Mai's POV

a day had passed since my encounter with the clown, flame, and straw hat guy.

after more investigation, it seems that many of the students had sensed the presence of a few specific ghosts from time to time, though we still don't know the reason. we tried giving some of them a psychic test and maybe 2 out of 21 or so had some barely noticeable psychic powers. it also seemed that most anyone in the area at that time 'felt like' they'd seen the same thing. meaning non psychics were also noticing them, but how can that be?

also the ghost the had reported were mostly all the same basic descriptions and most of them were recurring (they were not particularly common, but still oddly frequent for ghosts who are largely unpredictable), meaning they were picking up on very specific ghosts. though descriptions sometimes varied, we figured out it was probably about 6 separate ghosts:

a boy seemingly in his teens wearing a straw hat (5 sightings, 56 reports)

a shirtless man with some strange tattoos (3 sightings, 31 reports)

a man with a scowl, a cigar, and a hook (4 sightings, 42 reports)

a large old man with a long mustache (2 sightings, 34 reports)

a big guy with brown skin and curly black hair (1 sighting, 47 reports)

then there was one particularly odd one in quite a different way, very few reports were made and nothing unusual happened but the students seemed very afraid some how, the report was:

a guy wearing a cap and a Hawaiian shirt (1 sighting, 3 reports)

"do you think it could be that the schools been cursed?" Ayoko suggested.

"I don't think so, the ghost seem more concerned with each other than the students and it's not like just sensing seems to be impacting the students really..." Monk reasoned.

"besides, isn't supposed to be the location?" I said.

"I wonder about that..." Naru said without bothering to elaborate..

"What do you mean?" asked Monk.

"there's something strange about those ghost, normally the reason they stay after passing in that case is due to an emotional attachment of some sort, but that doesn't seem to really be the case here" he explained.

"I see your point..." Monk admitted. "but then just what is going on here?" he wondered.

"It seems like we may be in need of a means to get more information..." Masako observed.

The next thing I knew all eyes in the room had turned to me.

"huh?! what are you all looking at me for?" I asked defensively as I took a step back.

"here you go Mai." John said with a grin as he handed me a pillow.

I took it reluctantly and said "alright, I get it, I get it!" and with that I smacked the pillow on to the table, sat down, layed down my head, and closed my eyes.

Inside Mai's dream

"Hello?" I called "Anybody there?!"

"Jeez! You really don't know when to quit!" I heard a familiar voice complain and turned to see the same girl that had appeared in my dream before, telling us to leave.

"You're... from before..." I said not too sure what else to say.

"yes, brilliant deduction. look are going to get lost or what? I already told you there's nothing you can do here." She said so blunt and accusingly it almost stung.

I shook my head to snap myself out of it. I wouldn't back down! "No!" I said stomping my foot.

She seemed to be awfully taken aback by the outburst as if she expected me to just timidly stand there making excuses or something, well, whatever the case this was my chance at an opening. "How would you know what we can and can't do?! If you know so much why don't you tell us what you know?! If it really is something that's out of our hands, I'm sure my boss will probably have us leave, but that's not for you to decided!" I yelled at then stood there looking stern as I waited for her reaction.

"... Pfft..." she suddenly burst out laughing. 'okay... that's not really what I was expecting' I thought as I was starting to feel a little self convince.

when she finally calmed down and stopped laughing she muttered "Jeez, is that stubbornness contagious or what?" then she looked up and said "alright, I guess that's fair enough" she agreed.

"No one really knows the reason, but the devil fruit users are all stuck here for some reason, they can't leave, and since a lot of devil fruit users are pirates, it's only natural that no crew can easily abandon their nakama, due to that there are pirates everywhere. you guys may be exorcists or whatever but a pirate's spirit isn't like others, they won't be kept down. and pirates being pirates they can never get along and fights break out everywhere and on occasion someone will just go nuts for a while too. there are marines here too, but they're far out numbered and not to mention that one marine is actually more dangerous then the pirates... in the end so long as the devil fruit users are unable to pass on nothing will change and since we don't know much about the devil fruit apart from their effects it's impossible to understand what is happening much less how to fix it, do you understand? so what will you do now that you know all this? do you still think there is something you can do?" she asked sullenly after she'd finished her explanation.

"that... I think there must be a way! I'm sure we can help figure something out! We just have to do our best!" I exclaimed.

"I see..." was all she said before she disappeared.

To be continued...

meteorgin: I think next time will be from a one piece perspective, I hope I can pull it off