Everyone was sitting in front of the screen, ready to play. "Hey." Everyone looked up to see Naruto snap a photo of them. He laughed and sat down by Sasuke. Lee began to put on an arm wrap that he wore everytime he played a video game. "God, that thing is gay." Gaara commented. Lee glared at him. Gaara smirked. "And it smells." Lee ignored him. "Don't worry, I'll get your back." Sasuke was saying to Naruto, seeing as how he wasn't much of a gamer. Gaara spoke. "Sweet Sebastian Bach, I wanna play!" Lee moved his thumbs around as if playing already. "Bossman hooking up?" Sasuke put on his mic and asked, "Shika, you signed in? You there?" Shikamaru could be seen in his office sniffing something through a dollar before quickly sitting up. "Fuck, that burns." He laughed and whistled before saying, "No, I'm here." As he typed in his username and password into his computer, he explained, "Loretta called my wife, told her I got caught up in a partner meeting." Gaara laughed. "Get dirty, old man." "Not cool."

"All right, guys. Enough chatter. The name of this game is Stay Alive. We don't know much else, other than we're not supposed to have it." Gaara smiled maliciously. He leaned over Temari and turned out a lamp. Lee was about to get up when Gaara pushed him back into his seat. "Sit back down." Then, before handing Lee his controller, Gaara licked it and shoved it in his chest. "Bro!" Lee exclaimed. Gaara laughed. "Let's do it." Lee grimaced. "Dude." "Put your hands on it." Lee groaned. "Disgusting." "Touch it." Sasuke laughed as the game finally started. The words Stay Alive appeared on the screen in glowing red letters. A strange book slowly dissolved onto the screen and opened to the first page. It read, 'The Prayer of Elizabeth, in what looked like blood. Sasuke tried pushing every button on his controller, but the screen didn't change.

"She's stubborn. Isn't letting me get to the game." Naruto pointed to the screen. "Maybe you're supposed to read that prayer right there." Sasuke looked at him like he was crazy and Temari laughed. Naruto shrugged. "Just a thought." Lee rolled his eyes. "Voice-activated? No way. That's next generation technology." Naruto sighed. "OK." Sasuke shook his head and slowly read, "Come to me, clouds." The sentence he had just read dissolved from the book. Sasuke's eyes widened. "Whoa." Gaara was stunned and getting more excited by the second. "What?" Temari asked, bewildered. "It's... it's like a seance or..." Lee spoke, his voice shaking. Gaara interrupted him. "Can we skip this bullshit cinematic foreplay? I wanna fuuuuuck." He said the last word in a high-pitched voice as he pumped his fist in the air.

Sasuke sighed. "OK. Let's go. Everyone say this, right?" Everyone nodded. Shikamaru leaned in a bit closer to his computer so he could read. Everyone began to recite the prayer. "Come to me, clouds. May you rise as an evil storm born to rip them open. Let the cover of night bear witness and destroy those who resist so they shall harm me not. Let the blood of many cleanse me, preserving beauty eternal, I pray you." As the last three words dissolved from the screen, the game began. No one noticed the shadow that passed behind the couch. The book closed as a deep and sinister voice spoke. "Welcome. If you're listening to this, it means you've made a grave mistake." As the voice spoke, the game began to customize everyone's character on it's own... "You spoke the words, and soon you will die for it. At this moment, the evil of this place courses through your veins. You have been marked for death. Your choice has brought you here, to Gerouge Plantation. 200 years ago, Countess Elizabeth Bathory opened Gerouge as a finishing school for young..." Temari interrupted, catching everyone's attention. "Gerouge."

"You've heard of it?" Sasuke asked her. "Yeah. Grandma used to tell us if we didn't get home before dark, we'd get taken off..." Gaara nodded. "Yeah, but do you remember Grandma used to wear panties on the outside?" Temari hit Gaara in the head. "Seriously, though, I know this, guys. I've heard this story." The voice on the game continued. "What happened to those girls was so depraved that all accounts were stricken from public record. The evil of Gerouge has been reborn. Your salvation lies beyond the gates of this plantation. Your only chance is this: uncover the horrible truth about Gerouge Plantation and stop the evil. But, in order to do that, you must stay alive." The screen revealed all of their characters at the front enterance of the plantation. What was eerie, was that everyone's character looked exactly like them, and they hadn't touched the controllers. "My God." Naruto said with a shaky voice. Lee had the same idea. "I'm starting to get a little creeped out." "Shut the hell up." Gaara whispered.

Sasuke slowly began to walk forward. Gaara blinked. "Where the hell are you going?" "Just trying to figure it out." Sasuke replied simply. As he took a few more steps, everyone's controller began to vibrate. "What is that?" Sasuke asked breathlessly. Shikamaru slowly picked his vibrating controller up. "You guys feel that?" he asked over the mic. "Hell yeah. Feel it in my pants, baby." Gaara replied. "Must mean we're close to something." Lee spoke as he saw something in the shadows. "Or something's close to us." They watched, a bit panic stricken, as a young girl covered in blood and moving oddly emerged from the fog. It started slowly toward Sasuke. "God, you better pull your weapon, bro." Gaara said. "How about somebody do something? Lee?" Sasuke turned to the youngest of the group. "No, I'm good." Lee laughed nervously.

Sasuke pulled out a crossbow and loaded it. Naruto's eyes widened. "How do you kill her? She's already dead. Look out!" The girl screeched and lunged at Sasuke, who barely shot her in time. The girl stepped back before attacking again. Sasuke shot her again, getting a bit annoyed. She was on the ground, but began to crawl after him. Sasuke growled and shot her in the face. She finally went down, and her body disappeared. The voice spoke again. "When fear cripples you, when death's shadow surrounds you, drop a rose. It will help you stay alive." Where the girl's body was, lay a rose. Sasuke picked it up. "Right. It'll give us a chance to escape ghosts we can't face." Lee said, feeling a bit relieved. Temari nodded. "Undead can't cross the twig of a wild rose." Gaara laughed at his sister. "That is what you learn when you read too much goth chick-lit. Lay off the incense. And the game's fun, but it kind of moves along at a snail's pace."

A few hours later, Gaara was going wild. They were all in some kind of cemetery and they were all shooting wildly at hundreds of dead girls that just kept coming. "Left, go left. Left! On your left! Left! Left! Goddamn it, you noob!" Gaara was shouting orders to Shikamaru on the other end of the mic. He was literally going nail happy. "OK, and you eat my nails, and you eat my nails." Shikamaru was laughing at Gaara talking to himself. "Go round the mausoleum, man. Nice. And eat this." No matter how many Gaara took out, they just kept multiplying. "Come on! Sweet Jesus, these dead bitches are coming out in droves." Gaara watched as Shikamaru moved in front of a door. "Shika, the Bathory tomb, in front of you." Gaara continued to shoot at the ghosts as Shikamaru ran into the door. He began to close it. "Do not close the door, man. Do not close it. No! Oh, my God!" Shikamaru shut out all of the ghosts that Gaara still wanted to kill. He turned around to see an opening leading down into the floor. "Hello, mumsy."

Meanwhile, back in the mansion, Naruto pointed out something. "Whoa, whoa. What's that?" Sasuke narrowed his eyes and looked around. "What's... where?" Naruto pointed again. "There. Is something in that wardrobe?" Sure enough, in the small opening between the twin doors of the wardrobe, a light was shining that was hardly noticable. "Ah, nice eye." Sasuke walked up and opened the doors of the wardrobe. "Congrats, Naru-chan. You popped your cherry." Gaara smirked. Naruto laughed. "It's a secret room or something." Sasuke looked around before pulling out his crossbow and walking up the stairs to his right. When he reached the top, there was a picture of Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Everyone inspected it for a moment before looking down.

"Is that a diary?" Naruto asked as Sasuke picked it up and opened it. "Yeah. The one from the beginning with the prayer in it." Temari replied. "Shika, are you OK?" Sasuke asked over the mic. Shikamaru was lost in thought and it took him a minute to reply. "Yeah... No, I'm good." Shikamaru was walking around in what seemed to be miles of secret underground tunnels. "Are you in those tunnels again? There is no action there. The doors are locked." Gaara explained. Shikamaru shook his head. "Well, they're open now. You know, I'm exploring, tearing shit up." Shikamaru got his weapon ready before he walked into an opened room. "Ownin' fools." he said suddenly. "'Ownin' fools'? Temari asked in an amused voice. "I'm telling you, my controller is vibrating." "You'd better drop a rose." Sasuke instructed.

Shikamaru dropped a rose at the doorway of the room. He began to panic a bit. "Now I'm out... I'm out of... I'm out of goddamn roses, man." He walked into the room cautiously and looked around, feeling anxious. "Tell us what you see before you book it." Lee begged. "Some sort of sick torture room or..." Shikamaru continued to look around. There were hooks hanging from the ceilings, blood everywhere, and a bathtub in the middle of the room. When Shikamaru looked in it, he almost barfed. A dead girl's body was rotting at the bottom. "God, man. I just saw a flash of dead girls, or..." He put his head in his hands for one second before looking back up. A woman in red showed up out of nowhere and grabbed him. "Goddammit, man."

Shikamaru didn't even touch his controller as the woman stabbed his character in the throat with a pair of shears. "Man, she got me." "Who? One of the little girls?" Naruto asked a bit scared. "Some woman, man. I think it was the dame from the painting. You know, that countess. I didn't even get a chance to fight her, man." Shikamaru explained as the words GAME OVER spread across his computer screen. "Where's the torture chamber? 'Cause I want some ass." Gaara asked. "I dunno. I went through a secret entrance." "Hey, are you gonna try and get back in the game?" Sasuke questioned.

Shikamaru thought a moment. "Well..." Before he could finish his sentence, a shadow passed by the window. "Hey, is somebody out there?" Shikamaru asked the darkness. No answer. "Shika, who are you talking to?" Sasuke asked. "I don't know." Shikamaru replied, still staring at the window. "Probably some goddamn rent-a-cop trying to scare the shit out of the living." Shikamaru sat back in his chair, looking back to the screen. "You know what they say. You play the game too long, you start seeing shit. You know, or have seizures." He laughed and rubbed at his eyes. "Games could cause seizures." Lee said. "Perceptive reality, on the other hand, has yielded some interesting studies." Gaara nodded, going along. "And I'm sure you've read them all." Lee smiled. "I have. It seems the longer you play, the more your mind perceives the game world to be a reality. It's interesting, but it's only a theory. But then there's retinal memory, which..." Temari laughed and cut him off. "That is so fascinating, sweetie, but I'm feeling like we should call it a night." Sasuke agreed. "Yeah, some of us have gotta be to work."

"But I just figured out how to strip one of those zombie concubines naked." Lee commented, smiling idiotically. "That is what I'm talking about. How do you do it?" Gaara asked. "Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A." Lee replied. Gaara just sat there for a moment before, "Boobs." The all looked at the screen, laughing their heads off. Temari tried to speak between laughter. "Come on, you guys. Sasuke is right. We'll pick it back up tonight." "All right. Shika, you can rejoin us then." Sasuke told his boss. Shikamaru was looking over his shoulder nervously. "Yeah. I'll check my schedule." Sasuke continued. "Thanks again for hanging, you guys. I really needed it." Gaara sighed and held up his controller. "To Sai." Everyone else followed suit.

Shikamaru switched off his computer and checked his reflection in the mirror before walking out of his office and closing his door. As he was walking away, he heard the door open again. He stopped and turned around to see it sitting wide open. He looked around before making his way back to the door. He peeked into is office before jumping in and yelling really loud, trying to scare whoever was in there. Realizing no one was there, he began to laugh. "All right. OK." He closed the door tight and pulled out his keys, only to drop them. As he stooped to pick them up, a shadow appeared down the hall, just staring at him. He stood back up and whipped around, startled. Nothing was there.

Shikamaru chuckled to himself. He looked around again before rubbing his tired eyes. He started out of the building again. "Perceptive reailty." he said to himself as he walked. Before he could make it to the exit, his office door opened again. Shikamaru turned around and started at the door. He was beginning to freak. Just then, another shadow passed in front of the window. Shikamaru turned to see nothing. That's when he heard it. A low, rumbling noise. He blinked and slowly walked back to his office. The rumbling continued. He cautiously walked inside, looking for the source of the noise. He got on his hands and knees and looked under his desk. He slowly reached out his hand and grabbed his controller. The rumbling stopped. He sat up and looked at is controller, an amused smiling breaking out across his face. He looked at his computer too see someone behind him being reflected in the screen. He whipped around and screamed.

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Dun, dun, duuuuuuuuun. What happened to Shika? Find out in the next chapter!