Apocrypha shut off the truck's engine, parking in front of the pale blue-green of the cidery building and wasting no time clambering out, reaching into the back to swipe her laptop bag as she did. Tosa, in the passenger's seat, was somewhat slower, taking stock of her surroundings. The trees were just beginning to transition to the reds and oranges of fall, and the sun was only just beginning a descent toward the horizon.

"I need to take you off-base more often. Come on, let's go inside. We're out this way early and I've heard this place has some amazing ciders."

A flick of Tosa's tail indicated satisfaction with her survey, drawing a quiet laugh from Apocrypha waiting ahead at the door to the establishment.

Tosa followed her inside, tail swaying slowly when she sat on a barstool beside Apocrypha. "Only 'heard'? I thought Biloxi took you out here before?" she asked, eyes skimming the drink menu. "Where exactly are we going afterwards, anyway?"

Apocrypha grinned, giving her sample order and letting Tosa do the same while she opened up her laptop, quickly finding the website for their next destination. "Rolling Hills Asylum. It's about half an hour from here."

Apocrypha thought she caught a flash of fear in Tosa's expression while she explained, trying not to frown. "Is something wrong? We don't have to -"

"We can go. It's fine," Tosa interrupted, too quickly. "But really, an old asylum is your idea of a date, Shikikan?"

Apocrypha grinned sheepishly, picking up one of the cider glasses placed in front of her and taking a sip of the spiced liquid within. "I guess it's a little strange," she admitted. "But it's almost October and I thought it's a fun little idea for a fall date. Nothing much actually happened when Biloxi and I went, so it's not even that scary. It's like a haunted house with no actors in it."

Tosa exhaled slowly, silently sipping on her drink while Apocrypha eagerly went on to explain their next destination to her, from the history of the place to the various claims of spirit activity. Unease already gnawed at her stomach, even knowing it was likely fake. Just another "haunted" place playing on fools too willing to part with their money because of the fall season and Halloween's approach. Where every dark nook, every creak of intentionally skimped maintenance, every misshaped shadow, would all feed confirmation bias into the minds of those that believed such things going in. At least, that's what she told herself.

A couple hours later, the cidery was left behind, the driveway this time gravel and dirt crunching beneath the truck's tires as they approached the old brick building. Only two other vehicles were parked outside, and as far as Tosa could see, they were alone save for the crows sitting all around watching the newcomers.

When Tosa stepped out of the truck, she found her eyes drawn to one of the upper windows, a chill going down her spine at the presumably imagined glimpse of some shadow passing by in the room. Oh, why did I agree to this…?

Tosa followed Apocrypha into the building after Apocrypha had gathered the equipment, barely paying attention when she explained what each piece of equipment was for. Inside, a guide met them, a man, and it wasn't long before the tour of the grounds began. It was more or less the same as what Apocrypha had already told her at the cidery, but now it felt real. She was walking the same halls that the desperate, the hopeless, the insane, and the helpless had also walked before, and died in. For a split second, she wondered if this was what places like Azur Lane would be like when the war ended, or Kure, or so many other bases they had taken to calling home - empty, suffocating, carrying the lingering memories of their old inhabitants, their struggles, and no shortage of painful, undeserved deaths.

And then they were alone, just the two of them in the dark building where only the glimmers of moonlight filtering in through the windows and the beams of the flashlights in their hands illuminated their surroundings. Tosa shuddered as a chill ran through her at the realization, her ears flattening back against her head. "Let's get this over with," she grumbled, following Apocrypha closely as she led the way down a hall.

The first hour or so was uneventful, only a few creaks and thumps from time to time that Tosa convinced herself were only the sounds of the old building settling. She couldn't help but silently laugh at herself, even her tail swaying behind her in amusement at her foolishness. A battleship, someone who had stared down Sirens and laughed in the face of death a thousand times, yet she was afraid of some ghosts that didn't even seem to really exist? Absurd and senseless.

She paused to look out a window they passed, her ears picking up on the sound of rain starting to fall outside, the wind beginning to pick up and rattling tree branches that at times tapped and scraped against the building and its windows. She watched only briefly before turning to continue down the hall when she heard her lover calling for her, but froze in place as a large shadow lurched down a hallway as she turned her flashlight in that direction. When nothing more happened, she swallowed her fear, though her steps were more cautious now and her senses on full alert. Just your imagination. There's nothing there, she scolded herself.

Apocrypha was waiting at the top of a set of steps for her, the beam of the flashlight pointed toward the bottom of the stairs and the entrance to the asylum's underground tunnels.

"What's up? I was calling for you for at least the last ten minutes, Tosa. Is everything alright?" she asked, searching Tosa's face for signs of any hint as to what was going on. "If it's freaking you out that bad, we can leave. We don't have to stay. I promise I wouldn't hold it against you and we could find something else -"

"I'm not scared!" Tosa snapped, pushing past Apocrypha so she could stomp down the stairs into the tunnels first.

"And that goes for any stupid ghosts, too!" she shouted ahead of her towards what she hoped was no presence whatsoever. "Don't think for a second I'm afraid of you!"

Apocrypha snickered behind her, pulling a small device from her pocket and switching it on before speaking into the seemingly empty room. "Raymond, I know you like to hang out down here and bother women. If you're with us, can you say something? Or can you touch Tosa's hair?"

"Why me?!" Tosa hissed, glaring over her shoulder as she walked further into the tunnel. She suddenly flinched and jerked away when she felt something on her arm, desperately trying to brush the feeling off. "Ugh! Spiderwebs. I can't get them off."

Apocrypha frowned, reaching out as she approached Tosa to try and help pull away the webs, but found that there was nothing there. She felt Tosa grab onto her arm, trying not to wince at the tight grip so as not to let her know she was well aware by now of her being afraid. If she wanted to follow through with it and play tough, so be it.

"Raymond, was that you touching Tosa's arm just now?"

Silence for a moment, and then a broken piece of wood was thrown from down the hallway, narrowly missing them. While Tosa continued to cling even tighter to her, Apocrypha stopped the recording on the EVP recorder, playing back the last few minutes of recording. There had been no response to Tosa's challenge when first entering the tunnel, or to Apocrypha asking if someone was there, but they could just make out a faint voice following the clattering of the thrown piece of wood.

"She's...mine..."

Tosa's grip on Apocrypha's arm tightened upon hearing the recording, her tail tucking close underneath her. She tried to keep her voice steady, glaring down toward where the wood had been thrown from. "You want me?" she challenged. "Fine! If you want me, show yourself, you coward! Come on!"

"Tosa…" Apocrypha whispered. "Maybe you shouldn't -"

She was cut off by a scream that sounded like it came from upstairs, the two sharing a look and sprinting up the stairs out of the tunnel, before realizing their mistake. No one else was in the building, and the guide who had given them the tour earlier was a man. The scream had, very distinctly, been a woman's.

Apocrypha stopped to lean her back against the wall, trying to catch her breath and control the uneasy laughter bubbling up. "It wasn't anything like this with Biloxi. Oh God. This is awful and we're only halfway through the night."

Tosa was far less amused. "Well, we're stuck now, and this was your idea."

Apocrypha nodded, reaching up to push hair out of her face and pushing off of the wall. "Sorry for volunteering you to get groped by a ghost. …Pffft. Add that to the list of sentences I never thought I'd hear myself saying."

The jokes only earned a roll of the eyes from Tosa, who turned away to glare down the dark hallway. "Where are we going next? In this hellhole, I mean."

Apocrypha thought over the question, but it seemed someone else had a suggestion of their own, a voice coming through the recorder. A single word, but almost as clear as if the person were there with them.

"Nurse."

Tosa and Apocrypha shared an uneasy look, starting toward the stairs that would lead to the top floor and the nurses' quarters. Tosa constantly glanced over her shoulder, the feeling of being watched refusing to leave her.

"I don't think they want us here," she whispered, praying whatever was out there couldn't pick up on it.

"You just said a minute ago that we should finish this," Apocrypha whispered back, eyes scanning the hallway.

Although she could feel a weight on her, it did seem as if the activity in the old asylum had once again tapered off. At times, she could hear small noises, but nothing she could claim as spirits versus average noises in an old, dilapidated building. It should have brought her some relief, but somehow the sudden return to quiet was tying knots in her stomach, like the quiet in a house when a mischievous puppy was being too quiet.

She crossed into the room first, Tosa close behind, and almost instantly she reached to pull her jacket tighter around herself. The building was old and didn't hold heat well, but this felt like she'd just stepped into a mid-winter arctic blizzard. Apocrypha moved to the bed in the corner, sitting on the edge and drawing her knees up to her chest. Eventually, she realized she was still clutching the digital recorder in one hand, stretching out her arm to offer it to Tosa. "Stairs wiped me out," she lied. "Do you mind doing the EVP session in here?"

Tosa took the device, rolling it back and forth in her hand while she watched Apocrypha. "Alright. Just let it run and ask questions, right?"

Apocrypha nodded, cringing when that sent a wave of nausea through her and holding her knees tighter to prevent herself from being knocked off balance. "Yeah."

Tosa turned away, holding the device in front of her as she paced the room. "Are there any nurses here? Nurse Emmie?" she asked, glad no one was here to see her talking to an empty room in an abandoned asylum like some madwoman. "Emmie, are you the one making Apocrypha feel sick? Does it make you angry that we're here? That your home is being used as a tourist attraction?"

Silence was the only answer, even when Tosa stepped out to repeat and ask new questions in the hallway outside the room and in another room across the way. Too still. Too quiet. Even the sound of the wind and rain was muffled by the materials of the building walls.

Tosa tried one more time to make contact with the nurse's spirit while on her way back to the room where Apocrypha sat, this time asking for any sign. Abruptly, one of the doors in the hallway slammed shut with an echoing bang. Her steps quickened, hurrying to reach Apocrypha, but the Commander had already bolted from the room to find and grab onto her.

Without a second thought, Tosa brought her tail around to curl around her from behind, guiding Apocrypha down the stairs back to the main floor. She sat with her near the entrance, trying not to let on that from time to time she could still hear the residual sounds of footsteps, doors slamming, or the squeak of gurneys or wheelchairs, only relieved when hours later they were let out.

The pair sat in the truck in the parking lot for a while, watching the brick building and the trees in the grey light of dawn, until at last Apocrypha began to laugh, eventually breaking into full hysterics. "I never thought… you… of all people… would be afraid of ghosts," she wheezed between laughs.

Tosa grumbled despite the relief she felt that Apocrypha was again able to laugh at her. "Sure, sure. I'm never trusting you with fall dates if you get said ideas from Biloxi ever again, so you know."

Apocrypha grinned, reaching up to wipe tears from her eyes. "I didn't expect anything like that. Trust me, I don't want to come back here." Slowly, she calmed herself, still laughing from time to time. "I think next time, we'll stick to the cheesy haunted houses that get set up on base for the Halloween parties every year."

"That's a better idea," Tosa agreed, leaning her head back against the seat. "So, what now?"

"Breakfast, find somewhere to buy some apple pies, and homeward we go. Unless you want to find another -"

"Home sounds good," Tosa interrupted before Apocrypha could even jokingly suggest another ghost hunt.

Apocrypha smiled, leaning across to kiss her briefly before settling into her seat again and starting the truck. "Thank you for doing this with me anyway, Tosa."

Tosa didn't answer, watching the scenery outside her window while they drove, but Apocrypha didn't need her to answer. She had faced her fear for her sake, and that was answer enough.