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Techno glanced around the corner of the building. It felt like his hair was trying to stand on end, tension making his hands sweat slightly. He still didn't know why he had agreed to join Wilbur for this - there wasn't any reason for the brunette to need him. He was already a proficient enough ghost hunter on his own, without his help.
“Come with me, he said, it'll be fun, he said,” Techno muttered to himself, walking along the empty, echoing corridors of the prison. "This is not what I would consider fun."
No, instead of a nice night spent playing something chill and comfortable, he was walking around a dark, haunted prison with one of his best friends, and hating every moment of it. But Wilbur had challenged him, and hell if he wasn’t going to take that up and prove him wrong.
So here he was, pulling open creaking doors that made him wince with the loud noises that they produced in the overwhelming silence of his surroundings.
Right as he was about to turn around, the radio on his shoulder crackled suddenly, making him jump in surprise before Wilbur's voice came through. “Any hint of a ghost where you're at, Tech?”
His voice was all too cheery for their surroundings, he decided. “No, and I really don't want there to be, y'know. This place is creepy enough already.”
Wilburs laugh echoed – apparently he was close enough to hear without the radio now. “Come on, the Technoblade is going to be brought down by a tiny lil baby ghost?”
“You nearly died on our last hunt together, Wil, don't blame me for being a little nervous.” He switched the radio off as he saw the beam of Wilbur's flashlight, before nearly getting blinded when it turned to him fully.
Wilbur simply laughed, turning the flashlight away with a grin that was barely illuminated. “How are you doing so far? Feeling anything weird?”
Techno bumped his shoulder against Wilbur's, glancing up and down the corridor that they were in again. “Nah, not yet. Have you found the breaker box yet?”
“Not yet, I can't remember where it was in this place – it's always bigger than I expect it to be.”
Techno snorted quietly. There was a joke in there somewhere, immature and crude, not that he was going to be the one to voice it. “Well, the EMF reader hasn't picked anything up so far, and I haven't run into any pockets of cold air, so…”
“Have you tried the cells themselves yet? The ghost might be hanging around somewhere in there.” Wilbur put an arm on Techno's shoulder, fiddling with a device in his hands. “I brought a crucifix with me just in case, hopefully that'll be enough to stop anything from jumping down our throats immediately.”
Techno hummed, feeling somewhat doubtful. “If I'm checking out the cells, you better stay close, I don't want something jumping me while we're separated.”
Another laugh, and Wilbur patted his shoulder, taking his weight off the shorter man. “Fine, fine, you baby-”
He was cut off by Techno's glare, but that didn't stop the brunette from giving him a wide, teasing grin. Instead he led the way down the hallway, being the one more familiar with this place.
Techno had always thought that prisons were creepy, and this abandoned place was no help to that. He felt his nerves again begin to creep up on him, wiping his hands on his pants as he juggled around his own equipment, making sure that he had everything he needed on hand. It was something that he had checked over quite a few times before they had even left the van, making sure that they were as prepared as they could be.
The entire place was silent , which was probably what put him off so much. A place as large as this should have some amount of idle noise, but there was nothing to fill the void of the quiet outside of their own footsteps and breathing. Maybe there was a hint of something rattling against the windows outside from the other side of the complex, but nothing that was close enough to take the tension from Techno's shoulders.
At least until the EMF meter started whining, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He was sure that Wilbur would’ve laughed, if the guy hadn’t been so excited by the noise, eyes immediately locked onto the wavering needle of the gauge.
“Tech- Techno, come on, look at this-” he reached over, slapping at the pink-haired man’s arm.
Batting his arm back in revenge, Techno nearly growled. “Yeah, yeah, I hear the thing- what’s the reading?”
“Hah! That’s a five!” Quickly the brunette was pulling out his trusty notebook, flipping through the pages of notes that he had taken over all the different hunts he’d been on. “Okay- that’s one thing off the list, we just need to see what else can trigger it.”
“Hopefully before this thing gets too pissed off at us,” Techno added with a dry tone.
The grin that Wilbur gave him was not reassuring in the slightest. Another quick flip through his notes, and Techno could almost feel the hope drain out of his body. “Hey, do you remember what the ghost’s name was?”
A groan left the shorter man, head hanging forward in despair. “Wilbur,” he protested.
“What? It’s a good way to provoke a reaction and get the information that we need!”
“That’s a good way to get killed.”
“Ah, well, you know what they say,” Wilbur said in return, still with that same wild grin he always got when he had the chance to torture Techno’s nerves. "C'est la vie, right?”
Another groan, and Techno rubbed a hand over his face. “I hate you. Let’s just find the electrical breaker before we go any further, I don’t think that we want to be in the dark any longer than we have to be.”
The laugh that he got from the brunette propelled him away through the prison, once again swallowed by the silence. It wasn’t a comforting silence, not when Techno was waiting for the cold touch of something sliding down his back at any moment, walking on eggshells in his fear. How Wilbur actually enjoyed doing stuff like this was absolutely beyond him. Techno was one for physical fights, holding people down until they submitted and he could walk away with bruises and scrapes.
A ghost hunt was literally his worst nightmare – if he slipped up just once, he didn’t get another chance to fight back. He barely had a chance to fight in the first place, honestly.
It just left a bad taste in his mouth.
He found the office of the prison and looked around there for a while until he found a big black box with a red lever, pressing it up into position and sighing as the lights flickered on around him, as dim and dingy as they were.
It wasn’t much, but it was something, and for now that would have to be enough.
Pressing the button on his radio, he tilted his head to the side to call to Wil. “Hey, did you find anything else? Think we can get out of here and let the exorcist take care of the rest already?”
He released the button and listened to the quiet static loop next to his ear for a few moments, frowning. Stepping out into the hallway, he tried again over the radio, slightly louder this time.
There was no noise in the prison, and as the moments of silence stretched longer and longer, the static of the radio seemed to fill his head with a buzzing anxiety that crawled under his skin.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five-
A scream – distant for now, but Techno knew the sound of Wilbur’s voice like the back of his own hand, one of his closest friends.
“Techno! Techno, I pissed it off!” A laugh came down the hall, accompanied by the heavy pounding of feet, his madman of a friend coming towards him.
The lights began to flicker, and Techno’s eyes widened as WIlbur came sprinting from around the corner like his life depended on it. How he could sound so delighted at that fact, he would never know.
Behind him, in the dark flashes of the flickering lights that Techno could barely see through, he could see the figure that was rushing after his friend. Closer, closer, each flash of the lights closed the distance between the two.
Techno had a crucifix in his pocket, just as a backup – if Wilbur could just get close enough for him to get this damn spirit with it.
He tried to gauge the distance between the three of them. The speed of which the spirit was closing in on Wilbur, the way that he knew the doors would be locking on them if the spirit got too close to the exit alongside them.
A thousand little decisions flew through his brain, hoping, praying-
Wilbur wasn’t going to make it.
With that realization, Techno turned and ran away from his friend. Behind him he could hear Wilbur’s scream of betrayal, curses thrown down the hallway at him, but the adrenaline was racing through his veins and he couldn’t stop now. He could barely remember the way back to the front entrance where their trailer awaited them, he could barely think of anything past the fear of cold fingers tracing down his spine-
He heard Wilbur’s body drop to the floor behind him, still running at a dead sprint to try to catch up, and didn’t bother stopping.
Impossibly, a strained laugh left his throat, hysterical and breathy with his running.
The hunt was over for the spirit, for now, but Techno didn’t care. He didn’t give a shit, he wanted out of this hell.
Once his feet found the half-dead grass of the outside of the building he slowed down, glancing back at the door that he had escaped with eyes still blown wide with fear.
He saw a glimpse of the shadowy figure that he had seen chasing Wilbur and his heart pounded in fear once again, sending him scurrying into the trailer and slamming a hand to the button that would close the solid doors of it behind him.
Nearly collapsing on the floor of the trailer, he shut his eyes. He didn’t know how dark his head had gotten in there, the lightless hallways of the prison twisting his mind, and he didn’t want to know.
He’d left Wilbur behind.
As he returned back to the base, he again nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of his door slamming open.
Pulling off his headphones, he gave a smile to the brunette standing in pajama pants and a comfy shirt in his doorway, scowling back at him.
“You prick! You left me to die!”
Techno laughed, shaking out his hands which had been held stiff with anxiety for far too long over the course of the game. “Guilty as charged, I guess. You were the one that dragged me into playing Phasmaphobia, Wilbur, you really should’ve seen this coming.”
“I- still!”