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Vaith struggled to make himself as compact as possible-- which meant standing stiffly in a corner. His frown only dependence upon the realization of spiders. Pesky-- They dropped onto you and bit you and that didn't include venomous ones. They didnt need to be venomous to leave unwanted aftereffects. It didn't take much to realize that Vaith had an unfortunate experience with these creatures at an earlier point of his life.

It would have been more useful to use those scissors to cut the spiders off the ceiling instead. Actually, wait, there were scissors? The reaper might have registered that rather late, crouching low with his hands above his head. As if his fingers were going to provide an adequate shield .. Not really. More scowls. His teeth grinded against each other, his expression could only be described as one of utter disgust.

Utter. Disgust.

"Does anyone else feel like we're going to be having a few extra guests on us?" Vaith grumbled, his hand cautiously reaching for a pair of scissors, nearly toppling over in the process.

"Puzzles. Fun." The dry tone he used was along the icy frigid extremes, indicating that the reaper wasn't happy with the room that the haunted house had decided to throw them into. Vaith seemed to be abnormally preoccupied with brushing his hair, as if to make sure several critters hadn't made their way in. The way he kept looking around the room, head turning from left to right, down and up .. Well, it was mighty suspicious. Cool guy bravado, fail. A "C" for effort though.

((I have the puzzle solved @ this image I WAS UP LATE OK, but I thought it might be a bit presumptuous to post it right off the bat so I was wondering if you guys wanted to rp it out? <3)

Junko followed Vaith and Seiji into the house and nearly fell off the platform in her excitement, letting go of Mai so she wouldn't drag her down if worst came to worst, and instead clinging tightly to Seiji. "EEP!" She squeaked and looked down to see the platform had a very definite end. The walls were pretty though! She suddenly wanted to invest in some floating lights in her own room. It'd be nice!

...Wait..what was that sound? It sounded like skittering. Junko held a hand out for the scissors as Seiji offered them to her and the others, but her eyes were up on the ceiling and its...thousands of spiders. Her eyes widened. Unholy Jack! "Wow..that's...that's a lot of spiders." She seemed to shrink down a little away from them. Junko didn't particularly dislike spiders, nor was she scared of them, but she'd rather not risk having so many crawling on her. "I dunno...no offense to Lizzy but I don't want little spiders crawling all over me." She shuddered a bit and held the scissors with the blades pointed away from her, humming as Seiji called her name and asked her about their task.

What a strange web these spiders weaved. Oh! She knew this game! "I'm not very good but..this should be fun!" She sounded much more enthusiastic about this than Vaith did. But she did notice he was acting stranger now. Junko had been crawling on the large web toward the puzzle when Seiji asked him a question, looking over her shoulder at the two boils.

"..Do you not like spiders, Vaith?" Or maybe the dark? Or maybe puzzles? It could be any of those things. Junko frowned, looking up at the spiders on the ceiling. "Just...stay low and pretend they're not there! Focus on the puzzle, yeah?"

"I don't mind spiders! One of my best friends is a black widow spider demon. Spiders are really neat!" Junko was being honest! She didn't mind the spiders, just the feeling of having them crawling on her was not pleasant to the ghoul.

Junko was cutting her first shape into the puzzle when she heard the reaper announce she would protect them. "Hmmm?" She looked up to see what Kalindara was doing, and the sight of the scythe glimmering in the dull light of the room had glowing green eyes widening and hair writhing unhappily. Th..th...that was a huge scythe. Her hands trembled and she knicked her own finger with the scissors, swallowing hard and beginning to slowly back away across the web away from the blade.

B..big scythe. Big scythe. Big scythe near her. B-bad. Bad scythe. Scythes were bad. Blades were bad.

"O..okay. Thank you, Aurian.." Junko stuck her cut finger in her mouth a moment and started to cut out another shape. She knew how this puzzle worked, and it was a small sixteen-square one. It wouldn't be terribly difficult.

"Aurian? No...no. It's...no." Aurian hadn't done anything. Not to her. Not Aurian. It had been someone else but...scythes. Junko swallowed hard and gave them as assuring a smile as she could. "I'll be fine. Promise. See? Stopped...stopped bleeding...I'm fine, really." Scythes. Scythes. Why did it have to be scythes?

Junko resumed cutting, doing her best to concentrate on that until she heard the scream. Huh?! Was it one of her teammates?! Her head whipped up to make sure they were all okay only for the gust of wind to send her toppling over. She rolled across the shaking spiderweb, being thoroughly disoriented by the combination of surprise, tossing about and suddenly SPIDERS! She cried out and tossed her scissors, hearing them hit something as she scrambled to get them off her. Off! Off! Oh jack! Oh jack they were biting! Ow! Ow! Owwwwwwww! AH THEY WERE IN HER HAIR NOOOOOOO!

The ghoul got up to stand as soon as the web stopped moving enough for her to stand, whining and smacking as many spiders off her body as she could. She may have even crushed a few and killed them. Oops. She was trying to get back to her group and away from the web, stepping in a hole she had just cut and tripping forward. There was an audible SMACK! as her head met the edge of the platform. "O...owwwww.." She groaned, glowing green eyes opening slowly and being more obvious in the pitch darkness of the room. She couldn't see, but at least her eyes could...be seen? The soft blue glow of Mai's wisps was certainly helpful.

"I...I think I'm okay..ow...owowowOW! Get OFF!" She whined, smacking another few spiders away.

"Now what..?"

Protect? The ghost boil glanced up from the shapes he was cutting, only to have dark eyes widen as the arch of silver metal rose above them. Aurian's scythe, and it was impressive, but he chanced a quick glance down to Junko to see her reaction. Predictably it seemed somewhat panic stricken, and what was worse she'd seemed to have nicked her finger upon noticing it. Frowning he crawled out to where she was kneeling on the web, curling an arm around her shoulders as he took her hand, inspecting the small wound. "You ok?"

Vaith's question pulled the ghost boil's attention up and he gave a helpless sort of shrug. "We got attacked by a scythe wielding foe on the island, and they seemed especially keen on hurting Junko."

He might have added more, but the sudden shaking jolt of the room cut off any and all thoughts. He curled his arms a little more tightly around the ghoul, but the rain of creepy crawling spiders had even Seiji jerking with the mad desire to ride himself of their presence. "Not cool!" To make matters worst the lights flickered out during all the chaos, bathing the group in near pitch darkness. The black permeated only by the eery glow of some of their eyes. His own, along with Junko and and Mai's. Red, green and blue respectively.

Something crawled along the back of his neck beneath the wrap of fabric that served as a scarf, and he swatted at it instinctively, wincing when something sharp pricked against his skin. The damn thing have bit him! It stung, but a familiar sounding moan of pain jerked his attention from himself and back towards the platform. The boil crawling across the web as fast as he could, palms out before him to feel his way along, until he touched what felt like a leg. A very lovely leg. "Junko," asking what happened seemed a redundant idea all things considered, he'd heard the smack of her head against the platform, and instead he merely helped the poor ghoul up.

A soft, blue light cast heavy shadows around them all, and Seiji blinked up to stare at one of Mai's wisps. "That is really handy." And with that diffuse light Seiji was able to see Junko well enough to touch fingers gingerly to the side of her head as if feeling for a bump.

Vaith's brush against Mai's arm caught her attention and she turned toward him to make sure he was ok. She'd heard a lot of scuffling and distress and she wasn't sure who, if anyone, might be injured. "I'm alright" she said in answer to Aurian's question as she drew close to Vaith. The ghost carefully ran her cool fingertips across his swollen arm to inspect it. Didn't seem too bad.. but she wasn't a medic or anything, so she had no idea. She peered around to see if everyone else was ok and so far it just seemed like a few bumps and bites here and there.

Although they'd avoided any major disasters, Mai was a bit shaken. She wasn't sure what she needed to do, so she concentrated on making sure her wisps stayed near by. They were the only source of light in the room at that moment besides the softly glowing eyes of some of the students.

"What now?" she asked, feeling a bit useless.