Gamer and Minnie tumbled out of a farmer's cornfield. The farmer did not notice, because he chased after a goose trying to steal his rake. Gamer and Minnie stopped at the edge of a small pond. The ducks therein flapped away, and a dog hiding in the nearby foliage chased after them.
"Finally, some normalcy," Gamer went vertical and took in a deep, meditative breath. He ignored the farmer's expletives at the goose.
"Where are we?" Minnie gawked at the land. Though flat with slight hills, the fields weren't blocky and the clouds were cumulus. The trees that made up the nearby woods were so...high resolution. She was in a different world, "Is this what it's like to be in your world?"
"It's similar, but not quite. Trust me, my world will blow your mind if you think this is crazy," Gamer said. He watched Minnie interact with the pond water, and goggled at the koi who inhabited it. Something occurred to him, "This frame hopping thing is wild. I'm not just moving throughout Chanterelle, like the snowbound paintings. I can enter entirely new games. I wonder if I'm doing it with an internet or server connection. Gah, if only Samira wasn't preoccupied..."
The nefarious goose honked right behind the duo. They yelped and bounced away, but this sent them into the pond. When they hit the water, they popped out of a painting in the foyer of Ouija's Mansion. They stood and checked the coast. The babas and ghost queen were absent now. The uneasy quietness hung like a haze.
What broke that silence was the front doors abruptly opening. Persica, with Asterion leaning over her shoulder, hobbled in. The minotaur was nearly unconscious and barely helped support his weight.
"Bobs, why am I doing this?" Persica cursed after they entered. When she saw Gamer and Minnie, she dropped Asterion like a bag of potatoes, "Gamer? Minnie? Why are you two in this cursed place?"
Gamer dashed forward, concern in his eyes. Persica stepped aside for him to check on the minotaur. Instead, he dove by them and at the front doors. They had been slowly closing since their arrival. He critically failed, as it shut right when he reached the handles. It locked once again.
"NOOO!" Gamer tugged on the handles like a rabid animal.
Minnie jogged over to check in on Asterion. He wasn't covered in gunk, cleaned up by the princess's supplies. However, bruises and scuffs blemished his form. Minnie asked, "Are you okay?"
Persica shrugged while biting a nail, "He's been unresponsive for the most part, though he still has motor functions. I had to drag him inside to escape Kammy's monsters, though. I'd rather deal with the babas."
Gamer slumped on over and examined the beaten up minotaur. A curiosity rose, "Hold up, afro bull. You can't be seriously hurt. This is just an avatar."
Asterion poked one eye open, "Yeah, but it's giving me an excuse to eat dinner. The synaptic feedback did tingle, though."
Gamer rolled his eyes and approached Persica, "Are you familiar with the mansion? We need to escape this hellhole. These babas suck! We even saw their queen, too – white dress, purple hair, big bazongas..."
"I am not, but what do you mean 'queen'? Big bazongas?" Persica raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, they were like kablam!" Gamer emphasized the ghost queen's bust.
"I'd say they were more like blamo!" Minnie argued.
"There are very few other royal families throughout Chanterelle. I may know whom you speak of. Are they more boing or goddaym?" Persica dropped the princess persona for a moment to get to the bottom of this bosom. Gamer and Minnie both accepted 'goddaym' as the scientific etymology for Yaga's big babas.
In front of the stairs, a hidden hatch opened up. A person raised up out of the hole on an elevator platform. Based on the lab coat, overalls, and green undershirt, Gamer identified him as some scientist. What immediately flashed Marco in everybody's minds was the scientist's bushy moustache, big nose, and green baseball cap. He was lankier than Marco, nearly Gamer's height. His back lurched out due to an exaggerated hunch, as if he wore a backpack under the lab coat. Sleep deprivation was evident by the bags under his eyes and his unkempt moustache. He held a coffee mug in one hand, devoid of substance. He appeared slightly alarmed by the group's presence.
"Who's this long-nose Igor-looking motherfucker?" Gamer raised an eyebrow.
The Marco lookalike barely reacted. He reached into his lab coat and pulled out a small, violet bell. He gingerly rang it. Queen Yaga and a few of her babas appeared forcibly out of thin air, and were obviously disgruntled.
"Oooh, what is it now, Ouija? You're ruining my grand entrance for a show that these people will never forget!" Yaga pouted. Her babas berated and made faces at the scientist.
Ouija became annoyed and reached under his coat. He pulled out the rod of a vacuum, the hose disappearing behind him under the lab coat. He turned a switch on and instantly sucked up two of the babas. Their shrieks of terror were silenced once sucked in. Yaga and the other babas gasped and covered their eyes. They went slightly invisible, "Please, not the bag!"
Gamer's eyes honed in on that magnificent piece of ghost-killing equipment. It was the golden ticket to beating the ghosts. Ouija pointed the vacuum at the group, and it seemed to inform Queen Yaga to deal with them. His elevator lowered back into the ground, and the hatch closed.
"Do you think that's why haunted places are always dirty? Ghosts hate cleaning?" Minnie pondered.
"Whatever it may be, a mastermind is behind the babas. I feel like I should know this..." Persica struggled to think. She seemed that way ever since she saw Ouija. Like a long, lost memory.
"I needa that vacuum," Gamer set Ouija as the number one target. More items, more power. This reminded him, and he took out the small star item he collected and showed it to Persica, "Speaking of items, I found this in the house. What's it do?"
Persica's eyes lit up. The princess reached for it, "That's a star mint! It's super rare. It makes you invincible to everything. Nothing can affect you while you're under its effects!"
A baba zipped by and stole the mint from Gamer's palm. More babas appeared around the foyer and danced near Yaga. The ghost queen floated nearer and reclaimed the star mint, "This is not yours! I need these for my shows, so that me and mine shine like the stars above!"
"You use them for theater? That's such a waste of drugs! Can't you be like normal people and do opium?" the news upset Persica. She put a hand on her bag, filled with her own collection. She locked in on Yaga as her number one target. She spoke to Gamer, "Is this what you've been struggling with since you've arrived?"
He did not respond, and so she looked at him. The moment the baba zipped by, Gamer had thrown himself through the nearest wall. He left behind only a perfect outline. Persica sighed, "I'll take that as a yes."
Minnie hoisted Asterion up, since he still couldn't move from the creep gangbang. Persica instructed her, "Minnie, keep Asterion safe. I'll handle the ghosts."
"Got it," Minnie knew the bottom floors were unsafe. She lugged the minotaur up the stairs, regardless of size differences. This impressed Persica, since it took her so much to act as a crutch for him. Yaga and the babas left Minnie alone and focused on Persica. Once the shellie stepped through a random second floor door, all that was left in the foyer were the two royal women.
Queen Yaga stuffed the star mint between her honkadahlonkaloos and smirked, "Quite pompous of you to think you can handle all of us. Well, lemme tell you something! Nobody upstages the queen!"
Yaga and her babas started the show. The babas flew around and tried to frighten Persica, just as they had with Gamer and Minnie.
The princess did not react. Even the eerie music failed to bother her. Instead, Persica pulled out a number of things from her bag. Sage, chalk, crystals, paper rolls, and bags of drugs. Even as babas pulled on her dreads, peploi, and screeched at her, Persica remained composed while setting up her paraphernalia. She started to draw a circle and other geometric shapes within each other with the chalk.
This angered Yaga, and she put more bass in her singing. It rumbled the atmosphere and snuffed the light of the chandelier out. The foyer descended into an eternal darkness. Yaga and her babas were the only visible things thanks to their slight ethereal glow. Yaga sang of disruption, corruption, and sanity's requiem. Her voice boomed and her sharp-toothed grin stretched unnaturally. She sought to paralyze the princess and consume her mind in terror.
That's until flames appeared around Persica. The tips of her dreads burned like the ashen ends of cigars, her eyes glowed with fire, and her peploi became a glow-in-the-dark pink. Multiple substances were rolled and lit in between all her fingers. When she summoned flames, they came from her doobies. Persica had consumed a flare flower. Queen Yaga and her babas were stunlocked.
"I am the Princess of Chanterelle. As its greatest spirit medium, I will purge the dark spirits from this place," Persica neon glare permeated the smoke that started to obscure the darkness.