"Wait! Please don't shoot, let us explain!" The man puts his hands up in a gesture of surrender, a panicky look on his face. The woman is still standing and staring so the man nudges her with his shoulder and she quickly does the same. Belle holds back a sigh of exasperation, he's been on edge ever since he arrived in this town and now these two have arrived to make everything more difficult. He keeps the gun trained on them as he opens his mouth to speak.
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" He asks them, keeping a cold look on his face so they believe he'll really shoot them if they fuck up.
"U-um, my name is Steven, and this is Jen, we're looking for the ghost that was inhabiting this place but we couldn't find it. Then, as we were looking for it outside, a bunch of miasma flooded into the hot spring and the ghost we were looking for showed up. She wasn't in the mood to chat though and chased us around until we hid in this room." The man explains. There was a cold sweat on the top of his lip and his fingers were subtly twitching, they were hiding something but Belle figured he'd already gotten enough information out of them for now.
"Right, and did the ghost see you enter this room?" Belle questions, keeping the gun raised.
"W-we don't think so." It was the woman this time, Jen, who spoke. Belle closed his eyes for a second, focusing, the sudden influx of miasma made it hard to pick out anything specific but he just wanted to know if the ghost was close by. These idiots should know that ghosts can go through walls and if whatever was chasing them saw them come in here, it was only a matter of time before it would be in here too. He felt carefully, trying to distinguish the miasma permeating the entire building now, he was looking for the source and…there, he felt it. It was close, but not close enough to have seen the duo enter the room.
"I'm going to say this once so you two better listen, I don't care what you're here for, but right now, we need to work together to defeat that thing, got it?" Belle asks the duo evenly, glaring at both of them.
"Mhm!" They squeak and both nod their heads like pecking hens. The situation wasn't the…best, but they weren't being actively attacked. All he had to do was find the ghost, exorcize it, and leave with peace of mind. Hopefully, he'd be out of here before most of the town woke up and wouldn't have to see any more familiar faces. He brushes past the duo and lightly cracks open the door, peering down the hallway. Nothing was there, so he pushed himself through and into the hallway, gesturing for the duo to follow him.
"Are you sure this is the best idea? That ghost didn't seem to be in a mood to talk." Steven mumbles.
"I'm not going to talk to the damn I'm going to kill it and you're going to help." Belle snaps, putting a finger to his mouth after that and shushing the duo. They creep through the hallways, Belle occasionally stopping to find the source, until it leads them to the doors leading to the hot springs outside. Belle takes a deep breath, before flinging the doors open and peering outside. The hot springs are releasing steam covering the area in fog, it's decorated with fake rocks and plants and the entire area is surrounded by a big fence. Standing in the middle of the fog is a woman. Her long black hair is trailing through the water and her red eyes are staring into the distance as she hums a tune. She's wearing a red dress and there are stitches on her body where it seems her arms and legs have been reattached.
"Hk!" Someone makes a noise and the woman in red turns to them, her eyes piercing through them to stare at Steven, who made the noise. They're the same eyes he remembers, from before, and to his shock he finds them to be slightly nostalgic. Those eyes were what made him get into the supernatural stuff, start taking it more seriously, and try to investigate it. But now wasn't the time to get sentimental because the woman in red had grabbed an arm and thrown it straight at Steven. Belle ditches the gun and grabs out his trusty axe, swiping at the hand before it can touch him. The hand gets batted away into a nearby hot spring, but he had hit it with the axe's cheek so it would probably get up soon.
"Hehe, I have to thank you, kids, for releasing me, it's been such a long time since I've been free." The red woman giggles, holding her other hand up in front of her mouth as a sick and twisted smile forms on her face.
"Uh, um, you're welcome?" Steven answers the woman, Jen hits him on the head to shut him up.
"I still remember when that bastard locked me up, it seems he's not here anymore though, I noticed it when I came out to play a loooong time ago." She grins, stretching out her hands for added emphasis.
"Who's gone?" Belle asks tentatively. The red woman turns her eyes to him, searching his body up and down.
"I remember you. You're the little tot I saw when I came out to play last time. I just wanted to gobble you up right there, but I wasn't strong enough. About the person you are asking about, I don't like to talk about him, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt. The man who kept me trapped because I was 'too dangerous' is none other than the Ghost King, " She says mysteriously, waving her hands around for effect.
"The Ghost King?" Jen questions, a look of confusion on her face.
"Yes, the most powerful ghost to ever live, ah, but it seems he's gone now. Without his rules keeping me in place, I can eat you as I please." She chuckles, her eyes turn menacing, and before Belle can even process the new information her other limbs detach and fly at the group.