger counterparts, Lucas meandered about the bow of the ship. Often times he would return to places he had already searched.

After twenty minutes or so, he reached a crossroads in the halls and stopped.

"Man, this bites," he muttered bitterly. "All of the workers see something and I see jack diddly. I better just get back to bed."

Even as he said this, he felt what seemed like a hand pushing him forward, causing him to topple and drop the camera.

"Holy shit!"

Lucas picked up his small, handheld camera and turned around. He quickly turned into a hallway, passed over a spot, and froze.

"I'm getting a decidedly creepy, angry feeling around here…"

The American panned the camera over the area and stooped down to the floor. Slowly and cautiously, he reached towards the floor and touched the cold steel beneath him.

Suddenly, he recoiled from the spot on the floor.

"Somebody died here…" He gulped. "That settles it! I'm going back to the bunk! This is more creepy than I can handle!"

Quickly, Lucas turned and rocketed back to the bunks.

The two younger teenagers sat discussing their experience at the same time that Lucas had been pushed to the floor by that strange unseen force. Obviously, neither teen was aware of their older friend's experience.

"So now you admit that this stuff might possibly be real?" Ken asked, raising an eyebrow.

The redhead shifted from foot to foot. "I admit that these…occurrences…are hard to explain by…conventional means. At the moment, Lucas' theory is the most least likely yet logical answer to all of this."

"Lucas? Logic?" Ken inquired incredulously. "Are we talking about the same Lucas here? I'm talking about the one that lives in your apartment with your family now. You know, the foreign exchange student from America."

"Yeah. We are talking about the same Lucas."

Ken put a hand to Izzy's forehead, frowning.

"What are you doing?" the redheaded teenager asked.

"Feeling for the fever. Are you habitually taking drugs or drinking alcohol?"

"No."

"Do you have a history of insanity in your family?"

"Um…" Izzy thought for a moment, vaguely remembering something his mother had told him. "My great-uncle thought he was the reincarnation of Napoleon," he answered helpfully.

A pause.

"I'll take that as a big 'yes'," the blue-haired Japanese teenager stated.

Just then, the bunk room door slammed open, emitting a loud clang that reverberated about the room. The two Japanese teens whirled around to see Lucas standing there, gasping the doorway.

"Are you trying ta give us a heart attack?!" Izzy demanded, clutching at his chest as he attempted to slow his wildly beating heart.

The senior took a deep breath. He now gazed calmly at his fellow ghost hunters. "I don't know about you guys, but I think I'm getting all 'funned out'." On the last two words, he made quotation marks with his fingers.

"We saw some 'unexplained phenomenon' – " Ken shout a quick glare at Izzy. " – of the ghostly kind."

"What'd ya see?" Lucas asked, forgetting his earlier fright.

"Lights on the infirmary wall with no obvious source and a large, steel door slamming shut for no apparent reason."

"Dude, I just have to show you my footage!"

At 9:15 the next morning, the trio of ghost hunters gathered in the Izumis' living room, reviewing the footage they had taped the night before.

"Okay, here comes the lights!" the blue-haired teen exclaimed.

The two younger teens leaned forward in anticipation.

"Next stop: the infirmary," Izzy reported, opening another of the heavy metal doors.

The camera shot quivered as Ken entered the room. "It's freezing in here!"

The redhead rubbed his upper arms with his hands. "Must be a draft somewhere."

"Whatever. Well, it looks like nothing's – "

"The wall! Point the camera towards the wall!" Izzy yelled, flailing his arms energetically.

Hastily, the camera's view swung from its view of Izzy waving his arms like a madman and pointed towards the wall.

"Pff. What lights?" Lucas asked.

"I – I swear I got them!" Ken sputtered.

The camera's view clearly showed the wall, but there was nothing to be seen on the wall. The three teenagers could hear Ken and Izzy's recorded voices exchanging words, but for some bizarre reason, the lights that held their attention could not be seen on the footage.

The redhead merely stared, dumbfounded.

"Hah! Explain that, Einstein! You can't! So there!" Lucas crowed.

"It's not logical…It's just not possible…" Izzy murmured mostly to himself.

Lucas and Ken high-fived each other.

"Okay, Mr. Spock," Lucas taunted, "care to explain?"

"I – the camera must be faulty."

A sudden Bang! from the tape surprised all present, interrupting the conversation.

"And there's the door slamming," Ken unnecessarily told them.

"Okay, let's pop in my tape," Lucas suggested.

After fifteen minutes of Lucas' travelling – which included him talking to himself, humming popular tunes so far off-key that you could hardly recognize them, and revisiting the same hallways several times – he stopped.

"Man, this bites," he muttered bitterly from off-screen. "All of the workers see something and I see jack diddly. I better just get back to bed."

Even as he said this, the view of the camera pitched forward. The camera hit the floor, making the picture fizzle out for a few seconds but the picture quickly returned to normal.

"Holy shit!"

"You probably tripped, Lucas," Izzy stated, smirking.

"I didn't trip!" the American roared. "I'm not that clumsy!"

The redhead ignored that statement. "Okay. So we have lights that didn't show up on the tape even though we shot them and we know we shot them – "

"You shot ghosts?"

"Lucas, don't be irritating."

"Hey!"

"A door slamming shut that shouldn't be able to do so on its own. And Lucas…'being pushed'." The last two words were said with Izzy making quotation marks with his fingers.

"I was pushed! Really!"

Ken interrupted the argument before it could begin. "What's this part, Lucas?"

The image on the screen was of Lucas' hand reaching out and touching the floor.

Suddenly, the hand recoiled from the spot on the floor.

"Somebody died here…" Lucas gulped. "That settles it! I'm going back to the bunk! This is more creepy than I can handle!"

Quickly, the camera view turned and rocketed back to the bunks, shaking from side to side as the one holding the camera ran.

The blue-haired teen asked quietly, "How do you know somebody died there?"

"Well, if you had been paying attention to the movie," Lucas began in a haughty tone, "I did say that there was a decidedly creepy feeling there. You figure it out. Duh!"

"uh, Lucas? When most people get creepy feelings, they don't think 'somebody died here'!"

The American simply drew a deep breath and said, "Shut up."

"I guess this is one mystery we won't be able to solve," Ken stated.

"Jinkies," Izzy quipped.

Lucas chuckled and stated, "It definitely won't be the last."

Lucas would later be proved to be correct in saying that the experience on the Yakatori would be the last experience they wouldn't be able to rationally explain away.

Izzy kept the tapes from the adventure on the Yakatori. He labeled them and filed them away for future reference and examination. They eventually became part of the immense file of data he and his friends would collect during other adventures. This file would practically become he and his friends' bible when he and Ken compared data in attempts to find patterns.

Their next adventure would lead them to a little town with a highly unusual history.

But that is for another story.