Chapter 7: The Ghosts are Back in Town
"Hey, hey, Naka-chan, idol of the fleet is back, desu, and with me are my guests, say hello everyone, dess." Hikaru restarted the stream with her usual cheerful exclamations.
"Hey, Zephyr here from Devonport docks," Sally grinned and waved at her webcam.
"I'm Zenith," Robyn added.
Megan smirked, "And Crow, also of Devonport docks."
"Fubuki here," Rika continued. "With my two division mates Mutsuki and Yuudachi, who joined us part way through the last game." The two new destroyers gave a wave at their names, Mutsuki with hair similar if a bit shorter than Sally's, except red to her blue, while Yuudachi had long platinum blonde hair.
Hikaru shifted slightly in her seat. "As a reminder all the games we're playing today count as horror of varying levels so while I do have destroyer girls in the stream, there shouldn't be anyone smaller than a light cruiser or younger than about fifteen watching. I'd prefer eighteen and heavy cruiser girls just because I know Crow-chan and Zephyr-chan, desu, not to mention Five Nights at Freddy's."
Rika smirked at the camera in front of her as she loaded up her game. "I hope you're still in the mood for being spooked, because it's haunting time." Switching the stream to her screen, she grinned, her game letting out a chilling laugh before the music started playing in a way that just scratched on the nerves.
"What the poi?" asked Yuudachi, her eyes widening. "What is this?" she asked.
"Should we be worried that Fubuki-chan actually has a game like this?" asked Mutsuki from where she stood behind Rika.
Megan snorted in amusement. "It's honestly not the worst game she's got in her library. We sent her some and those can get… interesting."
Rika gave Megan an arch look. "You mean bloody terrifying," she deadpanned, "or can be gore fests, or both." Turning her attention from the Brit, she started a new game of Ghost Master, using the Ouija board in game to spell her ship name before sitting back to watch the introduction cut scene.
It took only a few moments for the Ouija board in the game to spit out a number of ghosts that chased the teenagers out of the school, scaring them in ways ranging from animated furniture to bug swarms to pulling their own bodies apart, something that drew a scream from Mutsuki and a yelp from Yuudachi.
"Calm down you two," Sally commented in an amused tone, a slight smile playing at her lips. "Ghost Master isn't that bad for scares, at least for the player."
"Doesn't mean it's not spooky…" Rika commented, making her voice change on the last word. "Anyway, welcome to Gravenville, the setting for the game. Our first job is to scare the ever loving hell out of everyone at the Kappa Lambda Sorority House in Gravenville University for Haunting 101, that other location that opened up?"
Rika paused for a moment to circle it with her mouse. "This right here is the Ghoul Room, basically our base and the place from the intro cut scene we just watched. Pretty much every level we play will have its own little intro/briefing that tells you what to do and gives you a bit of a fly through of the locale."
After Rika had gotten to the ghost select screen, Megan cut in. "Okay, just before Fubuki continues, we'll be seeing a bit of this screen. Notice something about it though? Across the top are tabs for different 'haunters' running in power order from weakest to strongest. Power also equals energy requirement. A sprite even on max will never equal a horror at the same level."
Sally nodded, shifting a little. "The other parts of the screen there?" she asked. "On the left is the team assignment. You can pick your own up to eight, though that's dependent on the level you're playing, or you can have the game pick depending on what the level needs." She watched while Rika circled the area with her mouse.
"This last, main area," Rika picked up the thread. "That's the haunters themselves. Notice I've got Sprites selected and there're three types, Gremlins, Hordes and Wisps with different amounts of boxes? You can sort of tell how many ghosts you can get of what type by looking here. End game I'll potentially have three gremlins, three hordes and a wisp, right now I've got one horde, one gremlin and no wisps. The same is true on the other tabs."
She took a moment to click through them showing off the different ghosts she had. "There's also some hidden ghosts that need to be found in particular ways so some areas reflect that."
Quickly picking out four of her ghosts, Cogjammer the Gremlin, Clatterclaws the Horde, Boo the Spook and Shivers the Phantom, Rika started the mission before pausing. "And here we are in game, just as a quick view, left and right of the screen are the ghost and mortal packs respectively. They give the player a way to get information on or observe the humans in the mission and bind or set orders or power limits on the ghosts. It also shows the ghosts in both your team and 'wild' in the level. Down the bottom is the camera control, though I'll mostly use the mouse and at the top is your plasm limit. It's pretty much your energy."
She leaned back for a moment, frowning at the screen. "Plasm starts frozen until you start scaring people or use a power in general and the amount you have grows and shrinks as you scare people or let them calm. Every mortal that bails permanently boosts your limit for the rest of the level. The more plasm, the more spooks in the field and the more powerful effects they can use."
Resuming the game, she quickly bound her spirits to different areas before sending in the first strike.
Behind her, Mutsuki yipped when Clatterclaws unleashed a wave of spiders onto the girls in the room she was bound to in the game. Rika gagged when the other destroyer wrapped her arms around her neck. "Yuu-Yuudachi…" she choked.
"Poi," Yuudachi responded, managing to pry Mutsuki off Rika and holding her instead. "Are you scared, poi?"
"Spiders…" Mutsuki shivered. "There was one that…" she trailed off and swallowed hard, looking away from the screen while Rika set Cogjammer up to 'Wild and Crazy' the vacuum that bound the level's ghost.
"If you don't mind me asking," Sally's voice cut through the commentary from the others. "What type of spider and what did it attempt or do?"
Mutsuki shivered again, pressing into Yuudachi's arms. "A tsuchigumo swarm attacked the town I grew up in and killed quite a few people," she admitted. "My sister and I… we were almost among them."
Megan and Sally shared a look while Robyn grimaced. "Not the club you probably want to be a part of, though all three of us have been there," Megan said gently. "If you want to talk about things at any point that's not right this minute, you can ask Fubuki for our names on Discord, Skype or Twitch and give us a bell."
Returning to the map screen from the score table, Rika shifted slightly, waiting while two new cardboard cutouts of houses rose up on the map of Gravenville in the game. "Okay… that was the first, and obviously easiest, level of the game. They get worse, rather rapidly."
"The scares?" asked Mutsuki from beside her, still in Yuudachi's arms.
"More the requirements," Rika replied. "There can be up to eight ghosts you control and a further four to rescue, plus 'scare everyone' is one of the easy objectives, you just have to let loose, others are harder."
There was a moment of silence from the girls in the room before Hikaru cut in. "How so, Fubuki-chan?" she asked. "Come to that, what about the ghosts you have and what's on the map?"
Rika frowned slightly, biting lightly at her lip in thought. "Starting with the map… I mentioned the Ghoul Room already, it's our base, what I didn't say is that it's also where we can power up our ghosts and see who we have available. The other pop-ups are levels, often if multiple open at once you can choose which way you do them but have to do them all to get the next set. Also if they're batty, they're completed. The last thing on the map is the 'high scares table'."
She paused to indicate the pumpkins in the lower left of the screen. "That does two things; it gives you your scores for each level and lets you replay them. There are some limits to replays, like being unable to use a ghost rescued from that level, but you can return with more powerful ghosts to attempt a better score.
"For instance, the two levels here?" Rika indicated the two houses with her mouse cursor. "Both have three spirits to free, thing is both also have at least one that's a pain to get." She frowned slightly, thinking things over. "Weird Séance here has a gremlin called Lucky as one of the bound spirits, you can get her through her own luck powers, but it's easier to use electric abilities, which she doesn't have and there aren't any electrical items nearby to use Cogjammer on.
"The Calamityville Horror on the other hand needs you to get two of three corpses seen by the police, the thing is one of said bodies belongs to a cosmetics saleswoman ghost who wants you to get a woman to try her cosmetics. Not the easiest thing to get, especially since you need to keep enough fear running to not be booted from the level and still not scare everyone until the police have seen the bodies," Rika explained.
There was the sound of metal against metal as Sally face palmed. "I remember that level, so goddamn annoying to get a woman to look at that and it's not the only pain in the ass area either."
Rika nodded, selecting the Ghoul Room and letting the narrator introduce the place and go over what it was for. "There's a few, actually, I think there's often more annoyance getting spirits loose than completing main objectives and in some cases you just have them sitting on their arse for the rest of the game."
Taking a few moments to browse around the abandoned university, Rika found Clatterclaws before pausing to take Mutsuki's hand and give it a squeeze. "Okay, since we've got a little break between levels, I'll introduce you to some of the spooks available in the game, starting with Clatterclaws so we can get her out of the way for Mutsuki's sake."
Bringing the spook up, she gave Mutsuki a small smile before looking at the screen. "Okay, Clatterclaws is a spider horde that takes advantage of arachnophobia, and because that is pretty common if usually mild – the whole thing of 'too many legs, too many eyes', she's in a lot of demand apparently. She has six levels of power and starts pretty much wild and has powers over plants and spiders," she explained, causing Mutsuki to shiver.
"I can teach her Flower Power for level one and either Arboreal Prison or Legion for level six with gold plasm, that's this stuff here, which I don't know if you noticed it or not, but I got that for beating the last level." She indicated the gold plasm count before backing out of the ghost close up and moving on to the next ghost.
"That's a reason to replay levels since the higher your score and the more pumpkins you get on a level, the more gold plasm you get to teach your spooks new tricks," she continued as she went about picking a ghost.
Taking a few moments to have a drink while the level intro played, Rika scowled at the screen in front of her. If she were honest, this level, The Calamityville Horror, was one of the more annoying ones in the game both because you had to get people to see and report corpses and because it was very easy to miss freeing one of the spirits, though missing Maxine Factor probably wasn't a bad thing given how annoyingly whiny she sounded and how rarely she was used.
"And here we are in level two… or three, depending on which order you do the levels," Sally commented.
Megan nodded. "I remember this one, second hardest of the first act, which granted is only out of four. Still a pain in the rear getting everyone rescued before the police officers find the two bodies they need."
"It's actually easier later on once we've taught Stonewall the Quake power or gotten hold of the implied second earth elemental who starts with Quake," Rika commented, quickly going through the three stuck spirits to get their intros before binding Stonewall on the roof and having him use Tremor. "I can Tremor things down, but Quake dumps Static's corpse at the bottom of the chimney, knocks down the wall hiding Arclight and cracks the door to Maxine Factor in one hit."
"You seem to know a bit about this game, Fubuki-chan," Hikaru commented, watching Rika bring Boo into the scene to draw attention to the door leading to Maxine while swapping Stonewall so he could pull down the wall in the basement.
Rika shrugged. "Let's just say I've played it a few times," she replied. She shifted a bit when Yuudachi let out an 'eep' at the sight of Maxine. "Yes, she's not exactly pleasant looking," she said before sighing. "Okay, let's see if she'll do what I want her to this time. Intrigue, only that band and pick on females."
As the spirit in the game started using the power on one of the nearby female human characters, Megan shook her head. "Right, that bit," she muttered. "Yeah, that's… one of the downfalls of the game. While the orders system does help with things like ensuring that someone's there to be scared or targeting particular things or just forcing a spook to work with one ability instead of it and everything below, it's hit and miss sometimes on allowing powers to work."
Sally took a breath and let it out, taking over for her sister. "In this level, honestly the 'two corpses' requirement isn't hard and getting Static and Arclight unbound isn't too bad, Maxine… she wants a woman to check out her cosmetics as was mentioned earlier. The orders should make it so you can force her to 'Intrigue' a female to her cosmetics, if it works right and fires right, though you need a guy to get the boards off the door first."
Rika nodded then fist pumped when the cut scene of Maxine breaking her chains played. "First time for once," she exclaimed. "Alright, Arclight next since he's a bit more of a pain than Static," shifting her focus she benched Stonewall and replaced him with Boo, who quickly pulled someone down.
A minute later the handyman was called in and possessed on breaking open the wall, while the police were checking Maxine's corpse. "Two down, now Boo, TK in the main lounge and let's bring Static home," Rika smirked as she rebound Boo and cranked his power band up, letting him pull the skeleton from the chimney stack releasing the last spirit.
Leaning back, she took a drink. "First time and all three in one hit for once," said Rika. "I hate trying to pull that off usually, because Maxine's a bint and if you get her it's easy to not have Arclight found in time. Static is the easy one, he just wants free, which is one Quake or a Tremor/Telekinesis combo, though you can use Bitter Cold to smoke people out and have the handyman pull his corpse out into either the main room or the bedroom above it."
She watched as the score totted up and shook her head at the time. Two pumpkins was good considering how much of a pain in the rear the mission could be, but there were certainly better things she could do later.
Robyn frowned as she watched Rika choose the ghosts she was taking for the last of the available missions. From what the fly through video had said, this was just another scare everyone away mission like the first, which begged the question of what her choices were about. "Why are you bringing the new guy if you have a decent team already?"
"You mean Static?" Rika asked, getting a nod from Robyn. "Spark Storm, simply put," she replied, going through the introductions to the trapped spirits. "While you can simply scare the heck out of everyone on this run and might get one spirit free, namely Wendell, who wants the group leader scared off, the other two are a bit harder."
Sally nodded, watching Rika set up a scare on the Alpha Tau leader. "You heard the three bound ghosts; Wendell got himself dead trying a suicidal joining trick so he wants the leader scared out of his skin. You can miss him, but it's a bit harder to do unless you leave jock boy until last you're probably going to get him. Terroreyes – and yes that is a pun, like Maxine Factor and several others – just needs his jar smashed as he wants out from being a science experiment after death. There's a few ways to get that, the easiest…" she trailed off as Aether unleashed her Shattering Scream. "Is that, though you can use telekinesis or fascinate type powers as well," she continued.
"The last, Lucky, is a pain early on because you either need to get someone to play and get a high score on the pinball machine so it zaps her," Megan continued, "or use someone with that sort of ability, which Cogjammer doesn't have yet."
"Speaking of," Rika cut in, "I think I've got enough to run that now so…" she trailed off as she bound Static and picked Spark Storm from his power selection. Almost immediately the ghost cat yowled as the pinball machine revealed just how much of a potential death trap it was in the game.
"Mou… Fubuki-chan, so mean to the poor cat," Mutsuki pouted.
There was a snort from Yuudachi. "It's a cat, cats are akuma."
Rika rolled her eyes as the pair started arguing. "Knock it off you two," she said. "We're still live, though Naka-chan has been pretty quiet lately." She looked away from her game for a moment, while Wendell was freed to see an empty chair where Hikaru had been sitting. "Uh… did I miss her leaving or something?"
"Sorry, sorry, someone called while we were recording and I couldn't afford to not take it," Hikaru called from somewhere off screen. A few moments later she was sitting back in her chair looking a bit rumpled.
Sally arched an eyebrow at her friend while Rika shifted her ghosts around to get Wendell free. "Anything worrying?" she asked, ignoring Rika's cackle.
Hikaru shook her head. "Nothing really interesting, it was mostly about some events I need to go to, at least presuming I don't get sent out on a sortie at the same time," she replied.
"Is that something that can be a problem?" Megan asked, glancing at her screen where Rika was cackling as she had her eight ghosts cause havoc in the level, sending people running, screaming and in some cases outright fainting all over the place.
Raising her hand, Hikaru held it flat and wobbled it back and forth. "Some more than others," she replied. "This sort of thing I quite like, and the singing, but dealing with some of the people that run events can be tiring. Fans are fine for the most part, heck, a lot of fans are lovely, but some of the event managers…" she grimaced.
"Well, here's hoping if we do end up with that, we have a good group to support us," Megan commented. A moment later she blinked at the scoreboard on the screen.
Sitting at the team selection screen, Rika chewed her lip for a moment before taking Stonewall, Aether, Boo, Weatherwitch and Maxine Factor. The ghosts selected, she paused before starting the level. "Okay… last level for act one in the game and as you heard, we're supposed to free the Darkling, which isn't happening."
"Poi?" asked Yuudachi, "but isn't that the point of the level?" she asked, cocking her head to the side.
"Please don't," Rika muttered tiredly. "In any case, while it is the point of the level, we're not going to be able to get the Darkling, yet." She frowned at her monitor. "If I remember right, he shows up again in act two's final level, then somewhere in act three as more or less the point of the game."
She paused, frowning slightly. "It might be easier to show everyone honestly, but the Darkling technically counts as the fourth bound spirit on this level and is the only one that there isn't a way to free because he's the level goal. This level might also take a while," she grimaced. "We're relying on the mortals again and they're not exactly smart."
Entering the level, Rika quickly reoriented the camera so she could see things better. "Right, let's see how stupid they're going to be today," she said. Moving the camera around, she bound Boo in the cellar of the house and tripped his telekinesis to pull the book out before benching him and speaking to Moonscream, who was bound to a shallow looking grave in the corner.
Sally nodded. "Okay, for those wondering, similar to Calamityville Horror, Summoners Not Included needs you to 'clear the way' for certain events, in this case the ritual to summon the Darkling," she explained, frowning slightly. "Beyond him, there's three spirits in the level, Moonscream is the Professor's wife, who he murdered originally, then there's Whisperwind, our second air elemental spook and Raindancer, who is the first water elemental. Of all of them, Raindancer is probably the hardest to get since she requires someone to use the toilet, which is a bit tricky with the bug hive outside."
Rika nodded, going through both elementals' introductions. "Yup, hence Stonewall," she commented, binding the named spook and using his tremor power to clear the way. "Okay, can't do much more on that one, though they will go there while searching and there is a key in there."
Switching tracks, she bound Aether on a bicycle near Whisperwind and used her shattering song to break the dreamcatcher. "Okay, Whisperwind got, bench them and Weatherwitch, I need your help here." Binding the spirit, she tripped gusts first, and then set her to only use one power before using Siren Song to draw in the students.
It didn't take long before one of the students in game was drawn to the area and Rika benched Weatherwitch once she was sure they would find the cellar door.
"And now comes the waiting time and hope that your plasm doesn't get too low," Megan commented, getting a nod from Rika.
"Hopefully it won't be long," Rika commented, getting a questioning 'poi' from Yuudachi. "Of course then there's the annoying part of scaring one guy away without spooking them and sometimes you can't lock one group or the other in place to deal with."
Moments later the cut scene triggered for Raindancer being freed quickly followed by someone grabbing the basement key. It didn't take long for the three mortals to make their way into the basement and attempt to start the ritual after finding the book.
Once the three were kicked out of the basement by the newly arrived professor, Rika hit the professor with one of the powers Moonscream had, Spooky Surprise. That done, and as the professor was recovering from seeing his dead wife, she hit him with everything she could from Boo, Aether and Stonewall finishing by having him swallowed into the ground.
The professor thoroughly defeated, Rika benched everyone apart from Boo, using his Rattling Chains to draw the students back, causing the cut scene.
Once the transition was finished, she quit out of the game and stretched with a grunt. "And that's that for a bit," said Rika. "Fortunately most of the time you're able to play Ghost Master in bursts since most levels can be done fairly quickly, unless some of the objectives or bound spirits require things that take some finagling." Shifting in her seat, she turned to her friends. "How are you girls holding up?"
"Yuudachi is fine, poi," Yuudachi responded with a cocky grin.
"I'm… alright, Fubuki-chan, just some bad memories from that spider ghost," Mutsuki added.
Shifting around, Rika drew Mutsuki into her lap, giving the other destroyer-girl a hug. "Well, I'm not going to be playing any more, though we've still got a couple of games left," she said.
"I was hoping people might have forgotten about that, desu," Hikaru grimaced.
"Ah, come on Naka, it's only a quartet of murder happy robots that you'll have to deal with," Megan commented, grinning, "with your arse glued to a chair and limited power to keep a pair of metal doors shut for six hours a night. Nothing too horrible, unlike exploring an abandoned mansion full of demons and other things," she continued, smirking when Hikaru flipped her off.
Mutsuki swallowed. "That doesn't sound good," she muttered, leaning into Rika's chest.
Yuudachi frowned at the screen. "I don't get it, poi."
"Crow is planning on playing Realms of the Haunting," Rika explained, "which, if I remember right, is a shooter-horror set mostly in an old mansion." She frowned, chewing her lip. "I think it's the tail end of a war between heaven and hell, with a demon trying to break some seals and get his hands on Excalibur. The original version wasn't too bad, bar having to walk along a path of dead rats to find a teleporter at one point and hearing them squish-crunch underfoot all along the area. Of course that's presuming it hasn't been 'updated' by Crow's friends." She nodded at the looks of disgust on Hikaru, Yuudachi and Mutsuki's faces.
Megan shrugged her shoulders, leaning on her elbows. "Honestly, I'm not sure whether this is a modded version or not off the top of my head," she said. "I do know you could cheese the AI in the original because it had issues with certain doors and the like so you could just hang out in certain spots and pot-shot enemies. Most of the enemies weren't that bad either."
Hikaru frowned, trying to remember what she knew about the game Megan was planning on playing. "I think there were headless demons in yellow Arabian pants, horned versions of them in green that were tougher, skeletons in steam-armour that looked almost Games Workshop space marine style, gargoyles, 'special agents' and a few others. You also very quickly got an unlimited ammo weapon, which made up for the lack of health drinks."
"You know, the reason she remembers those enemies is because the first lot, if you hit them with a fully charged shot from an unlimited ammo weapon, you'd blow their arms off, the bone-armours could be exploded and the MIs swarmed," commented Sally dryly.
"Well, before we get to that," Hikaru interrupted, "You might want to look at the chat, there's a few people on there asking where they can buy the games."
Sally shrugged. "Well, the version of Shivers I played can't be bought, and I'm not sure on the legal issues considering it was produced or at least released by Sierra, who has gone under, but the original version isn't available right now. A lot of people have been calling on Good Old Games to sell a version though so you never know."
"Ghost Master, Realms of the Haunting and Five Nights at Freddy's are all on either Good Old Games, Steam or both," Megan pointed out. "That said you may want to wait on sales since digital editions don't tend to price drop after a time. You might also want to look at GamersGate and Humble Bundle as well, granted a lot of them these days link to Steam, Origin or uPlay, but they can have sales at different times and might have something you weren't expecting."
Hikaru nodded in agreement. "Hai, that's true," she said. "Humble in particular given they usually have two to six 'bundles' running that cost from $1 to about $15 and usually give three tiers of items, sometimes several hundred to over a thousand dollars' worth of books or games at once."
"To clarify," Megan cut in. "Humble Bundle does 'bundles', usually overlapping periods and they can be software, video games or eBooks, I don't think they've done music or videos, but that might just be me missing them, most bundles are themed though depending on a particular set up so say Paradox games or Warhammer eBooks or something."
She shrugged, rolling her shoulders. "Each bundle will have multiple tiers, usually three, but there might be some bundles that do things differently and depending on how much you pay, you unlock a certain tier, so if you pay the bare minimum you get only the first tier, if you choose to pay over the amount for the last tier you get all of what's there. Each bundle can contain potentially several thousand pounds, dollars, yen or whatever currency in items, so you might pay £15 and get… I don't know £1500 in eBooks or something."
Sally nodded, scrolling through the chat on their stream. "Hey Fubuki?" she started, drawing her friend's attention. "Got someone here asking what other horror games you like playing."
Rika frowned slightly. "Well, I'm not the big one for horror," she responded. "That's Zephyr and Crow that said… I do have a number of horror games, mostly because of them." She reached around Mutsuki, pulling up her list. "Some of the obvious ones would be the Left 4 Dead duology, which we've all played on, but I've played several of Sierra's games like Phantasmagoria and its sequel, Ghost Master, obviously… I've also got the Legacy of Kain and Vampire the Masquerade games from a time I was into vampires but couldn't stand the sparkly ones from Twilight and several of the Thief series among others."
"What about you, Naka?" Sally asked.
"Well, as Fubuki-chan said we share Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2," Hikaru started, frowning slightly. "Obviously I've now got Five Nights at Freddy's so I can play it for everyone. Beyond that… most of mine with horror elements are the hidden object or Nancy Drew games."
Sally nodded. "Crow, same question then I'll answer it."
Megan nodded to her sister before opening her Steam library. "Okay, so, FNAF and sequels, L4D, L4D2, Realms of the Haunting, both Shivers, both Phantasmagoria, the Legacy of Kain set, most of Darkling Room's stuff, though there's supposed to be some others coming, Graveyard Keeper, most of the Alien or Alien vs Predator games," she frowned, scanning her list of games, "Thief, Still Life, STALKER and Dead Space to name a few."
"And I've got most all the ones my sister has, plus 7th Guest, 11th Hour, several Resident Evil games not counting 7, FEAR and others," Sally finished off.
Hikaru nodded slightly. "Okay, how about we take a break for a bit so Crow can set up, then we can watch her play Realms of the Haunting for a while, have another break then I'll play FNAF, sound good?" Getting affirmative responses, she cut the video feed.