While Juliet was doing her best to not have a full-blown panic attack from the fact that the hospital was absolutely 100% haunted, and while Erie and Hope were cautiously advancing through the hospital in full protective gear...
"Hi-yah!"
...Rin was actively fighting off evil spirits and monsters.
A black figure rushed towards Rin only to be split in half as Rin swung the enchanted knife John gave her.
*Impossibbbbbble!*
A ghastly voice echoed before the figure burst into black ash.
Seeing that, Rin giggled and held the knife up, idly testing the point. "This is fun! Best idea ever to come along with my kouhais!"
It had been a while since Rin went hunting. Between training for the Olympics, school, streaming, and having fun messing with the Ohana since she'd deliberately broken the immersion with the infamous Rin/Hana interview, Rin hadn't had a chance to let loose in a while.
A white blur rushed towards Rin, letting out a ghastly wail.
Rin idly rolled the knife over her wrist into a reverse grip and slashed, making the spirit vanish in a puff of white smoke. "Hm... It's a lot less scary in real life than it is in games though..."
The newest Neighboring Malice game was super spooky. Between having to puzzle solve and avoid monsters that could cause a game over in a few seconds, it was super nervewracking to play.
But in real life like this...
Rin flicked her wrist, causing the knife to spin like a silver disc and split apart the bloody semi-transparent figures of nurses wandering the hallway. Then she idly walked towards her knife and picked it up.
"Is this why they make you so weak in horror games?"
Rin tilted her head, staring at the groaning and shambling transparent figures walking out of the nearby hospital rooms.
It looked spooky. And it definitely reminded Rin of the horror games she liked playing. But...
"There's no tension! Where's the scary parts?"
One of the figures giggled. A pale woman with an unnaturally wide smile due to a split across her face. "Am I pretty?"
"Nope!" Rin slashed her knife and split the woman in half, making the woman vanish with a scream. "I'm prettier! Also!" Rin puffed her cheeks as she stared at the other figures. "If you're yokai, why are you so weak?!"
The transparent figures floating ahead of Rin were definitely the yokais and monsters that her mother once warned her about. The sort that appeared at night and made little girls disappear.
...Though in hindsight, Rin realized that her mom probably just said that since Rin was alone at night from her mom working late hours.
But in any case...
Rin flipped her knife up and pinched it out of the air, holding it by the point. Then she gestured the handle towards the various cursed spirits in front of her and said, "Aren't you ashamed of yourselves? I'm just a cute young girl! Why are you so weak?"
Silence.
The yokais looked at each other, definitely bewildered.
Rin stomped her foot, feeling frustrated. "This isn't fun! You don't even drop anything cool! At least animals drop their bodies so I can craft loot! You just poof!"
More silence. A tense atmosphere... but not from the yokai, from Rin's frustration.
After a few seconds passed, Rin clicked her tongue. "I'm bored." She calmly started walking forward, switching her knife into a forward grip. "I ran all the way up to the top floors here because I thought you'd have spooky and strong things to play with. But you're all so fragile. It's boooring. I'm leaving."
The air darkened for a moment, almost as if the hospital itself wanted to punish Rin for her audacity.
But then something even darker emanated from Rin as she slowly turned towards the source of the malice. Her smile widened and she hugged the knife against her face. "Ooh! Is someone fun finally showing up?"
Silence.
And then the upper floors of the hospital became perfectly normal, as if everyone had decided to run away from her.
Rin puffed her cheeks. "...Meanies." She sighed and idly twirled her knife as she started heading towards the stairwell leading downstairs. "I might as well see if my kouhais are having fun... Oh!" Rin paused and then her eyes lit up with excitement. "I can give feedback for Erie! Since she wants to make a haunted house, I know exactly what would make it fun! First of all... no weapons, I guess."
Having a knife definitely helped keep you safe.
Rin wouldn't leave home without one if she was heading to a place like this.
But for an experience where you're meant to be scared, it ruined the atmosphere. Also...
"Hm... Tension is important, right?" Rin mumbled as she walked down the stairs. "Jumpscares are probably dangerous. Psychological horror is definitely better..."
The first few spooky ghosts that jumped out at Rin got her. But after that, it just got annoying.
But if you never knew what would jump out at you, and if you had the feeling that something would, but nothing ever did...
Rin giggled. "That's the real horror~ Okay!" She pulled out her phone. "I've gotta save these notes..."
===
While Rin was roaming the upper levels of the hospital and completely bypassed the horror genre by making it into a survival action genre instead...
Hana was roaming the basement of the hospital. "Hm..." Holding up her phone to use as a makeshift light, she looked around and said, "This is interesting."
Unlike the rest of the hospital, the basement didn't look like it was haunted. Instead, it looked like it was the forbidden research lab of some horror game like Neighboring Malice.
"It looks more like a monster will jump out instead of some ghosts..." Hana murmured as she walked around, looking at the surroundings with interest.
There were rusty metal shelves with preserved organs. Glass jars with brains, ears, livers, kidneys... things like that.
Hana wasn't sure if they were human organs and parts... but it kind of looked like them.
Which made her wonder what was going on here. "Was this really just a hospital?" Hana hummed and tapped her chin as she continued to walk around in the dark maze of the basement between all the shelves.
And speaking of the maze...
"Ooh! Erie should definitely do something like this!"
The basement looked like it was originally just a big open space. There weren't any rooms or anything like that splitting the basement up.
But the people who originally ran the hospital had used it for storage, so they moved a lot of tall metal shelves into the basement, making long hallways between the shelves, as well as little aisles.
Some old crates and boxes blocked dead ends too.
In short...
"It really is like a horror game, isn't it? Although, I guess you could just move these out of the way if you wanted..."
Hana stepped over a box to round the corner to explore another aisle. "Hm..." Her orange hair fluttered behind her, standing out in the dark and gloomy atmosphere. At the same time, her orange eyes looked at the faded yellow labels along the shelves.
"Patient information, medical codes, staff dossier..." Hana mumbled as she read the notes on the shelves. "Seems like the usual lore bits... Ooh! If I flip through these, will I find like a secret conspiracy? That's usually how these things go, right?"
Hana wasn't Rin, so she didn't personally play the horror games that Rin did on stream.
She also was less fond of the 'blast all the monsters' playstyle and liked exploring things more, so it was fun looking around like this.
But now she was curious.
"If they're organized like this, there should be some incident reports too right...? Oh! Here we are!"
Hana came to a stop in front of a shelf with boxes of manilla folders with 'Incident Reports' scrawled over it in English with black sharpie.
"Let's see... Experiment 731?" Hana hummed and picked up one of the folders before opening it up to read the documents inside. "Beginning test experiment of binaural audio waves upon children. Testing viability as sonic weaponry... Huh. Neat-"
*CRASH*
Hana paused and craned her head over towards the source of the noise.
As she did, something moved.
Pale white skin. Decaying flesh and white bone...
A giant white hand slowly crawled over the shelves towards Hana before pausing.
Hana stared at it.
The White Hand stared(?) back.
Then Hana said, "You know I'm not human, right? Also, Mister John will actually murder you if you go upstairs and scare the other girls."
Silence.
The White Hand twitched as if contemplating Hana's words.
Then Hana said, "Also, if you scare my kouhais, I have the capacity to turn you into a marketable plushie. Do you want that? To be forever tossed around as a toy for children?"
The White Hand shuddered and then immediately vanished.
Hana nodded. "I thought so." After that, she flipped the manilla folder again and continued reading.
===
Meanwhile.
It was roughly 4 PM now, a few hours passing since the girls first started exploring.
Back in the van, Juliet was just falling asleep when she saw Hana's confrontation with the White Hand.
John didn't react, too busy keeping an eye on Hope and Erie.
But Juliet froze.
'Did I just... see a giant rotting white hand?'
It was gone now, and Hana was acting like nothing had happened.
But Juliet had DEFINITELY seen it.
Did she?
"...I'm just... gonna pretend I didn't see anything."
Juliet closed her eyes and turned up the volume on her headphones, playing the music to distract her thoughts.
*I know you've lived a nightmare... I caused you so much pain. But baby please don't do what I did... I don't want you to waste your life in vain~*
"God bless RWBY's soundtrack." Juliet mumbled and then started drifting off to sleep.