Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water (Trial Version) -- Second Drop (Part 2), Mt. Hikami
2Okay, so... rightly shaken, but not at all deterred or even willing to show any signs of distress, Yuri is now ready and, more importantly, well-equipped to handle the perils of Mt. Hikami at this now demonstrably unsafe hour.
We're now free to follow the trace on Fuyuhi's last known whereabouts without fear of being caught defenseless by the angry spirits wandering the mountainside, just looking for an excuse to ...er... what was Hisoka's way of putting it, "drag [us] to the Netherworld"? ... ... ...I'm sure Hisoka's okay without the only weapon we know of that works against these things. Besides, they demonstrably do NOT attack until you've got a weapon ready to take 'em on... wait, that means we're actually LESS safe now!
Now that we've got it back, we can now bask in my complete ineptitude when it comes to quickly drawing it and taking pictures of things. Hey look (and listen!), is that an example zooming past as an opportunity to demonstrate just that?! ...but wait, there's more! Angry creepy figures just to make me extra-disconcerted about everything!
... ... ...let's keep moving, shall we?
Y'know, after tracing her for so long, I'm beginning to wonder ever more just how on earth (and a couple adjacent spaces beyond mortal perception) Fuyuhi managed to hike so far without getting mugged by angry apparitions (well, we did too... sort of) or at least otherwise getting scared to death by the ambient paranormal activity. If she can't wait for a professional ghost hunter to find out what happened to her friend, I seriously doubt she has the disposition to do it herself and come out of the whole affair unscathed. Or even scathed. Or right back around again to "at all"...
Well, speak of the devil, we've gone and lost her trail, it's been so long and so far... but thankfully, there's an unnaturally glistening object on the ground for us to check out before we give up and wash our hands of all this water-borne evil and change the shop name to "Kozukata's Antiques" instead. (What? Oh, Hisoka! You're safe! Somehow! Of course the new sign was a joke! ...that I can hopefully get a refund for...)
It's a note! ...uh... a scrap of paper, somehow not immediately sullied by the elements and the over-abundance of standing moisture and certainly not disturbed from where it initially fell. It seems to be torn out of Fuyuhi's notebook. Wait, she was so upset about her friend going missing on the mountain that she either wrote about it at length in a diary that she brought with her... or wrote while she was here? No wonder she didn't see anything spooky along the way...
More importantly, it means we can continue the trace with something with a little bit fresher psychic fingerprints on it. And also immediately catch sight of a spooky specter who was apparently reading the note over our shoulders... but thankfully it's the nonviolent kind. Unthankfully, my camera skills are a shoddy as ever... and my aim at something that just showed up even worse. Double-unthankfully, some actual grabby ghoulies show up just afterwards... ... ...wait, you don't think this is a direct punishment for failing to give unfriendly-looking "friendly" ghosts a quick photo op, do you? That's not a thing, right?!
So yeah, the easiest way to keep me out of someplace spooky with all my undead-purging killer intent is to set two ghosts on me at the same time so that I'll be just flustered enough to not be able to focus on EITHER of them and basically guarantee some wasted film, long opening while it reloads, and an incredibly unsmooth bit of standing around while they come to get me. Just tell them not to both stand in frame at the same time, because their cumulative wacky ethereal orbiting fragments will provide me the opportunity for a Shutter Chance, which is the only real silver lining to be had here... (Actually, if you can make out some of what the ghosts have to say in their final moments between the yelling and distortion, it seems like they have very similar concerns to the living... albeit on a far more disturbing level.)
It also seems that the terrain is getting steadily more indecisive about how many ways it wants to let you go, and the game's not going to bother holding your hand and make you follow the trace. I'm not particularly confident enough in my ability to fight off of the phantoms OR find my way back in a timely fashion, so I've decided once again to ditch my need to see everything else before going on. (No, it's not because I'm scared! ...not entirely, anyway!)
So I make a point to continue onward and follow the trace more accurately. I'm still not entirely sure if I'm supposed to "do" anything in the midst of these prompts to pull out the Camera Obscura to see something Fuyuhi was doing at the time, because taking a picture doesn't seem to do anything... much less affect my ability to find more pages of her suspiciously expository journal.
Wagh, jeez! Spooky ghost children, screw this freaking mountain, I'm outta here!