"...and so he says to the others, 'I saw the next guy coming with pineapples!' Pineapples!" I bursted out laughing at my own gross joke. Taker stares blankly.

"That... was the strangest joke i have ever heard." Well at least he's honest.

"I thought it was something the folks here at the mansion would like, after all it's got everything people are diggin' around here. Death, violence, humiliation... it's got it all. But hey, that reminds me, how many jokes have you heard anyway? Cause if you said mine was the strangest, you'd need something to compare it to."

However Taker was going to respond to that, he was cut off by a high-pitched echowy giggle. "Well, someone obviously liked my joke." I quip, only to freeze for a fraction of a second when I realized it was none other than specimen 4, or ringu, who was doing the giggling. And seeing what I had of this place so far, it was safe to say that the reason for her giggling probably wasn't my joke, to say the least.

"aaaaand it's time to run again, this is starting to be less scary and more annoying to be honest."

And so we did. well, I ran, Taker just kind of floated along leisurely. That's kind of weird now that I think about it, the fact that specimens completely ignore one another when they're in the same room. But no time to think about that now., now that I think about it, maybe it is.

Like Taker, Ringu also floated at a leisurely pace. And when she spoke (nothing memorable, mostly just "Come here," and "Stop,") it was in a very monotone, and dare I say it? Bored sounding voice. And I began to formulate a plan. It was crazy, but similar on the crazy scail to all the methods I'd previously used to deal with specimens.

"You don't seem to be enjoying this," I say as casually as one can while running from a hungry ghost girl. Said hungry ghost girl didn't indicate in any way that she'd heard me, so I tried again. "Um excuse me, Ringu-Chan?" Welp, looks like exploiting what little I know about Japanese culture didn't work either. Or at least not like that.

I really didn't want to have to do this since there's no telling how she'd react, but at this point i didn't have much of a choice. My feet were beginning to hurt something awful and I was starting to sweat profusely. I wouldn't be able to keep up my current speed for much longer. So I took a deep breath and deploy one of the three Japanese words i knew by heart, the one that meant something other than 'hello' or 'thank you.' "Hey! I'm talking to you, baka!" That got her attention.

Ringu froze, her black lips parting wide to reveal, surprise surprise, needle sharp fangs. Taker also seemed taken aback, giving me a look that said: 'did you really just say that?' I was starting to think that this might not be the bestest idea.

"What did you just..." Ringu sputtered in a voice even echowier than Spooky's, and surprisingly (for me at least) without even the slightest hints of an accent. Kinda disappointing, I always found accents cute. Like the person is super passionate about learning the most complex language out there and is doing their best to learn it, but they can't quite shake their roots. So adorable!

"That's what you get for ignoring me!" I say haughtily. I thought about adding another 'baka' to the end of that sentence, but decided against it since I was pushing my luck as it was. "anyway, as I was saying, your heart doesn't seem to be into this whole chase thing; so I was wondering if you'd mind telling me what's up with that?"

Ringu's expression was unreadable for a moment, and there were a few moments of silence. But then, suddenly...

"IT'S NOT FAIR!" Jeez, this girl's sscreeching could wake... well, even more of the dead. Not wanting to risk going deaf, i slam my hands onto my ears so quickly that it feels like my brain's rattling around inside my skull. That, or it's from Ringu's screams. But whichever it is, it's not pleasant.

Either Ringu notices my discomfort, or she just decided to tone it down on her own, because the next time she speaks it's at a much more reasonable volume. "I don't understand why she won't allow me to be a part of her army, I mean I'm just as good of a ghost as she is, if not better. Is it because I chose to stay behind rather than-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa whoa whoa! Let's take it back a notch. When you say she... are you talking about Spooky?"

Ringu nods. "She is an absolute menace."

"Yeah, I kinda figured that out on my own already. What I haven't figured out until now is that she's got an army? What would a little ghost girl who wants nothing more than to scare and kill a few people, not necessarily in that order, need an army for?"

"It is a ghost army." This time it's Taker that answers my question, I guess he was feeling jealous due to not being helpful or something? This also makes Ringu jealous or something, for she scowls at him, almost as though she didn't realize he was there this whole time. Of course, Taker isn't at all deterred by this and just goes right on ahead. "Spooky wants to create an army of ghosts to invade the earth with in order to frighten the masses. But it would be quite difficult to search the world for ghosts since they are so rare; that is where we come in."

"You have to die a tragic death to become a ghost," Ringu continues. "And being killed by a supernatural entity greatly increases those chances. I've tried holding some of the souls I myself have harvested to keep them from joining her, but to no avail. They always find their way to her."

"Or, if you're unlucky, and are rejected for one reason or another, you become one of us. You forget everything you've ever known, with no choice but to take the dead for all eternity."

"I barely remember anything before arriving here," Ringu confesses. "Just my first name, Ringu, and a few other little things. And you probably will too, seeing as you probably won't be accepted into the army at this point. Spooky has been muttering about you lately, talking about how you're messing with the order of things and are being disrespectful."

"The point is," Taker interrupted, probably getting frustrated about how Ringu was getting a bit sidetracked. "No one has entered these walls and came out alive."

"Except for me." I proclaim firmly before I can stop myself. But I realized that I never really wanted to in the first place. Things had always been leading up to this, I decided, thinking back to that one off little thought that popped up out of nowhere during my last encounter with Spooky. I did want to stop her. If I became famous due to being the only one to make it out and for my tales of the supernatural, that was just a bonus. But what Spooky was doing was totally uncool, and the fact that it had been going on for so long right under everyone's noses seriously pissed me off. Yeah, I was going to stop Spooky, and get out alive if it was the last thing I ever d-no, no, bad choice of words. Forget I said that last part.

Meanwhile, Ringu seemed unimpressed with my statement. "Do you really think you're the only one to say that? You're not the first, and you certainly won't be the last. Why not just stay here and let me shelter you from the pain. I think I know how to hold you."

"Uh, no thanks." I reply maybe a little too quickly. "Not interested in being lunch. But hey, you know what? You might be able to help me in another way."

Ringu hesitated, most likely trying to seem uninterested. But eventually her curiosity got the better of her, and she caved. "How so?"

A/N: I have no idea why this keeps happening, but here we go with yet another somber chapter. Originally I planned for Ringu to be a bit more of a drama queen about not getting to join Spooky's army but that's not what happened.