CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
JENSEN ACKLES IS HOT
When the sound of two terrified screams reached the ears of the others, they quickened their pace and headed straight for the mansion doors. Walking inside they realized that the two were nowhere in sight. Deciding to split up, they went in search of the sunshine haired boy and the ebony haired girl separately.
The shy indigo haired girl had activated her Byakugan, and the Copy Ninja and the Uchiha Brothers activated their Sharingan. The three scanned the house in search of their friends, but found nothing. For some strange reason their bloodline limits could not pick up anything. The blue haired woman sent out a swarm of her paper butterflies, but she could not locate them. Hana tried to pick up on their scents, but got nothing. It was almost as if Kim and Naruto had disappeared.
"ARHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
There is was again, another scream of terror. Though that time it was only one, and it sounded like Kim. The members of the search party were starting to panic. They had been wandering around the dark mansion for about an hour, and that was the only sign that the missing duo were still somewhere in there.
Hinata had traveled to the lowest level of the mansion, the basement. She was lucky that she had her Byakugan activated or she wouldn't have been able to see properly in the darkness. She caught sight of something underground. Scanning the room she found a hidden door behind a bookshelf that led to a stair case. Moving the bookshelf out of the way she walked down the stairs. She had discovered there was an abandoned tunnel beneath the mansion's foundation. The oddest part was that there was a light further down the tunnel. She slowly made her way to the source of light. Halfway there something had touched her from behind. As she was about to attack, something got a hold of her hand. Turning around, she realized it was the blond boy everyone had been searching for.
"Naruto-kun," she muttered as she threw her arms around the blond in a bone crushing hug. The girl had completely forgotten it was her long-time childhood crush she was hugging. When she pulled back to look at his face she would have blushed if not for the look of complete horror he wore that was only enhanced by the blood that had dried along the side of his face. "Naruto-kun?"
"Hinata-chan! We need to find the others and get out of here fast. There's something weird going on in this place. As soon as we walked in, there was this thing that grabbed us. I have no clue where it took Kimi-nee-chan, but I ended up in here," Naruto explained as he grabbed the girl by the wrist and led her in search of the others.
Hana went to the second floor. The stale scent of dust was overpowering her heightened sense of smell. She had wandered down one of the many halls in the mansion. There were about four doors on either side. She'd open the doors, and gave a quick once-over before moving on to the next. At the end of the hall there was a lone room.
Inside, the room was very spacious. On the right wall was a queen sized bed situated in the center, and a nightstand and an armory on the left of it. Paintings, sculptures, drawings, and sketches covered the entire left wall. There was even an art supply station, containing all the things the artist would need. Placed by the large window overlooking the woods beyond, was an easel. She stood in front of the art wall and admired all the completed pieces. The brunette ran her fingers over the supplies as she walked by, examining them. Walking over to the easel she looked the window, and then back to the unfinished painting of what was supposed to be either a sunrise or a sunset.
"Deidara and Jade would have a field day in here," a voice sounded from behind her. She turned around in fright, not having heard any footsteps to indicate that someone had entered the room. Though nothing less would be expected from the man standing before her. He was an elite after all.
"Itachi! I didn't hear you come in," she said lamely. He just sent her a small smile then suddenly turned serious.
"At first I thought this was a prank Kim and Naruto were playing on us, but now… I don't think so anymore. There seems to be something else going on."
"What do you mean? Are you saying that there's someone here? If there were, they would have been able to stop them. Do you think this could be a possible haunting? I remember my brother saying something about going on a mission and finding a haunted castle."
"I won't rule it out completely no matter how far-fetched it may sound. This house was rumored to be haunted." Just then they heard a strange noise coming from outside the room.
Jade, Konan, Nagato, and Deidara wound up finding each other. Jade and Deidara had gone in search together, and they found Nagato wandering around. After a bit more searching they came across Konan, who had been staring at a wall. Ironically enough, it turned out to be a stone carving of Purgatory, which she did not fail to point out with a smirk. Nagato face-palmed, while Jade and Deidara snickered.
"Did you guys find anything that could lead us to them or tell us what happened," Konan questioned.
"Nothing so far," Deidara was the one to answer. "Although we did hear a bunch of weird noises, un."
"You think this place is haunted," Nagato asked, furrowing his brow at the thought. He was never one to believe in the supernatural.
"Could be," Jade said. She was about to say something, but was interrupted by a high pitched scream. "This place's selling point has always been the fact that it might be haunted."
"ARHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Sasuke had decided to follow after Sakura. He still couldn't understand how his blond so-called best friend knew about his newly discovered feelings for their pink haired teammate. Since when had Naruto ever been observant? The blond was supposed to be an idiot, oblivious to almost everything. If Naruto had gotten smarter, who's to say that Sakura didn't get stronger in his absence. He really didn't know. He didn't know much of who his teammates were anymore. They had changed just as he had. The two were so much closer than he had remembered.
The two had wandered around for a bit looking in all the rooms they passed. They had come to a stop at the sight of large wooden double doors. Shrugging, Sakura pushed them open with ease and walked in. On the inside were mirrors like in a funhouse at the carnival. She giggled as she saw their distorted reflections. Her favorites were the ones that made her look like she had a huge butt, and Sasuke look short and fat. She made a comment that, that was how they were going to look when they got old. Sasuke shot a glare at his reflection and patted his well-defined stomach.
Sakura was feeling a bit awkward. She didn't know how to act around the youngest Uchiha. She didn't want to annoy him the way she had when they were younger. Her goal was to befriend him, and become someone whom he could trust and count on and confide in. She understood that they could only ever be friends and nothing more. That was why she had to move on. Maybe she had been a bit foolish to put all her hopes in her ex.
As they walked further into the room, they came across a red and yellow spiraled floor; it reminded her of that movie with the tin man and cowardly lion. When the pinkette had pulled a random lever she had found off to the side, the floor gave a halting jerk then began to move. It spun them around and around. They walked to the center and watched as the room spun around them.
"ARHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Kakashi was wandering around the second floor when he heard the third scream of the night. He, like Hana, could not use his heightened sense of smell. Slowly but surely, the white haired Jonin was getting frustrated. He had heard two more blood curdling screams since he had entered the mansion. Walking down yet another hallway, he went through all the rooms. Hearing a fourth scream, he decided to try something he was not all too sure would actually work. He wanted to find Naruto and Kim, and get the hell out of there. The place was starting to give him the creeps. Biting his thumb and smearing the blood across his hand. He formed the proper hand seals, and slammed his palm on the ground in front of him.
"Ninja Art: Summoning Jutsu!"
He waited a for a second, but nothing happened. Standing up he began to resume his search for the missing two, but just as he was about to take the first step, he heard a poof.
"Hey boss! You called," an all to familiar gruff voice called out to him.
"Pakkun," Kakashi said, his eyes crinkling in a smile. Success! Standing before him was a small light brown pug wearing a leaf headband on his little head, wraps around his right front leg, and a blue vest with a white circle on the back.
"Why are you dressed like that? Where are we?" The pug gave his master a once over, judging his choice of attire.
"It's a costume for Halloween." Pakkun tilted his head at the strange word, but was waved off with the promise of a later explanation. "We're in an abandoned mansion for a friend's party in a different dimension. So I'm not too sure if you'll be able to go back," he explained to his summon, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, a habit both he and Naruto seemed to share.
"Who do you want me to track," the little dog asked. "If it's a girl you should consider showing her your face."
"She's already seen my face. I'm just not sure if she remembers it, but that's not the point."
"So it is a girl. Tough break. She's probably not interested in someone who reads porn all the time." Kakashi shot the pug a face. What a sight it was, to see the Hatake flustered like a fool. "You know what they say, set them free and if they were meant to be yours they'll come back."
"It's not like that. Just find her and Naruto, so we can meet up with the others and get out of here," he commanded. Just after Kakashi had said that, the two heard heels clacking on the marble floors. Before he knew it, someone had ran into his chest and sent him sprawling on the floor.
"Found her boss," Pakkun stated, unhelpfully. The ebony haired girl lifted herself off of her fellow pirate, and turned to find the source of the unfamiliar voice. When she saw a dog, a mixture of shock and confusion washed over her feature. "I know, I'm cute. But if you promise not to freak out about the fact that I can talk, I'll let you touch my paws."
"I'd much rather play with your ears," Kim said in a monotone, not fully understanding the fact that she was talking to a dog. "They're so adorably floppy." She looked down at Kakashi where he laid beneath her. "We need to find the others and get the hell out of here." She grabbed him by the arm, hauling his gigantic form up and began to lead him downstairs as fast as her healed feet would allow. Pakkun ran after them.
"Wait! What were you screaming about?"
"That wasn't me."
"Then who was it? Naruto?"
"No! It's something else. I need to talk to him." They ran down the halls in search of the others. The first group they had come across was Hana and Itachi. Pakkun had started to growl at the Uchiha, but was quickly informed that he was okay. Then they came across Deidara, Jade, Nagato, and Konan.
"Pakkun they're okay," Kakashi told his nin-dog when he heard the low rumble sounding within the little dogs chest.
"What other missing-nin are here," the dog asked sarcastically. Jade started freaking out with the dog, and stared at him with wide uncomprehending hazel eyes. He gestured to Itachi, Deidara, and Nagato with his paw. "And aren't these three supposed to be dead? How are they even alive? Isn't he the idiot that blew himself up?" Then he turned his head to the side when he caught the scent of four more people. "So Sasuke's here as well."
"Naruto," Kim shouted when the blond came into view. "What did you do?"
"ME? What did you do? This was never part of the plan, dattebayo! We never agreed on ghosts!"
"What plan," Nagato asked catching the attention of the arguing pair. Kim and Naruto started to smack each other on the heads and calling the other names.
"Well, we were watching a movie about a haunted house…" Naruto started.
"Then we got the idea to make it seem like the mansion was haunted…"
"It turns out that this place is actually haunted…"
"When we walked into the house, something grabbed us…"
"I ended up in a tunnel underground."
"And I ended up in a bedroom up stairs," Kim finished. The pair of pranksters wore matching sheepish grins, somehow forgetting about the fact that they had been dragged through the mansion by angry ghosts.
"Wait," Sakura spoke up, realizing something, "if it wasn't you guys screaming, then who was?"
"The first time it was us, but the others were probably the ghosts," Kim explained. It wasn't like she was unable to sleep at night after watching horror film with Jade, or anything, and it most definitely wasn't like she crawled into other people's beds for comfort. Yet, somehow, the girl was completely calm and rational.
"So we're stuck in a haunted mansion," Sasuke stated dryly. From the movies he'd seen in both his home dimension and the new one, he knew that the moment they tried to leave, every exit would be blocked and they'd be tapped inside.
"Who would even be haunting this place," Konan asked. "What's the story behind it?"
Jade decided to tell them of the mansion's history. "This place has been abandoned for as long as I can remember. It was built sometime in the mid eighteen hundreds by this rich man. His name was Alexander Stonewall. He took five mistresses, each their own talents that made them unique. The first was a champion ballroom dancer, the second had an amazing singing voice, the third could make any garden into a flower wonderland, the fourth was a musical prodigy, and the fifth had a passion for art."
"So this man built this place, and fooled around with a bunch of women. It doesn't mean that this place is haunted," Nagato deadpanned, ever the skeptic.
"He had all five mistresses at once," Jade deadpanned. Everyone's minds reeled. She continued on with the story. "They each had their own rooms at the ends of the halls. He would spend the same amount of time with each of them, though he was a complete bastard and was rarely ever around. He was always away on business, or so he said. Even though the women were competing for the same man's attention, they were great friends. Then one day Stonewall had fled, and his mistresses were never heard from again. The only reason they knew they were dead, was because of all the blood that was found in each of their rooms, but they never found the bodies. No one knew why he did it," she finished.
"So we're being haunted by a bunch of women that didn't know how to get their own man," Itachi joked, highly disturbed at how similar the situation was to the Warring States Era. Had he been born in the past, he would have had to take a number of women to continue the Uchiha lineage.
"At least one Uchiha has a sense of humor," Naruto shouted. "But this isn't the time for jokes, 'ttebayo!"
"Wait," Kim shouted, frantically looking around. "Where's my dad?" Right as Kim asked the question, a scream resounded in the manor, one that unmistakably belonged to Ren. Kim was the first one to break out into a run, with the others soon after her.
A sudden chill swept through the room as the rapidly declined. The windows had frozen over, the doors all slammed shut, and wouldn't budge no matter how much they tried. Naruto tried to run into the doors, but he only bounced back leaving the door unscathed. Sakura decided to use her monster strength. It worked, and the door shattered. When they tried to go through the pieces of the door put themselves back together like a puzzle.
"Isn't there some incantation that can banish them back to hell, un?"
"We're not dealing with demons," Kim said, wondering how the man had even come to that conclusion.
"Then what are we dealing with," Hana huffed, getting frustrated. She was a specialized tracker, one of the best in the village, but apparently she couldn't track the damn thing that were screwing around with them.
"Most likely vengeful sprits," Kim answered. "You know, like... when someone dies and they have unfinished business, or something like that."
"How do you get rid of those,"
"Find the bodies, salt and burn the remains." They all gave her a weird look, all silently asking her how she knew so much. "My dad watches this show, and Jenson Ackles is really hot." They all shook their heads at her answer. "Besides they base most of the stuff off of the actual lore and supernatural facts, and I've been a bit conflicted ever since Misha came along... but Destiel!"
"Where would someone stash a body," Nagato asked, finally giving in to the fact that the place was haunted.
"Buried somewhere in the woods," Kim suggested. "In the walls?"
"I am never going to piss you off again," Jade said. "You would kill. Then I would not be able to haunt you, because you would get rid of me."
They finally decided on burning the doors. Kakashi, Sasuke, and Itachi took turns doing that. As they were running through the halls random objects were thrown at them. Everything that could open and close was doing so in rapid succession. When they heard Ren's screams again, they quieted down to be able to pinpoint his location. He was somewhere on the upper floor. Racing back up to the top floor they, began to searching the rooms again. There was only one room left at the end of the hall. Entering and searching the room, that must have belonged to Stonewall, they discovered nothing.
"What now," Jade whimpered.
"Find the bodies," Kim said as calmly as she could, though on the inside, her heart was racing a mile a minute. "If we get rid of them he'll be safe, and then we would only have to find him." The longer her father was missing, the harder she found it to keep her calm.
Everyone nodded in agreement before making their way out of the mansion, to the back yard. Hinata stood at the front of the group using her Byakugan to scan the ground for the wives' remains. They searched for about an hour before they were deep within the woods. Buried beneath the riverbed, were the remains they were looking for.
Kim took off her heel and stepped into the small river, the water coming up to her waist. Itachi, Hana, and Kakashi followed after her. Hinata directed them to where they had to dig once Nagato returned with the shovels he found in the dusty gardening shed. They used their chakra to be able to stick to the bottom of the riverbed to prevent them from slipping. Kim had some trouble with it, but she managed.
Soon they had uncovered the bodies, which were only skeletons wrapped in bedsheets secured with rope. One by one, they let the bundles float up to the surface where the others could grab them. With the remains in tow, they made their way back to the mansion.
"Son of a bitch," they heard Ren yell. When they reached the edge of the woods, it was to see the man being dangled off the roof by a figure. The figure was a silvery blue color and was slightly transparent. He gathered chakra into his feet, but when he tried to stick to the wall the figure would hold him out further. He caught sight of the others, eyes narrowing at the sight of the soggy bundles of fabric. "Burn them!"
Getting to work they laid out the remains in a row on the ground. When Naruto made to burn the bodies, he was thrown back by a powerful unseen force. Naruto started to panic. He hated ghosts, and standing before him were five of them. Quickly creating a shadow clone, he held out one hand and formed a Rasengan. He cursed loudly when he passed right through the figures. Whit the spirits distracted, Itachi activated his Mangekyo Sharingan and directed his gaze towards the bodies. Black flames sprouted on the remains, causing the entities to scream in pain as their forms started to flicker before disappearing in a blaze of fire.
With the spirit gone, Ren had nothing to keep in suspended in the air. He cursed loudly as he started to rapidly descend, to far to grab onto anything. Kim sprang to her feet and raced over to her father's falling form. Gathering chakra to the bottom of her feet she ran up the back wall of the mansion. She intercepted him midway, and got a hold of the back of his pants.
"Daughter you're giving me a wedgie."
"Better than going splat on the ground, Father," she retorted. She swung him to the side in order for him to plant his feet on the wall. From there they leapt off, and moved to rejoin the others.
"Jade, I'm sorry, but next year all you're getting is a cake," Ren told the girl. She just nodded. He looked down at Pakkun and pointed. "I'm not cleaning up after him."
"I never asked you to," the pug stated, scratching at his nose.
"I thought Naruto was messing with me when he told me that some animals could talk. I guess he was telling the truth," Ren stated with the nonchalant understanding and acceptance they were learning to expect from the man.
"Here," Hana said, handing Ren a picture she had found in the study. When he turned it over he thought he was looking at black and white photo of himself, with the only differences being the long hair and the old fashioned clothes, and Ren's larger muscle mass. They had the same ebony colored hair, tan skin, and hardened dark eyes. The most shocking difference was in the eyes. Whereas Ren's held a warmness, the other man's held a coldness. He showed the picture to the others.
"I guess you look so much like him that the women mistook you for him. That's why they kidnapped you and tried to kill you. They wanted revenge even after death," Sasuke stated. Everyone rose an eyebrow at the irony of what Sasuke had just said. When he caught on, he glared back at them.