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After a long day of dealing with various clients and trying desperately to ignore the limp Kermit laying on the couch, Reigen finally heard the door open and a soft voice call out in greeting.
“Shishou?”
Reigen turned to the door to greet his disciple.
“Hey, Mob! How was--” he stopped. Standing right behind Mob was the younger Kageyama brother -- Ritsu -- and he was staring at Reigen with a distinctly smug look. Reigen decided to turn his attention back to Mob for now. “How was your day at school?”
Mob shrugged his backpack off his shoulders and set it on the ground. “It was fine. Math was hard as usual, but not too bad. I also found a pencil with cats on it.” He said, holding the prized pencil up for everyone to see.
“Well, that’s good.” Reigen turned back to Ritsu. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I decided to walk with nii-san today. Make sure he gets to work safely. Speaking of which,” Ritsu gave a grin that Reigen definitely did not appreciate, “how was your day at work?”
Reigen glanced at the Kermit, still in the same place he had left it.
“Not too eventful.”
“Oh really?”
Ritsu walked over to the puppet and picked it up. Mob seemed to notice it for the first time.
“What’s that for, Ritsu?”
“Oh, nothing much… you never know when you might need it.” Ritsu walked back to the door and opened it, stopping in the entrance to turn around one last time.
“Have a good day at work, nii-san,” Ritsu said. Then he turned to Reigen and mouthed ‘ soon’ before leaving, puppet still wrapped in his arms like a mother holding an infant.
Reigen laid his head on his desk. He wasn’t paid enough for this.
***
Dimple looked from the Kermit laying on the floor to Ritsu’s threatening gaze and Shou’s ecstatic one before crossing his arms in exasperation.
“I’m not doing it.”
Shou threw up his arms disbelievingly. “Why not?” Ritsu only continued to glare.
“Because I don’t want to! I’m not your pet, and possession isn’t a cheap trick to use for your amusement. Really, it’s a matter of dignity--”
“You’ll be famous.” Dimple immediately snapped his head around to look at Ritsu.
“I’m in.”
Ritsu grinned, nodded, and picked the puppet up from the floor. “Come with me.” He walked into the hallway and opened the door at the end, dropping the puppet in the entrance. Dimple floated over to it and hesitated, glancing at the boys.
“Are you sure about--”
“Just get in the fucking puppet so we can start filming,” Shou said, barely concealing his excitement as he opened up his phone camera. Ritsu gave his friend an offended look.
“Shou,” he gasped quietly, “you can’t say words like that!”
“Like what? Fuck?”
“Oh my god, stop.” Ritsu buried his face in his hands. “Dimple, possess Kermit already.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Dimple disappeared into the Kermit, which gained the distinct red blush on its cheeks and slowly raised itself from the ground. Shou raised his phone while Ritsu’s face split into a wicked grin.
“Alright,” Ritsu instructed, “stand behind this door. When we tell you to, open it, then slowly walk down this hallway. Shou,” Ritsu turned to face his friend, “turn off the lights.”
Shou flicked them off, plunging the hallway into darkness, as Dimple moved to stand behind the door.
“Ready?” Ritsu asked, moving out of the shot to stand next to Shou. Shou nodded wildly, while an indistinct grumble came from Dimple’s direction that the boys took as assent. “Ok, start!”
***
Finally, after filming several more scenes ranging from Kermit ransacking a kitchen to a rather impressive shot that involved him crawling on the ceiling, Ritsu sat down with his phone to edit the best clips together. Dimple had long discarded the puppet, which lay limp on the floor in the corner of the room. “This had better be worth it,” he grumbled, casting a glance over at Ritsu.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Ritsu said. “This video will go viral.”
***
Teruki had been laying on his bed, debating whether to start his homework or do… well, just about anything else, when his phone buzzed, making the decision for him. He opened his phone to discover that Ritsu had made a new post to snapinstachatgram-- a video whose thumbnail was mostly dark with a faint, shadowy green figure standing in the center. Curious, he clicked on it and almost immediately regretted his decision. The video opened with Kermit walking slowly down a dark hallway, followed by a variety of increasingly disturbing scenes where he made things float, set fire to a deck chair, knocked things off of shelves -- there was even one where he crawled inhumanly fast along a ceiling, something that would absolutely haunt Teru’s nightmares for the next week. He scrolled down, utterly confused and horrified, to read the caption.
share with 5 other people or Kermit will haunt you too
Obviously, this was a joke, a scare tactic to get people to share the video. Teruki scoffed and scrolled down to a rather pleasant picture of a small succulent. He was about to continue scrolling but paused. After a moment of thinking…
He couldn’t risk it.
***
The video had become popular almost overnight, gaining countless views and being shared repeatedly; Ritsu had even been sent it himself once or twice. Within three days of posting, Ritsu was pleased to discover that people were talking about it all over school, asking their friends ‘Have you seen the Kermit video?’ and showing it to those who hadn’t. Several people asked Ritsu if he himself had been haunted, to which he nodded sagely and warned them with false despair not to let it happen to themselves. After a week, people started to claim that Kermit had haunted them, and all sort of rumors surfaced; Kermit ate my homework, Kermit broke my window, Kermit kidnapped my brother. Ritsu did nothing to kill those rumors (and if he even started a few of them, well, no one had to know); he was content to watch them run rampant on their own. By this point, he had created a full-blown urban legend.
Ritsu was, once again, mad with power.
***
Reigen sat across from his clients -- a group of about three scared-looking kids who appeared to be in middle school -- as he waited for them to explain what was happening.
One of the girls looked at her hands, then at Reigen, and took a breath. “There’s this… well, it’s like an urban legend that people have suddenly started talking about. There’s a video going around, and if you don’t share it with five people, Kermit will come and haunt you.”
Reigen felt the blood drain from his face at the mention of Kermit, remembering the incident from a few days before. He turned to Mob, sitting at his small desk a few feet away. “Mob, could you get us some tea?” Mob nodded his assent and stood up quietly to make the drink. Mostly recovered from his shock, Reigen turned back to the clients.
“Can I see the video?”
“Sure.”
One of the boys in the group pulled out his phone and scrolled quickly before evidently finding the video and clicking on it. He turned the phone to face Reigen. Sure enough, it was a video of Kermit, with the shaky camerawork and overall low video quality of a found footage video. Reigen watched with horror as the very puppet that had broken into his office on that fateful Monday morning was filmed in a variety of situations, from scenes of him being being massively destructive to simple creepy shots of him standing unnaturally still in strange places and staring at the camera. Reigen couldn’t see the telltale bright blush on Kermit’s cheeks but had no doubt that this was the work of Dimple, likely at the request of Ritsu.
Mob returned with the tea just at the video’s conclusion, setting down the cups before peering curiously at the screen.
“Oh, is that the Kermit the Frog thing?”
Reigen glanced up. “Apparently. You knew about it?”
Mob nodded. “Teruki sent the video to me a few days ago. I didn’t see what the big deal was, but now it’s all Tome will talk about, and Mezato keeps asking if I have anything to do with it.”
Reigen nodded thoughtfully, not wanting to give away the fact he knew exactly where the video originated to his clients and Mob. “I’m sure I can take care of this.”
He thanked his clients and watched them leave. As soon as the door shut, he turned to Mob.
“Do you know where Dimple is?”
Mob narrowed his eyes in thought briefly before pointing to a point somewhere behind Reigen and saying, “Right there.”
Reigen turned around to see Dimple in all of his fart-like glory right behind him. Not one to waste time, Reigen cut straight to the chase.
“I need you to possess the Kermit again.”
Dimple crossed his arms. “Is that all you people think I’m good for now?”
“Yes. Now, can you do it? I need to publically exorcise the Kermit for my clients.”
“Why should I?”
Reigen sighed. “I’ll pay you.”
Dimple stared blankly back at him. Reigen only pressed forward.
“Fifty cents.”
Dimple looked at him like he was stupid. “What am I supposed to do with human money?”
“Capitalism. Buy something. Whatever it is you like to do when you’re not around here.”
Dimple shook his head. “No. You’ll have to do better than that if you want me to help you.”
“Fine. I’ll make you famous.”
“How?” Dimple looked skeptical but mildly intrigued.
“We’re doing it in public, remember? You can choose whatever place you want.” Reigen smiled, looking pleased with himself. He was confident that he’d won the argument.
“No.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because I’m already a viral video online! Just being seen by a crowd of people isn’t going to top that. I have no reason to help you after Ritsu did that for me.”
“But--”
“I’ll record for you.” Reigen and Dimple turned toward the voice that had spoken. Shou was leaning against the arm of the couch, Mob standing next to him.
“Shou? When did you get here?” Reigen asked. “And how long have you been listening to us?”
“Oh, Mob let me in a few minutes ago. But that’s not important. I can live stream the exorcism on snapinstachatgram.”
Dimple narrowed his eyes. “Why would you want to help with this? Didn’t you help Ritsu make the video in the first place?”
Shou shrugged. “Yeah, but this sounds fun. Plus, Ritsu’s reaction when he finds out will be priceless.”
“You two have a strange friendship,” Reigen said, shaking his head. Then he clapped his hands together as if to signify that they were moving on. “Alright! Let’s go perform an exorcism!”
***
They decided to perform the exorcism in a local park not too far from Salt middle school; there would be plenty of passers-by to witness the exorcism, many of whom were likely to be middle school students themselves who knew about the original video and would want to record the event to show to their friends. Shou had unceremoniously shoved the Kermit into Mob’s backpack so no one would notice it on their way to the park; now he took it into a secluded area behind two trees and dumped it on the ground.
“Alright,” he said, looking up at Dimple, “when I give you the signal, you can possess Kermit and come out into the open.” Not waiting for a response, he ran back to the where Mob and Reigen were standing and readied his phone camera, giving Dimple a thumbs-up once he was prepared. Dimple made a rude gesture before sinking out of view. A few moments later, Kermit crashed through the bushes like a feral dog, dead set on murdering and then proceeding to consume some sort of small rodent or any unlucky humans who happened to get in its way.
A group or students passing by immediately noticed the puppet and shrieked in terror, a few even whipped out their phones to begin recording what they believed to be their imminent death.
“Don’t worry!” Reigen shouted over the panic, “I can take care of this demon! Mob! Exorcize him!”
Mob leapt into the path of the raging beast, who was currently ripping apart a styrofoam soda cup with his velvety maw. He stuck his arm out toward the rabid puppet and froze it with a blast of energy. It shrieked with the rage of a million cats, all simultaneously getting their tails stepped on. Despite the attack, Kermit quickly regained its momentum and turned its attention to a math notebook, dropped by one of the horrified students. It successfully reduced the cover and the first few pages to shreds before it was apprehended once again by Mob. This time, the psychic powers didn’t let up; Kermit writhed in midair, letting out another ungodly shriek, before finally Dimple was ripped from the puppet which fell limp to the ground, utterly discarded.
***
Ritsu was lying on his bed, conveniently forgetting to do his homework until later that night, and eating instant ramen much too spicy for his taste. Trying to distract himself from the pain the noodles had cause him, he picked up his phone and opened his snapinstachatgram.
1 New Notification - 火Shou火 Started a Live Video!
“I wonder what Shou is up to?”
***
Shou felt a chill down his spine, and grinned as he felt the cold rage of a betrayed Ritsu from miles away. Despite the danger he was in, he grinned.
He’s coming.