The mist never retreated from that twenty mile circle. It remained a low level mist that extended only a third of a meter from the ground - most of the time. Sometimes it was thicker and rose up nearly three meters above ground level. Sometimes the mist extended over hundreds of miles from the Monster Ward.
It was on those days that people shut themselves into their homes because something else strange about the fog was noticed if not understood. It didn't enter holy ground, and it didn't pass thresholds. Public areas had fog on those nights. On those nights, monsters could rise from anywhere the fog was.
The fog spreading seemed to have the usual weather influences. Cool damp weather allowed it to spread, but not cold enough to snow. It didn't matter what holy symbols or sigils were displayed as long as the one who had placed it was strong in their faith. As some of those who vanished on foggy nights could have attested, simply brandishing a cross when one had no faith didn't improve the odds of their survival.
Going into those twenty miles on ANY day was dangerous. Going into that pond was suicide. Sometimes divers came back, but the most fortunate of them were insane. Those that weren't insane were something far worse. Undead. Kuei. Faceless. Zombies. Ghouls. Skeletons.
One of the skeletons though DID retain his humanity and apparently a sense of humor, his first words scribbled out message after coming out of the pond being "Well, THAT certainly could have gone better."
The walls began going up after the third day the fog spread. It helped, though those manning the towers couldn't help but feel a bit creeped out on watching the fog spread out tendrils as if testing each barrier before rolling up against it. As if it was trying to find a way out itself. Which was silly, it was just fog - right?
Every so often, someone would offer a rational explanation for the fog and how the monsters weren't actually monsters but just people preying on other people's gullibility. Those who accepted the Japanese Government's offer of a large prize to go there and PROVE it tended to stop after entering Juuban. One way or another.
Things that went bump in the night were in the fog. Those with odd gifts though - they bumped back.
The government, for the most part, put out the usual things about not going out on fog-ridden days and ESPECIALLY not when the night was thick with fog. Special alarm sirens would sound when the fog was spreading, and if containment failed they would have no problems with a curfew being lowered. Originally the attitude was very much "we must protect our citizens" but doing anything about the pond or the twenty miles was another thing altogether. How DID one deal with such a thing? If bombs were brought down into the pond, or it was sealed in concrete, would it spread things further or shut it down?
1981 saw the building by VERY nervous individuals of a concrete wall completely enclosing the pond and the stationing of troops outside that wall. The next morning the wall was missing several pieces and of the 520 JSDF troops - there were three survivors who required substantial psychological therapy.
The very next night there was a thick fog which rolled across the water, and by the time daylight returned Japan had seen a devastation that had not been experienced by the nation since World War II. Those who had made it to homes that had the 'threshold effect' or to the grounds of shrines and temples and churches survived. They went out the next day to see property that had been smashed or crushed, power and phone lines that looked as if they had been bitten through, claw and bite marks nearly everywhere, and a number of people who were missing and not accounted for.
Instead of losing her parents to an airplane and the resulting phobia, Makoto Kino lost both parents to that very night of a deep fog - when she had been sure that someTHING had been scratching at the window for HER.
A boy with silvery blue hair was noted by a young mother and physician for a very notable effect. When the fog had begun entering her hospital, Ranma's eyes had changed from blue to red and he'd kept the fog from entering until the breech in the spirit wards had been repaired.
(As for the individual who'd broken the line of protection in order to get a cigarette, nobody had seen that patient since then.)
Further concerning to Doctor Mizuno was:
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(Posted Fri, 28 Jul 2006 09:53)
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