The Amakura Promise: Back to All Gods Village (Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly)
Chapter One
By: Lurdokyle
Disclaimer: I do not own Project Zero or the Fatal Frame franchise, (but that would be cool if I did xD) so don't sue me please
Chapter 1 --- Mayu, a Memory
-rate as you as you see fit )
Among the commotion Mio could barely stand. The translucent preists heaved there ringed staffs toward the stony ceiling in unison. The Repentance has ended. Two Mourners trudged by the celebration of the unholy spirits. Not the grotesque Mourners, nor the vile task she had performed seemed register.
...mayu...Mayu...
She reawakened to the sad reality when the Mourners knelt on either side of a large slab of rock that rested unmovably on the floor of the cave. Her sister...her twin...
Mayu's body lay motionless on that slab of rock, where Mio only seconds before, layed on top of her dear sister. Mayu put Mio's hand around her neck. The Crimson Ritual had to be fulfilled.
One sister kills the other...
The remaining sister stays to watch over the village...
Both feared and respected...
"I was born for this", Mayu had said sadly.
Mio squeezed her sisters neck. Gently, at first, but she increased pressure so Mayu could not breathe.
During that time, Mayu neither moved nor rejected Mio. She just lyed underneath Mio's body. The Ritual was unstoppable. It had to be performed. When Mayu silently died, Mio relieved Mayu's neck of her hands. A red rash had formed on her lifeless neck where she was strangled.
It was two small marks, crossing each other, Where Mio's thumbs had been;
And two large marks below the first pair, where the palms were positioned, and they curved upward around the sides of the neck.
It was plain: a Crimson Butterfly.
The spirit of the sister that dies takes the form of a crimson butterfly, and flies into heaven, parting the evil clouds that darken the Village...
When it was clear Mayu had died, The priests that surrounded them in the dark cave rejoiced.
Presently, Mio violenty shook her head in disbelief and looked fixedly upon those red marks on Mayu's flawless frame, and then to her hands which commitedthe atrocity.
"...no...no...NO!" she cried.
TheblindMourners took hold of her sisters feet and arms, And after a two swings heaved her into the giant dark rectangular chasm of the Abyss. The scene passed like slow-motionto Mio. She almost reached for the Camera Obscura, which she kept halfway in her pocket because of its' size.
"Nooo!" wept Mio, running up to the edge of the Abyssal Hell and gazing into itsblack depths.
"Mayu!" she cried.
Suddenly, a Butterfly fluttered up from the dark and hovered a little above Mio.
"Thank You" said her twin. The words resonated throughout the chamber with a sincere echo that bounced off the walls.
"Mayu! Dont go! Forever together, remember?"
The glowing crimson butterfly flapped its wings hard and began ascending to the cavern ceiling.
"Mayu! Dont leave me!"
The promise...Forever together...her twin...herfamily...the best friend...Forever, ... together.
Mayu raced up the cavern halls with inhuman speed. Out of the ceremony house and across the whisper bridge, through the dirt streets of the Village, and bounded up the path into the dark forest.
"Mayu!", she cried for her sister.
Mio stopped on a raised hill with an cliff overlook of Village. This hill harbored a sacred stone where the crimson spirits of the shrine maidens could pass through the cave roof and out of the ground, to continue it's journey to the heavens. There, she saw Mayu's spirit emerge, and it fluttered its glowing orange wings through the air, taking notice of her twin sister.
Mayu continued to fly up an adjecent hill, followed closely by a heart-broken Mio who screamed for her sister to come to her. Although Mio was running as fast as she could, she stumbled over the lush foliage that aided in Mayus distancing, all the while yelling with her hands covering her tear-soaked face.
"Mayu! I'm so, so sorry Mayu! I'm sorry!" Her voice was shaky from her crying but the words were clear.
Suddenly, the forest canopy parted as she climbed through a clearing where a shrine gate stood.
What she saw amazed her, but her detirmination did not deviate.
There were thousands.
The spirtits of old Shrine maidens and Alter twins swirled through the night sky, beating there beautiful wings and lighting the never-ending night that consumed the village.
They were everywhere. they flew from behind, and in groups, and twirled and flipped and dove.
Mayu joined in with them and Mio could'nt tell which one was her twin. "Mayu No!" Mio screamed, and then she cried out again faintly, losing control:
"Stay with me. please." Yellow sunlight poured out from the mountains of the horizon. One orange butterfly approached her swiftly and gracefully, while all the other ones headed past.
Mio, out of sadness, extended an arm up to her face, with her pointer finger out.
Her Twin, her Sister, her Friend...
"Mio, promise me that we'll stay together always" ... that is what you said Mayu!
The lone butterfly cast and orange-red glow as it hastilly approached a distraught Mio. Mayu gracefully fluttered to her finger and hovered there for about a second. Mio felt her sister brush the tip of her finger. She flew away into the crowd which ascended to heaven at last.
"MAYU!" Screamed Mio, collaping in the grassy knoll and sobbing violently into her palms. Mio did not cry because she killed her sister. She knew it had to be done, to save the Village, and herself. For Sae, and Yae, for Mustsuki, and poor Itsuki, and Chitose, and Azame and her sister, and even the tortured soul of the late Kabusi folklorist. She cried because Mayu would never be next to her again, never seen or heard or felt again.
The sun broke free over the mountains and dissolved the never-ending night that the Village suffered. The dense dense fog pulled back from the intrusion, leaving Mio surrounded by sunlight and the sweet smell of a nearby cherry blossom tree. The grass felt cold and real beneath her. Mio was back home, in her own time. But where was Mayu to celebrate with?
Mio turned her head to the brilliant sky of Japan,ponderinglifewithout her Mayu to be there for her when she needed help.
The stream where Mio and Mayu used to play was visible again, and her surroundings changed to the present forest as if undistubed by the mysterious aura that snatched wanderers away to the Village. Mio and Mayu just saved the tortured souls of All God's Village by themselves. But Mayu died. Half of the Amakura Twins was dead.There really was no way to stop the Ritual after all, Mio had concluded. It had to go on for the sake of the Village. More twins would need sacrificing, more lives taken to save others in the Village. But isn'tthrowing awayjust one humansoul worth saving many, many more?
Of couse not.
Mio sat quitely on a bench. Calm wind pushed ripples through a small resevoir. Her gaze and thoughts looked up the lake that rippled in the sunlight. The local dam was finished and theplayground of her childhood drowned, where so many memories resided. The area of forest where she used to play with her twin sunken, along with the Village. Along with Mayu.
More than a month later Mio could not find any resolve for happiness, except for knowing her sister could rest in peace beneath the waves, or wherever she was.
'Mayu, I would die too see you again. But I can't die now ... because ... you died so I could live on...' Mio closed her eyesas the wind picked up.
Upon her neck and upper chest there was a strange red-orange mark, abeautiful crimson butterfly. She remembered finding a book in the Ceremony Masters' house about thiseerie stigmata. It would seem that the Remaining are endowed with this mark that tattoos itself ontothe ones' who die in themindinstead of the body. She was honored when she first dicovered it. Ever since she carried it with sadness, honored to bare the sign of the selfless Mayu Amakura. She was clueless about the origin of the Hellish Abyss, and why twins had to be sacrificed. She remembered something about two parts of a deity that were split at birth when she was rummaging through documents in the folklorist's cell, some kind of superstition that took control of an entire village. A religion, perhaps? There was no way to discover the truth now that the evidence was buried in the watery basin.
"Didn't we always promise each other... that we would always be together?"
"Together ... forever"
Mio shot her eyes open.
...forever.
"I-I know how to go back!"
Authors Notes:
I will submit chp.2 soon!
Just to let you know: The story takes place during/after the 1st Ending. Not when you beat it on other difficulties and the end cutscenes are different, like Mio goes blind when she looks into the Hellish Abyss or When Mio pulls Mayu back when Sae and Yae fall into the Abyss together and everything is happy-go-lucky.
Nope, this is when Mio suffacates Mayuat the alter becausethey have to complete the Crimson Sacrifice to contain the Malice that comes out of the Hellish Abyss. Man, that ending almost made me cry. Mayu is so noble and selfless sniffle
anyway the story shall proceed on as Mio tries to return to the village to be with Mayu's spirit butterfly, but finds Itsuki and the other spirits have returned to life when the Repentance ends...
Lurdokyle