Mad House

Halloween Sonohara found herself wandering through the backstage area of the Friction arena, seemingly for no reason at all. She didn’t have a match tonight, and she wasn’t dressed like she expected one, either - she wore her black jean, her boots, her favorite Evil Dead movie poster t-shirt, the one with Ash looking all badass with his chainsaw. She didn’t look like she was wandering in any specific direction, but more like she was just...wandering. Here one moment, then there the next. All over. Random.

There was a reason she was doing this, though Halloween wasn’ about to share it with anyone. She had a little problem - she needed money.

This was not a problem she had never had before. In fact, back home, it had been her most common problem, as her mother tried hard to keep food on the table and couldn’t always make it happen. During those times, she’d initially hit the streets and tried to play up the whole ‘cute, poor girl’ act, hoping people would empty their pockets and fill her hat. When that didn’t work, though, she started emptying those pockets herself, and found that to be much more lucrative. While pickpocketing was never a full-time thing for her, it always got her out of a bind when she needed it. That was one of the great things about being so small - it was so easy to go unnoticed when you wanted to. So few people ever looked down, and when she learned how to have a light touch…

But she’d thought that, after getting a job in one of the biggest wrestling companies on the planet, those days would be behind. As it turned out, that was far from the truth. Wrestlers weren’t paid a flat fee, they were paid to wrestle, and she wasn’t doing that nearly as much as she would’ve liked. Most of the time management kept trying to put her in the kawaii matches she wanted to avoid, and when they did give her a match against a bigger one, it was up against someone in a dark match, which didn’t pay even half of the televised stuff.

She had other irons in the fire - a Patreon page, a Youtube and Twitch channel, but they were just letting her survive. She was one missed month of rent away from taking a plane ticket back home.

So, here she was, at the path of last resort. The good thing was that she had a pretty good chance of striking big. Since this was a televised night, the more popular wrestlers would be around, and they would have good money. She could also slip into the audience and go fishing there. Easy money.

The first step was finding a mark. She couldn’t just pickpocket anyone. She wanted someone who looked distracted, someone who wouldn’t take much notice of her, someone who wouldn’t expect to be pickpocketed in a million years. Oblivious, unaware, vulnerable. It seemed like the smallest thing, but in her experience, finding the right mark was the hardest and most important part of the process.

So, for the moment, she was hunting. Walking with hands in her pockets, minding her business, whistling a little tune. Don’t mind me, I’m just a harmless like kawaii, wouldn’t hurt a fly. Looking left and right and left again, until she found…

A nurse smoking by herself by the backdoor.

Night Shift:

Perhaps a somewhat uncommon sight in this den of hedonism where the wrestlers were only ever the center of one’s attention. She didn’t appear to be doing anything of particular notice. Despite the rant and rave all around her for an active night on the show floor, this amethyst vixen couldn’t have appeared less interested in any of it. Her eyes were straight ahead, half-lidded and ten thousand miles away.

Sophia had to appreciate quiet moments like these for all they were worth. They came fleetingly at the end of each night, when she realized there was nothing left for her to do. Her phone was quiet for the first time in hours. Her performance check was due in a few days and how she intended to spend those finances were already plotted out thoroughly. Her routine observations around the city had produced fewer concerns than usual. This had been an uneventful week. Tomorrow she would have more problems to deal with that she would much rather look forward to. Today she could sit with the smoke between her teeth and reflect on the hours that passed her by. The days she’d spent stalking shadows, the months of work setting up her new base, the years of running through forests with rifles. She felt the corner of her lip upturn in a chuckle. If the captain could see her now...

She gripped the cig between two of her fingers and let out another long draw. Her other hand went into her jacket, playing with the medicine capsules that formerly belonged to the doctor sleeping in the closet behind her. Funds had been somewhat tight this month with some lavish new investments she’d completed for the homestead. She’d skimped on some essentials as a result, but damned if she was going to risk catching a fever. The only one she could count on in this country was herself and that meant ensuring she had all of her bases covered. There was more to her life now than money and violence, dear to heart as those things were. Caution commanded her lifestyle. Even the tiniest slip-up could send her back home in....what was this she was feeling?

Between the capsule felt an almost metallic texture. The Russian looked to her pocket curiously and pulled out a long, glittering necklace. A mix of amethyst and ruby gems attached to a silver string. It was far from authentic, but the typical buyer wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Damn it, she forgot to make that deposit for Nishima. That was another phone call for tomorrow. Her eyes rolled and tucked the faux jewelry into her pocket. The good news was that was the worst news to happen all day.

If only Japan’s cigarettes weren’t complete pieces of shit. Sophia clicked her tongue and flicked the cigarette away, With a tug of her collar she snugged the jacket closer against her shoulders and pushed away from the wall to the opposite set of doors she’d been staring at for the past thirty minutes. She pushed her way through them and down towards the stairwell that would lead to the parking garage. A car wasn’t a luxury she could afford at the moment - or rather the Suzuki motorbike she would prefer - but this route cut a quicker path to the backstreets that would lead to her place.

The girl let out a weak sigh and couldn’t help but feel a little depressed. So much excitement in the air, yet she’d never felt so bored.

In a lot of ways, pickpocketing was like hunting. Or, at least, how Halloween imagined hunting was, since she’d never actually done it.

She was fairly sure it involved more than just walking out into the forest with a rifle and walking until an unlucky deer passed you by, though, and it was much the same case, here. People thought it was as easy as just walking into a crowd with a light hand, but that was a good way to come up empty handed or worse, spend the night in a cell. No, a good pickpocket picked her marks carefully, took the time to study them. You didn’t have to follow a mark around all day, that would take too much time with too little return. No, you got the best results when you looked with an appraising eye, saw how they moved, saw if they were alone, saw how careful they were being. Et cetera, et cetera. Look for the important things. The things that stood out.

Like, say, a fucking golden necklace. ”Meirda…”

Halloween muttered to herself as her eyes centered on the bauble, held by a nurse not too far down the hall she’d just turned into. The woman was inspecting it for whatever reason, gazing at it while she smoked. On her lunchbreak, probably. Not a care in the world. And, oh look, she had an eyepatch, giving her a limited field of vision. Kind of sad. Kind of convenient.

Easy mark. Almost too easy. Halloween hadn’t stayed on the good side of jail bars by going after the hard marks, but she didn’t want to be spoonfed, either. And stealing from a nurse was a little on the iffy side…

...but damn, that necklace looked expensive. She only got a glimpse at it, but she could tell it was enough to keep her head above water for a few weeks, minimum.

Oh well. Only a couple of people around, some staff talking about the match lineup, nobody close to the nurse, a clear shot and a good approach. Go.

The nurse pushed off the wall and started down the stairs, looking like she was getting ready to head home for the night. If that was the case, she knew where she’d be coming out, and there was an elevator that could get her down there almost as fast. As soon as the woman pulled back and moved through the doors, she dashed hard to it, made her way in, and hit the button for the bottom floor.

She came out not far from where the staircase opened up, and sure enough, the nurse was already making her way through the garage. Seemed to be heading towards a back alley, too, and Halloween was in a good spot to intercept.

It took a little maneuvering, but she was able to cut a path through the garage that made them intersect without seeming too suspicious. She came at the nurse from her blindside, keeping her head down, looking for all the world like she wasn’t paying attention, waited until she was close to her target, then jerked to the side and bumped into her, reaching into her pocket and snatching the necklace in one clean movement.

Bump and lift. Textbook.

The woman was more solid than she expected, clearly had a lot of muscle and didn’t move like she’d thought, but it didn’t affect her technique. She slipped it into her back pocket and spun around with her hands up, giggling with wide eyes. Bring out the buy eyes, turn the cuteness up to eleven. ”Oh!” She yelped. ” Super sorry, miss! My bad!”

She threw a frilly wave her way, then started to strut off, going to the staircase the nurse had just come through. Big rule about pickpocketing - the less time you spend around your mark after the lift, the better.

Sophia felt her nose sniffle a few more times. The night air was absolutely terrible in this place.

The countryside of Novogrod was a distant comfort to her now. The last thing she would ever do with the few precious breaths she could still retain from this tainted earth was ponder a return to that cabin in the middle of the woods. But at least back there was a sky full of stars. The air was clear and the wind over the trees blew free. She was starting to forget what the stars looked like when she gazed up at the sky.

For some reason, her mind started wandering to that boundless field of twilight. Maybe if she went to the top floor of this structure, found a way to sneak onto the roof and stand on the highest incline, she could peek above all the light pollution and see the sky again. What else would she see up there? A shooting star? Home? Did she even need either of those things anymore?

What was that story her mother used to read her?

One amethyst iris was glazed over in thought. The other one was crushed beyond recognition and recycled for useful matter in some refrigerator a sea and a thousand miles away. Sophia evidently hadn’t learned to value her eyesight even after all this trouble. It was entirely her fault when someone bumped into her to stick a knife into her ribs and she would have to accept her death with grace. Her body stopped for an instant, frozen over and stiff as a statue for a single moment. An innate response to danger that shut down her body and braced herself for a blow that didn’t actually exist. She slowly looked over her shoulder, peeking an eye over the collar of her jacket to the cheery little girl, hurrying back to the entrance she’d just left.

“Stay with your mother, little one. It is dangerous at night.” She called back and walked away. The saccharine tone of her voice betrayed the frustrations brewing inside. Part of her almost wished she’d been attacked. At least then there would be a scar to pay for. To think children were even allowed at these kinds of venues. Japan was a land full of oddities.

Her mind recentered on the path home, more attentive of the shadows and what might be lurking in them as she stepped out from the parking area and slipped into one of the backstreets, practically hugging shoulders with the doors as she made her way down the narrow path to her humble abode.

”All right guys, I’m checking out for the night.” Halloween yawned as she sat her controller aside and stretched out in her gaming chair, getting out all the kinks and aches she’d accumulated through her four-hour gaming session. ”Come back in two days, we’ll be streaming Call of Cth…” She groaned and wagged her tongue. ”Cthulhu, Call of Cthulhu. Always have trouble with that word. Anyway, we’ll see how far we can get in that. Same bat time, same bat channel.” She winked and threw up a peace sign towards the camera. ”Stay safe.”

Halloween reached up and put the lens cap back on her camera, then ended the livestream on her computer, watching as her 150 followers began to dwindle. It had been a fun little night, playing Alien: Isolation, chatting with her fans, and, of course, wracking in some decent Superchats. Today she’d earned about $150 USD, not bad for a night run. Enough to keep the lights on for a little while longer, anyway, and it least she got it doing something she would’ve done for free. Not something everyone could say about their lives.

Leaning back, she started sipping on a water bottle, getting close to finish it off, one of the things she always did before bed. It was a rare quiet night in her apartment complex, and she planned to take advantage of it with a good, hard sleep. Head to the park early, get some laps in, maybe scoot over to the gym and work on some upper body…

Halloween started to get lost in her thoughts, when she was drawn away by the glitter in her eye - that necklace, laying on a table to the side, the one she’d swiped off the cyclops. She slid over in her swivel chair and picked it up, taking a moment to look at it - really look at it. She’d noted how fancy the thing looked like last night, but now that she had the chance to truly sit down and take it in, she was kind of caught off guard by the gleam. It was ornate. Expert crafted. Expensive-looking, in plain words. She wasn’t too knowledgeable about jewelry, but she knew a high price item when she had one. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d buy from your normal strip mall store - no, this was top-tier stuff.

Which begged the question: Why was it in some nurse’s pocket?

Which begged another question: If she had this stuff in her pocket, what kind of stuff did she have at her house?

Halloween’s nails found their way to her lips as a germ of an idea began to grow in her mind. She’d never considered straight up burglary before, but...was it a huge leap? Taking things out of people’s pockets wasn’t too far from taking things out of their homes. It had a bigger risk, sure, but if this woman was carrying something like this in her pocket, there was no telling what she had in her own place. High reward. It seemed like she was walking home, so she couldn’t be too far from the arena, easy to track her location. Just a quick in and out, and she could be so set she’d never have to find extra income for a good, long while.

Maybe. Maybe.

It only took another day for ‘maybe’ to turn into ‘yes’, and Halloween found herself following the nurse home one day, sticking close enough to pick up where she lived and far enough to not draw suspicion. Kind of a run down looking place by Japanese standards, nothing too fancy. Thre stories, maybe a basement, looked like it had seen better days. Most importantly, though, it seemed to be lacking even the basic security features - simple windows, simple locks, not even those automatic lights that look like security cameras. She was kind of surprised no one had tried to break into the place before, it seemed like it was begging for it.

The street was quiet, relatively remote, didn’t get too much traffic or passerbys. When the AFW was on, the area almost became a ghost town, as traffic was focused towards the arena and all the attention went towards it. That would be the time the nurse was on duty, too, giving her a two-hour window, minimum. So easy, too easy.

She took a day to gather her courage, another day to gather supplies, and then her opportunity came. Twenty minutes after the show started and the coast was clear, a strange, small figure could be seen making its way down the street, taking care to avoid any street lights. Clad in black from head to toe and wearing a black mask over her mouth, she would’ve been hard to spot even if there was anyone around to spot her, with only a black bag over her shoulders to really make her stand out. Cautious, quiet, she took one quick look around as she neared the house to make sure - 100% - that she was alone, and then she went slipped off to the side and began to move around the place, looking to determine the best way inside.

Tokyo was a city of boundless light. Every street held its share of wonders. Every turn catered to delights and dangers found all across the world beneath inviting balls of light. Noise and energy defined the metropolitan heart of Japan. Any place without it may have very well been afflicted with a curse, especially any area so close to the AFW arena.

The neighborhoods surrounding the complex had been rising dramatically in property value. Neighboring businesses sprouted quickly over the years as investors seized the advantage to brush shoulders with one of the busiest commercial hotspots in the country. Up-scale homes and modernized apartment complexes were filled with not only urbanites, but foreigners that were rapidly establishing a new quarter in the neighborhood. Wherever the federation reached, the land seemed to shift in response.

Except one, curious lot. It’s housing quiet and turning a deathly grey without a second thought. An unattended string in the vast web of decadence.

The abandoned heart of a once-promising redevelopment project found itself overflowing with decay and a curious malaise, home now only to vagrants and strays attracted with the rest of the filth congregated in one isolated block. The lights from the arena barely eclipsed over the horizon of roofs in this place of remote, disconnected dark. Between a crumbling parking structure and an abandoned attempt at an elevated subway station laid a single home, creaking its last years away under the night wind. Chips of plaster fell away from its sides, spider webs spun themselves a new home and feasted on corpses beneath the moldy eaves.

As one little girl approached the abandoned home, she would find the slightly hazardous steps to the porch to have an unsettling creak to them. The front door would offer no answer. The entire landing seemed devoid of personal life. Off to the right, however, came a noise. A bang. Several, one after the other. It had gone on for hours now. If anyone had actually lived in this part of the ward, irate neighbors would have lined the block around eager to beat the door open.

The noise emanated from a small sidepath around the porch and along its side towards the backway. It was somewhat of a tight squeeze between the concrete and wet runoff from a broken air conditioning unit, rats scurrying at the sounds of even the lightest footstep. Junk and debris were left discarded on either side. It would have been nearly impossible to tell one’s way by sight, but it wasn’t necessary to go too far in.

The sound came from above again. The grated shutters of a window only a few feet above slowly creaked open inch by inch before slamming shut with a terrible shudder. It opened and closed with a rise in the wind. Darkness laid on the other end with no glass or curtains to offer protection from insects, spiders, or whatever other undesirable guests the darkness may bring. It must have been the only window in sight that wasn’t blocked or obscured in some fashion, save for the broken pieces of glass dangling on its edge. Not a single light could be seen. Only moonlight would guide one’s way.

What could be on the other side? There was only one way to know. Take a deep breath, Yuki.

To many, a place like this would’ve been a warning sign. Japan was, overall, the single cleanest, safest, nicest place Halloween had ever stayed in. A real glittering, glammering, glitzy kind of place, all shiny and sterile and low on the crime scale. The kind of place where you could leave your door unlocked for weeks at a time and still find everything in its place when you got back. So having a place like this in the middle of stuck out like a Pentagram tattoo on a nun’s ass. Just something that absolutely, positively shouldn’t have been there. Something that had to have a reason for being there, and in all likelihood, not a happy reason.

To Halloween, it felt like home in a lot of ways. While she didn’t hate Tokyo, this was a lot closer to her old stomping grounds. The grit, the smoke, the dank, the dark. She’d been in some shady places. Not quite this level, but far closer than anything else on this island. It did strike her as a weird place for a nurse to live, especially one who was carrying swag like that necklace, but she could come up with a dozen reasons for that. She wasn’t too put off by the thought. Not as much as many would’ve.

Then came the noise.

Halloween had been on her way to test the front door. Not to sneak in that way, she wanted to make her way to the back for that, but to get a good idea if anyone was home, see if she could hear any noises. To her surprise, she did - loud ones, too, coming from off to side, cutting through the thin air, making her ear tingle. Keeping low and quiet, Halloween made her way over to the side and squeezed through the opening - tight, but this was one of those precious, rare times when being fun-sized came in handy.

It was easy to see where the noise came from - window. Looked like a good entry, point, too. Nice and dark on the other side…

Go for it? Go for it.

Yuki took a moment to shoo away a rat that was getting far too curious with a kick from her foot, then took a run at the wall, planting her foot on it after a jump and using that to boost up and catch the windowsill. She hung there for a moment, before pulling her way up and taking a quick peek inside to see…

Darkness and silence.

The ‘home’ on the other side was little more than a weathered landing that barely supported the pair of tiny feet that would fall onto it. Faint rays of moonlight trailing in from the windows were the only source of light that would reveal the rest of the manor. Even past the mire and decay, it all still appeared significantly out of fashion. The confines appeared to be rotting away from the inside out. A kind soul would do well to light a match and put it out of its misery. A much kinder soul than the ones that dwelt within.

The landing one would find themselves in should they have crawled through the open window would only lead to two directions; two sets of stairs. On the right, the stairs seemed to lead to the first floor. The vacant living area was filled with cobwebs, yet the furniture appeared orderly and oddly lived in. Framed photographs aligned the walls of a happy Prussian family, a clock above the ashen fireplace ticked on and on only some steps away from the front door just out of view from the landing. An antique savonnerie carpet was laid out beneath the glass table covered in dust and chipped plaster. There was little more than the bare impression of a lingering presence somewhere in the house.

On the left, another set of stairs lead up to a long hallway. On one side was a row of windows that provided a view of the entire street outside. It would be easy to see anyone that approached the house from here. A long series of doors stood tall, five in total that guided the eye down the length of the hallway to a final door at the other end with a metal frame and a rusted handle.

The door at the end of the hall was slightly ajar and slowly moved with the inward and outward draft of dead air from the open window. Did someone leave it that way?

Creeeeeeeak! Creeeeeeeak.

Creeeeeeeak! Creeeeeeeak.

The door beckoned a wayward soul forward. What laid beyond it, there was only one way to know for sure. Unless one would rather explore what lies below.

Where to go next?

Halloween didn’t know too much about the woman she was robbing, but she could say one thing without much dispute - she needed a maid. Or a vacuum. Or a duster. Or a set of explosives.

Any of those things would’ve made the hovel she found herself in now look so much better. In truth, it wasn’t too much worse than the house she had grown up in, but the difference was that her mother had kept that place in good upkeep and not let it rot, not to mention making her clean up with her all the time. This place, however, didn’t have any of that love applied to it. It was hard to even believe a place like this was in the middle of Japan - she hadn’t been here too long, but even she could pick up the impression that this was a clean country, filled with a lot of tidy people. Small wonder that some in the city were starting to complain about all the immigrants that the AFW attracted.

She didn’t move after the landing, instead taking a moment to let her eyes adjust to the light and taking it all that came her way. Did a family live here? That was the kind of impression she was getting from all the little clues, painting the picture of a hearty home, somewhere warm and friendly and loved - at least, at one time. It hadn’t been that way for a long time, though. All this dust, all the decay, hanging in the air. It was a husk of a home, and it was hard to believe anyone would even want to hang here for more than ten minutes, much less live and sleep there. And what was with this photo? It didn’t look like the woman she’d seen was in the picture. Maybe she was just some distant relative coming to stay here, but...

”Ooooookay.” She muttered under her breath, a whisper, just to hear her own voice and still the nerves. She shouldn’t have been that nervous, she’d done this sort of thing before, but something was setting her senses off and she couldn’t put a finger on it.

Didn’t matter. She could dwell on it later. She wasn’t exactly a burglarizing expert, but she figured a big rule was not staying in one place longer than 100% necessary. Her best bet was to clear this floor, then move on to the next, so she moved to the door that was open - no sense messing with the closed ones first, start with the freebie. She took slow, quiet steps - as quiet as a house like this could manage - and after she took a moment to listen in and make sure no one was on the other side, she stuck her head in and let the rest of her body follow.

SQUEE SQUEE SQUEE SQUEE SQUEE !!!

A horde of mice poured out from the inch-wide opening that Halloween made. Larger and larger volumes of rodents poured free from behind the door the wider it opened until the pack finally dissipated, scurrying over and under the girl's feet to the safety of the shadows where they disappeared. In their hurry, a break in the tide would force one of the adjacent hall doors open. Just a peek. Looks like that one had been left unlocked. There seemed to be another passage on the other side, but where it led or what was in it was another mystery. Perhaps one that could wait for later.

Still the claws of mice could be heard all over, scuffling in the walls and against her ears.

On the other side of the door the visitor had just opened, lay a broken cage in the center of the room with a rope harness dangling just above from the light fixture. The cage must have slipped free and broken open on the floor. Quite an odd place to keep someone's pets. In a broom closet no less. The only thing inside otherwise were tools, mice droppings, bad art wrapped in dust-coated plastic and a dresser. A dresser with a hole through the center panel. A quick peek inside and one would find a bit of a motif running through this homestead. More space. More nothing at all. It seemed.

From underneath the dresser just at one's feet, a scarlet hue light beamed out from the space below. It was easier to notice in the shifting pocket of darkness as the light swung from side to side in the room, focusing its faint light from the door to the dresser and then back again. There was something behind there. A closer look behind the edge of the cabinet would reveal a handle peeking out from the other side. A door.

The only way to get to it, it seemed, would be to move the dresser aside. It would make a bit of a noise. Maybe it would be better to turn back and consider some other options.

Then again, there must have been something of value in there if it was so well hidden. But at the same time, the mystery of this concrete hall almost seemed to be calling one forward, luring them into its unknowing depths.

Where to go first? Was it worth the risk?