The Face of Fear
"A haunted house? In
this school? Wouldn't that just be called a house?" Tsukune asked. Evidently it wasn't, as a discreet sign identified the edifice that he'd stopped to look at very specifically as a
haunted house. In fact, it noted that the builders were the Haunted House Club. Which a subtitle elaborated as "a club for building, staffing, and maintaining haunted houses." There did
not seem to be much room for ambiguity there.
"I thought you had those in the human world," said Yukari, giving him a quizzical look. "It's pretty simple, you just go through and people in costumes try to scare you."
"Yeah but here if you turn a corner and a bug-eyed monster jumps out at you, it's probably because Shiragami overslept and is racing to class without stopping to put her disguise up."
"Why don't we go inside and see what it's like?" asked Moka, her eyes lighting up as she grabbed his arm. "It sounds exciting!"
"Exciting, yes," purred Kurumu as she claimed his other arm. "Dark rooms where frightened girls can cling desperately to you, asking you to hold them until the trembling stops.
Very exciting, hmmm?"
Tsukune froze in place, torn between not wanting to deny Moka and not wanting the antics to, once again, spiral out of control. It was Jotaro and Mizore who decided things, holding one of their impenetrable silent conversations in a single stone-faced glance before striding in. As Tsukune found his musclebound sempai a valuable source of strength in the trying times that seemed to define his life these days, he felt it best to follow them.
Inside was a darkened room, as Tsukune expected from a haunted house. Yeah, they'd wait a little bit for the tension to build, and then out pops...a shrine maiden brandishing a charm?
"Eek!" eeked Moka.
"Yeek!" yeeked Kurumu.
"Yipe!" yiped Yukari.
As prophesied, all three girls were clinging to him, but Tsukune couldn't understand
why. The shrine maiden wasn't pulling her face off to reveal a skull or anything, she just looked...normal. Kind of cute, actually, not that Tsukune was particularly interested in that fact given the amount of girl troubles he had already but just to demonstrate her general unscariness. Yet there were his three companions shaking like leaves in the face of a gently waving slip of paper.
Mizore had vanished somewhere, which could mean she was scared or she'd gotten bored and felt like being stalkery. Jotaro, well, Jotaro could be feeling anything from fear to confusion to the bittersweet realization that his eventual children would never undergo the hardships of his generation and thus would never truly understand him. No way to tell, really. And now the shrine maiden was herding them into the next room, so he guessed that was the whole scare? Somehow?
Going deeper in failed to provide any clarity. A knight in white armor, hefting an exceedingly shiny shield. A stubbly fellow in a trenchcoat, giving a flowery monologue about secrets and the streets. A Christian priest, intoning what Tsukune strongly suspected was butchered Latin. None of it seemed like enough to reduce three girls whose courage he'd personally witnessed a distressing number of times (was
every student constantly placed in mortal peril in this school, or was he just hideously unlucky?) to gibbering messes. At least the grimy guy with the torch and pitchfork had ominously warned them that they were about to face the last, greatest scare of all so this whole baffling ordeal would soon be over.
Tsukune would have said that he had no expectations about what this supposed last, greatest scare of all would be, but somehow a hulking man in a dress and heavy makeup, laden down with bottles of tequila, still defied them. Next to him, Jotaro grunted, "I get it. That's supposed to be Gramps," and plodded out the exit with no further fanfare. Tsukune concluded simultaneously that a) Jotaro having an alcoholic crossdresser for a grandfather probably explained some things about him and b) he never, ever wanted to discuss that first conclusion where Jotaro might hear.
Absently patting Kurumu's head where it was buried in his chest, Tsukune asked the crossdresser, "Do you have anywhere my friends can lie down and recover from this apparently terrifying experience?"
"Oh sure, right over here," came the reply. As Tsukune followed, hampered somewhat by the little witch academic clinging to his leg, his new friend chattered, "Let me just congratulate you and your absent friend for your steely nerves. In the history of the school there's only been a handful of people that made it all the way through the house as calmly as you just did, and every year we strive to make it more frightening than the last. Yessir, you've humbled us with your ability to withstand sights that should weaken the knees of
any monster!"
Now Tsukune was starting to tremble a little. Please let him not have been outed as a human over something so very, very stupid.
"In fact, looking at you....Hey Shiho, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
The big guy wouldn't be so chipper if he was about to accuse Tsukune of humanity, right? Nor
would the shrine maiden from the beginning who'd just bustled over. They'd be stern or angry or contemptuous at such an interloper, right? Right?
"Oh yes," chirped the girl who must be Shiho. "His facial bone structure is
excellent. Just the right kind of appealing blandness without being overtly attractive. Get the right costume, spike his hair up a bit, and he'll be
perfect!"
And so Tsukune, not known for his ability to refuse people who were being friendly and enthusiastic at him, found himself manning a haunted house while dressed as a generic shonen protagonist. It wasn't much hassle, honestly. All he had to do was keep a straight face and declare, "I fight for my friends!" whenever someone came in. Well, that and occasionally help drag out the bodies of patrons who'd fainted at the sight. He supposed he should enjoy it. It was the first and probably last time people found him intimidating.
