In his spare time not performing pranks, playing games or haunting with his fellow Ghosts, Jinji usually dedicates himself to various forms of intense study. One of the many subjects Jinji regularly conducts research into is that of mortal disease and ailments. Though this may appear morbid to some, Jinji actually has an altruistic purpose to such study – being a Ghost who believes in the sanctity of life, Jinji always aims to ensure his pranks and hauntings never cause direct harm to mortal beings; and he likes to be able to identify when living beings are suffering, so that he knows what to avoid and also how to help out if harm should come to them unintentionally.
One night, Jinji is reading a book on “common diseases and ailments of the human body”. Flipping to the next page in the book, Jinji finds himself reading up about the common cold. To begin with, Jinji finds the disease rather uninteresting. Headaches, grogginess, occasionally a fever… all rather boring. Then Jinji flips the page to “methods of transmission”…
The viruses that cause common colds are extremely contagious, and easily transmitted through contact. One of the ways the illness spreads itself so easily is through the secretion of nasal mucus, colloquially referred to as “snot”. A person afflicted with the cold will, in the majority of cases, find that their nose will leak out nasal mucus teeming with bacteria and viruses. As this mucus can very easily drip onto surfaces if not wiped away; and as wiping can very easily leave traces of the mucus on the person’s hands where it can subsequently spread to other surfaces or make contact with other surfaces, a person afflicted with a cold must make a conscious effort to control any spread of the virus to other people.
The description of snot and its highly infectious nature fascinates Jinji; and his curiosity is quickly teased. “Hmmm, just how easily does snot spread?” The Gengar decides he has to experiment and see for himself; but how? Suddenly, his trickster mind comes into gear; and quickly after, the naughty spook is concocting a plan to not only test the power of snot, but also use it to create some very gooey mischief…
Over the next few days, Jinji secretly prepares his prank. Using his experience in slime fabrication, Jinji creates a watery, sticky, yellowy-green slime to use as a snot analogue. Jinji also creates a fake nose out of hollow plastic, to attach to his face. Jinji fills the hollow cavity with some of the slime, then chants a strange incantation. As he does so, the nose briefly glows with a dark energy. Jinji grins mischievously. Now, all he needs is the right moment…
Jinji’s opportunity arrives a few days later, on a day where dark and stormy nights are expected in several regions in the mortal realm. As the Ghosts and Jinji spend the morning preparing a plan for a big night of floating between houses and haunting people, Jinji secretly casts a curse upon himself to give himself flu-like symptoms. Later in the day, Jinji starts to feel distinctly unwell, and informs his fellow Ghosts. As the feelings worsen, Jinji tells the other Ghosts he doesn’t feel up for haunting, and will stay home to rest and recover. While the Ghosts are upset not to have their Gengar master joining them for their hauntings, they understand the situation and trust him to be able to look after himself; and the excitement of mass spooky mischief is too great to pass up; and so, later that night, Jinji is left alone at his mansion while the Ghosts leave to go haunting.
Jinji waits in his bed until the Ghosts are far enough away, then attaches the fake nose to his face. Even though the slime has been sitting in the nose for a few days, it remains just as fresh and gooey as the minute it was made. Jinji has also kept some of the slime in a container hidden in the cupboard in his room, and he pours a small amount into his mouth, storing it under his tongue. This done, the Gengar floats all the way downstairs, to the mansion’s basement.
The spooky mansion that Jinji and his fellow Ghosts calls home has in its grounds a very large basement, which consists of one large, mostly empty room walled with stone, with wooden beams spaced out across the ceiling. One of these beams stretches across the very centre of the room; and attached to it is a decorative wooden structure leading to a second, lower beam. Jinji floats over to this beam and pretends to sneeze, spitting the gooey, sticky slime from below his tongue onto the wood of the lower beam. Then Jinji hovers beside the beam, positioning himself to ensure that his fake nose juts past the beam’s surface. The spacing between the two beams is wide enough that Jinji can sit upon the lower beam and just brush against the upper; and once Jinji is certain his positioning is just right, Jinji shifts his body over and takes his seat. Jinji laughs as the goo squelches underneath him, the slime sticking to his undercarriage and thighs, something Jinji deliberately planned to ensure he can’t be moved away from this ideal spot. As all this is going on, Jinji’s fake nose briefly glows dark once again. A small drip of slime drops from the nostrils of the nose. Jinji chuckles to himself in an evil glee. The prank is about to begin…
Drip… drip drip… drops of slime fall from Jinji’s nose, slowly to begin with but quickly becoming more frequent. After roughly two minutes, the dripping becomes constant, turning from once every few seconds to multiple drops per second. Soon after, the drips turn into a constant flow. Streams of snot fall from each nostril, and quickly grow quicker and quicker. Jinji’s incantation was a replication curse, causing the slime inside the nose to regenerate and grow quickly, thereby allowing the slime to pour out rapidly and without limit. After about five minutes, Jinji’s nose is like a fully-opened tap, both nostrils pouring out the “snot” at a rapid rate.
The goo pours to the ground, where it begins to pool in the centre of the basement’s floor. As the flow becomes faster, the goo begins to spread, and cover more and more of the stone surface. Sniffling and pretending to feel groggy from his “cold”, Jinji observes how far the “snot” has spread; and considers his experiment a success. He laughs to himself, the prank having moved from a genuine experiment to just being naughty fun. By the time the Ghosts return, Jinji’s snot will have covered the entire basement floor and started to rise and flood the room; and with him now stuck to the beam and the curse still in effect, it’s a sure bet that Jinji’s cold won’t be finishing any time soon…
