In the wild realms of horror fictions, malicious forces of evil and fear have a tendency to be tied to a certain placed. Standing outside these cursed places, observers may find nothing out of ordinary. However, upon entering, the observer will be plunged into a whirlpool of terror. From then on, horror and despair will be injected into the observer's soul, slowly rotting every aspect of his life until the very last bit of his/her sanity is whipped away,forcing him/her to become yet another victim of the devilish being lurking within the haunted zone. Today we have two of the most iconic horror villains that choose a certain place as their main base. Kayako Saeki, the vengeful spirit of a Japanese housewife that terrorizes everyone that dares entering her household; IT, a lovecraftian being that plagues the small town of Derry located in the center of Stephen King's creations.
Kayako Saeki[]
| “ | When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage... a curse is born. The curse gathers in that place of death. Those who encounter it will be consumed by its fury.
— The opening text of the Grudge
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| “ | Croakkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!
— Kayako Saeki's standard 'battle cry'
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Kayako Saeki (佐伯伽椰子 Saeki Kayako) is a character in the Ju-on horror franchise.
Grown up neglected by her parents and isolated by her classmates, Kayako developed anti-social behaviors and hatred toward human nature. When attending university, Kayako temporarily fell in love with a man named Kobayashi. However, after the accidental death of her parents and her graduation, Kayako married Takeo Saeki, a man who seemed to care about her feelings and showed kindness to her. Years later they had a son named Toshio.
Their family life was happy at first, slowly restoring Kayako's faith in human. However, all the things changed when Toshio attended the primary school where Kobayashi worked as a teacher. Once again encountering Kobayashi, Kayako fell in love with him again and wrote about her feelings in her diary, which was discovered by Takeo . Feeling cheated, Takeo became extremely angry and even came to suspect Toshio being the child of Kobayashi, in this way, Takeo beat Kayako and Toshio to death(Kayako's jaws were broken during this incident).
After being brutally murdered by her husband, Kayako became an Onryō(Japanese incarnation of demons) due to the painful and torturous nature of her death. She killed her husband with her demonic power and continued to reside in her residence in Tokyo, controlling the ghost of her son and husband. Whoever enters her resident will fall into her curse and be terrorized by her vengeful spirit. No matter where the victims go, Kayako will always succeed in tracking them down and either scaring them to dementia or murdering them in gruesome fashion.
Depicted as a pale woman in her 20s with broken jaws and blood-stained clothes, Kayako's demon form allows her to maintain the powers displayed below. Due to the Grudge being one of the scariest movie in history, I won't be showing any clips here in order not to upset certain viewers. For people interested in the stories related to Kayako or feel like more info is in need, check it out here.
- Onryo Hair: Kayako's primary weapon is her hair. She firstly uses it to kill her husband and to strangle, blind, stab (i.e. grab a kitchen knife or any sharp utensil) or bind others. To make it sounds familiar, check it out here. The hair possesses superhuman strength, flexibility and length, as seen in the movies that the hair is capable of lifting up multiple grown men and strangling them to death with ease. There was also a scene in which Kayako stretched and scattered all of her hair across the room, coloring the ceiling in black and forming a gigantic, dense net to restrain her victims. Another thing to bear in mind is that the hair can magically adjust its length. When not in use, they remain in normal length on Kayako's head, and when used they can magically grow to various length. The maximum length is unspecified, but purely judging from the films it is limited to the width of a living room, approximately five to six meters.
It[]
| “ | Float? Oh yes, indeed they do. They float! And there's cotton candy... They float. They float, they float, Georgie, and when you're down here with me, you'll float too.
— It to Georgie
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IT is an ancient monster and the title character and main antagonist of the 1986 novel the same name (and subsequent television and film adaptations). It is a shapeshifting creature known as a Glamour and is billions of years old. Although it lived on planet Earth for years, it originated in a void/dimension outside the regions of space known as the Macroverse. Since its true identity is unclear, due to its shape-changing abilities making its real name and species unknown, the creature is just named IT.
However, the creature is packed with shapeshifting power and prefers taking the form of a circus clown, even nicknaming himself as Pennywise the Clown .
Residing in the fictional town of Derry, IT awakes once in twenty seven years and terrorize the town's population, mainly targeting the children, luring them into death traps, scaring them with its magical abilities before devouring them.
It demonstrates the following powers and capabilities, for people interested in stories related to this demon, check here.
- Claws and teeth : In its clown form, IT is packed with razor-sharp claws and teeths.
- Superhuman Strength : IT can tear the heads and limbs of human bodies with extreme ease, either with arms or mouth (as Pennywise or any humanoid form).
- Body Changing:IT can bend/shrink/alter the intensity,density and form of its body at his will. Allowing him to travel through narrow space or tiny holes with ease, either by turning his body into narrow form or directly turning into liquid/gas and flowing through the space.
X-factors (Kayako - It)[]
- Strength:80-95.With her hair, Kayako is capable of lifting up grown men and strangling them to death with ease. However, IT directly tears apart people. Enough said.
- Endurance:100-80. Although incredibly hard to be hit, IT is susceptible to severe physical damages and magical damages. Kayako, on the other hand, is completely immune to physical damages and only susceptible to magical damages.It could also be implied that Kayako's resistence to magical power is superior to IT, considering the fact that Sadako's attakcs failed in landing a scratch on her most of the times, while IT yelled like a baby when a silver bullet hit his head for the first time in the film.
- Speed:50-95.When her husband murdered her, both of Kayako's legs were broken, resulting in her crawling behaviors as a demon. Even at her fastest, Kayako can be outrun by normal humans (that aren't intimidated by her) due to the sheer slowness of her crawling movement. IT, on the other hand, demonstrates superhuman speed that can match a motorcycle/car.
- Intelligence:60-90. Kayako is a normal Japanese woman, not being genius in any subjects at school and had spent most of her mortal lives as a housewife. IT is an elder being with lower-tier omnipotence and immense knowledge about Macroverse, magic and human world.
- Experience:75-80.It has been around since the beginning of the universe, fighting a long war against the powerful residents of his original universe and had been terrorizing human world since the 1700s. However, he hasn't been fighting any opponents with magical abilities that are up to his par since he started his human world exploration, excluding a few users of Shining. Kayako has only been around for roughly two decades and takes murdering random Tokyo citizens that happened to enter her house as her main task. However, she has recently fought Sadako, an equally powerful vengeful spirit. In this way, the scores are close in this category, with IT taking a slight lead majorly due to his age.
- Creativity:70-100. IT's versatile abilities and record of pulling off creative stunts to taunt/deceive his victims make him take the lead here. Kayako, while certainly takes heart into making scary noise and visions to creep out the residents in her house, is no match for Pennywise, who is capable of finding a different way to kill/taunt each one of his victim by utilizing his mind reading abilities, shapeshifting skills and reality manipulation.
- Brutality:100-100. This category is pointless, isn't it ?
- Control over reality:45%-55% (60%-40%). Both are roughly equal in terms of powers to mess around with the reality around, with IT being more capable considering the fact that he can alter the weather while Kayako mainly focuses on small adjustments to make it more convenient for her to track down or intimidate her victims. However, when inside her house, Kayako, now powered up by the sorrow embedded in her mortal life, is the more capable one considering the fact that she even comes to messing with the time.
Battle[]
The Prelude[]
Being an old resident of the humble state of Maine in the center of King's horror universe, the detective is absolutely no stranger to weird deaths and disappearance that have been plaguing this unremarkable community ever since its creation. However, this time, things are different. First there was that strange house that appeared out of no where, seemingly popping out of ground in the wasteland next to the abandoned mansion where junkies and drunks hang out. Then came the strange results of the investigation. Upon arriving at the house's door, the police found it unlocked and made their entrance, only to reveal a normal household with nothing out of ordinary, excluding the fact that, although there haven't been any Asian residents in Derry since the Chinese restaurant moved to the neighboring town, everything inside the household, from books, paper documents to labels and calendar, seem to be written in an oriental language, which was later identified as Japanese. Searching the second floor, they weren't able to find anything strange, either, except the fact that one police officer named Darren claimed that he heard odd croaking noise when they were about to go downstairs, which wasn't taken seriously by anyone at that moment.
The real bizarre thing started a few days after the investigation, when the officers assigned to inquire the house began to die one after another. Darren was the first one to be found dead at his apartment, lying on his couch with his eyes and mouth wide open and face twisted into an expression of sheer agony. Initially they determined the cause to death to be heart attack, since the symptoms matched, regardless of the fact that Darren, a bulky, energetic young man in his late 20s with no family history of heart disease,obviously shouldn't have met his end in such a way. Two days later, two other cops that were present at the scene were found dead inside the police car, which seemingly went out of control when they were driving it around the town during one of the daily patrols and dipped into the river. Max Anderson, the last officer present, expired on the next Tuesday. Early that day he arrived at the station on time, but in a "rather" paranoid state, as described by his co-workers, who also stated that Max was behaving strangely, always shaking his hands and not paying attention to things around, murmuring some gibberish about black cats and blue children.At noon, the other officers left the station for lunch, while Max said he wanted to remain in the office. When the others returned, they found Max lying on the floor, dead and maintaining the same expression as Darren.
It didn't take long for rumors to start spreading across the town, indicating that the death were linked to the house, which must have been a cursed place all along. A week later, Walter Pilgrim, a student at Derry College, lost in a game of truth or dare and was sent to venture inside the house as punishment. Although he left the household safe and intact, later that week he bit the dust as well, with his body dismembered and scattered around his apartment. Approximately several minutes before his death, he dialed the police, and the telephone conversation is as follow :
"Derry Police Department how may I help you ?
"Quick, save me, save me !.... She....the woman from the house, she's fucking coming for me ! Oh god oh god....What's the fuck is this ? Hair, so many hair (Interrupted, followed by a shriek )
After this incident, the police sealed the household and from then on nobody has ever ventured or dared to venture inside. However, what added insult to injury for these already-mysterious case was the fact that a man of possible Russian origin (indicated by the police record of his name) was found wandering around the house in the afternoon two days after the death of Walter. Immediately taking action, the police was able to arrest him on set. Through interrogation, they found out that this man, who asked the officers to address him as "Tybalt Trotsky ", claimed that he was just inspecting the set for some sort of combat so that he could decide who to vote for in some sort of election. Deeming him suspicious and probably insane, the police detained him at the station, only to find his cell being empty the morning afterwards, leaving yet another unsolved mystery in this already complex "supernatural" case of mass-murder.
Reading this, the detective frowns and sinks into retrospect. In the pass few decades of his career, he has encountered countless cases like this, some turned out to be faked, while some turned out weird and remained unsolved till this day. "This case reminds me of that weird case in early 80s. That psycho and his car...." He whispers to himself, as more old cases flashes back in his mind. "Of course, the explosion at Chamberlain High School, that was a strange one like this indeed, with those witnesses claiming that they'd seen a figure covered with blood striding across the hallway during the accident....Oh and not to mention the Overlook Incident in Colorado, which I've only heard of. Will this new case fall into one of those,or will this turn out to be a hoax ? I'm going to see it for myself tomorrow." Putting away the files, the detective stands up and turns to his bed, readying himself for his upcoming investigation in the "cursed" house. However, before lying down, he senses something wrong outside the window : A balloon, in bright red color, is floating out side, on which painted a smiley face in yellow ink. "What's the....?" Before he can react, a dread feeling of exhaustion suddenly overwhelmed his body, sending him collapsing down on the bed.
"Hee, hee, hee ,hee. My good-old bud, I'm going to borrow your body a little while. Just a little, little while, to check out who has been trespassing on my land of joy. When I find out whoever is controlling that house, he'll float too !!!" Laughs the detective, in a joking tune, as IT lifted his human husk up and hopped out of the window, heading to the cursed house.
The Battle[]
What greeted Pennywise as he kicked the door open was the typical setting of a Japanese family, with everything kept in order, plates and bowls lined up on the shelf and stairs facing the entrance, leading to the infamous second floor where 30 years ago the familicide that shocked the entire Tokyo occurred. Before Derry's lurking devil could make a further move, the sneaky blueish silhouette of a child-size figure appeared at the end of the dark corridor, immediately catching its attention.
Remaining in the detective's body, Pennywise launched himself forward in an attempt to catch the silhouette, only to find it vanishing into a room before IT could make it to the spot. Without hesitation, IT recklessly pressed the knob. Bursting into the room,hardly had IT balanced itself when a bundle of female hair grabbed him by the arm. Struggling to break free, IT wasn't fast enough to leave the detective's body before another bundle of hair was applied to the arm, instantly ripping it off. An amorphous mix of gelatinous goo and blood oozed out of the wound, as the detective's body, now lifeless, slammed on the ground. Slowly, popping out of the goo, was the head of a clown. Looking up from his spot, Pennywise found himself staring directly at the pale, blood-stained face of Kayako Saeki, the main victim of the Saeki family murder and the rightful owner of this house -- now a property of the demonic dimension of the dead, cursed and tormented souls.
Looking down at the clown, a vague sense of surprise gleamed within the hollow eyes of Kayako. While her limited intelligence was not enough for her to figure out the nature of this stranger being that broke into her house, the simple fact that she couldn't read the creature's mind suggested that the being with childish appearance forming below her is far from mere human.This was the second time in her Onryo life when she found herself against someone that wasn't human.
"Well, well, well !" Exclaimed the clown, as he beamed out a broad smile. Kayako's appearance, while unnerving enough to cause instant mental blank in the minds of the harshest detectives of Tokyo Police Department, was pure comedy for the primordial terror of Stephen King's verse. "It's funny that you are already floating. Now would you mind telling me why you want to steal my cake ? This town, Derry, was build on me, and the fear of me roaming around the town makes me overjoyed. Now because of you and your crappy house, nobody fear me anymore."
"Croooooooaaaaaaakkkkkkkkk !" Kayako let out a string of cough, partially because of her broken jaws, and most importantly because she had not even the slightest ideas about what Pennywise the Dancing Clown was saying. English was not yet a compulsory course in Japan back in her days at school.
"That's not very polite, young lady !" Said Pennywise, as he stretched eyes backward and opened his jaws, revealing his rotating teeth. Launching himself forward, Pennywise was able to bypass Kayako's hair snatch and sink his fangs into what supposed to be the demon's neck. However, it didn't take long for Pennywise to notice that he had been chewing on the wooden door. Puzzled, the clown let go of the do. As IT wondered where had ITs opponent gone, Kayako's ghastly pair of rotted hands emerged from the wall nearby. Too shocked to react, Pennywise froze at ITs spot, allowing the hands to grab him by the neck. Seconds later Kayako's head poked out of the wall, pressing all of her strength onto the clownish figure's neck, pinning IT to the ground. However, before she could continue to rip apart her opponent, IT melted down.
Using the liquid illusion as a mean of distraction, IT's true form shapeshifted into a wisp of air behind the melting clown and quickly slipped out of the room from the window. However, as IT slowly reformed outside the window, it dawned on IT that he somehow managed to end up in another room. "What's the.. just happened ?" He asked himself. Scarcely had he worked out the situation when the mindless, zombified abomination that used to be known as Takeo Saeki bumped into the room, with blood covering his collar and kitchen knife in hands, which he hacked into Pennywise's big head. Yelling in pain, the clown backed off, only to entitle Takeo with a chance to kick IT in the crotch.
Takeo was about to make another slash with his knife when the clown suddenly extended its right hand forward, which instantly shapeshifted into an insect-like arm and knocked the knife out of Takeo's hand. With its opponent disarmed, IT spared no hesitation in lifting up Takeo's body and violently tossed it towards the window.
A crackle noise signifying broken glass gave Pennywise enough indication to figure out that this time the window was real. Therefore, hardly had Takeo retrieved the upper part of his body back into the room when lighting under IT's command came blasting down from the night sky above and overcooked the formal owner of Saeki household.
Not even taking a glance back at the fried body at the window, Pennywise opened the door, and once again surprised to find ITself at the bottom of the stairs, exactly where he noticed the blue child and went into pursuit. The only difference was dead bodies of two men with Asian feature were on display, slammed on the floor in random fashion. A further gaze at the window next to the door was yet another shock, for the scenery showcased out of it was nothing close to the humble, rustic town of Derry, but lines of small apartments and billboards with oriental characters instead. In the far distance,taking red neon light as its luxurious dress, the Tokyo Tower shined in all its glory, with the slim Sky Tree blazing silver nearby.
With a mix of illusion and time tricks, Mrs. Saeki had brought her uninvited guest to her home state. However, what she still hadn't realized and would never probably know was the fact that her opponent was an being with lower-tier omnipotence that came in a clownish form, who had seen through her little mind pranks and come up with ITs own games in a period of time noticeably shorter than her painful journey down the stairs.
The Saeki household sank into a state of dead silence the moment Kayako reached the bottom and halted her unearthly groans. What unfolding in front of her was a damnable scene so horrific that a brief moment of seizure erupted in her hellbound heart. The husk in front of her, along with the fancy circus suit covering ITs body, suddenly began mutating, with the vibrating violently and black goo seeping out of ITs eyes, staining the floor with a series of burnt marks. Quickly regaining her still the Onryo stretched our her hair in a manner that absolutely would put a certain resident of Morioh to shame in an attempt to retaliate her guest's sudden outburst of intimidating behavior that would cause more than a small warning in the honorable realm of DF.
However. the moment the hair swirled around the clown's neck, IT vanished, and what came bursting out of the floor, was the terribly deformed creature of nightmare, with its body covered with bits of fungoid and molds that were inadequate to hide the bugs and maggots feasting on the dead meat that composed its body. Every segment of the creature signified death and corrosion, with the exception of its glistening teeth, between which rested several crimson pieces of leftovers from its last dinner.
Like a high speed train,the creature sprinted towards Kayako, grabbing her arm before the hair could return, instantly twisting its ankle. For the first time in a decade, Kayako refreshed her idea on the definition of pain. The devastation of her second arm soon followed through, and a kick to her already-destroyed jaw from Dr. Frankenstein's rotting creation was powerful enough to send Kayako tumbling back, with the hair, which had been temporarily rendered powerless by the sheer amount of pain projected into its user's demonic husk, dangling around her body.
Being mommy's good boy, it should come as no surprise that Toshio, who'd been watching the fight on the top of the cupboard, hopped into the ring when his beloved mommy was in troubles. What owned this little brat, however, proved to be the seemingly dry skin of the creature's back, which somehow became wet and slippery the exact time Toshio grabbed Its flesh, ruining the boy's ambition of climbing up the giant and beheading it with his bare hands as he did to those neighbors back in Japan that just had to poke their noses into something beyond their simple minds. Almost simultaneously getting hold of the poor blueish boy was the scaly hands of the creature from Black Lagoon, which dismantled Toshio in seconds, despite the ghastly pupil's struggle.
Yet again, the Saeki household was filled with blood and murder, and the stunningly large and morass cycle of death and grudges managed to find its way back to where it started by staining the ground with some of the very first drops of bloods of the entire circulation of Grudge. If IT, now in an old-school form of an universal horror icon, had been more focused, he would have noticed the already broken and decomposed body of normal Toshio sitting at the dining table, forming a perfect reflection of irony with the dismembered corpse of demonic Toshio a few steps away, which Pennywise, being such an entity of twisted humor, would certainly find comedic. With the sucker-puncher taken care of, IT turned back to Kayako, who was still struggling on the floor, trying to regain her posture. Slowly reshaping into a clown, IT marched forward, readying ITself to reap Kayako's soul. This fight had already evolved from funny to annoying, and he was no longer a fan of playing games with the lady on the floor. However, what he hadn't realized was that Kayako had yet another trick down her kimono sleeves.
Most importantly, unbeknownst to both of them, an Inca Chief was anxiously waiting for the result of their duel in a realm far, far away, truncheon in hands, brooding over a death plot against a fury of desert and god of war.
Back to the house, Pennywise was about to put Kayako out of misery when objects in the living room around suddenly floated up. Hardly had IT dodged the incoming chair when the dining table came crashing towards its body, sending it tumbling down the corridor towards Kayako, who had retrieved her hair just in time to swirl around Pennywise's body.
As the demonic hair tightened, Pennywise sighed. Deeming this fight as a complete waste of time, he made the decision to mark an end for this booby game the woman had dragged him into playing.Stretching out his right arm before Kayako's hair could rip it off, IT grabbed the demon by the head. Staring at the Clown's eyes which blinked sinister, for no more than a few seconds Kayako remained her depressing gaze and proceeded to tighten up her hair. However it didn't take very long for a general tension to fulfill her demonic mind, as she slowly found the environment around her shifting,with the familiar floor and furniture of Saeki Household fading away in the shadow, and a new dimension filled with hideously bizarre alien landscape and views beyond the imagination of any earthbound existence rising up. Very soon loosened her hair was Kayako, inside the demonic heart of whom a dry sense of despair eventually replaced the murderous rage, for the entity in front of her had taken off ITs circus costume, and revealed its true, other-worldly form. Desperately clustering the hair around her in an attemtp to defend herself from the multiple hands IT was stretching forward, Kayako was not able to hold her line, as IT's assault came in liquid, solid, gas and spiritual forms, circling her body with lethal pressure both physically and mentally.
A crawling tide of chaos, a piling pyramid of terror, an absurd pagoda of fear beyond time and space. No other phrases could be used to describe the bloodthirsty god of Marcoverse that terrorized the last few minutes of Kayako's life as a demon. With the demon's soul fractured, body disemboweled, and utter existence wiped out in the infamous ritual of Chud, IT returned to Derry with pride, where the local people were shocked to find out the cursed house perishing in flames in the middle of the night.
However, for Kayako Saeki, her adventure in the multiverse was just at the beginning.
Post-Credit Scene
"Are You sure this is a good idea chief ?" Asked one of the Inca soldiers, as he meticulously pointed to the remains of Kayako's still-burning remains, which fell down from the sky early in the morning.
"Of course. So far my calculation has been correct. Savages from plains in the North has already landed at my marked spot, and the horde of ghouls that emerged from the east hill exactly according to my prediction. Now the creature burning in this pit must be the our guidance back to that arena realm.Go and inspect !" Ordered Chief Trunchi. However the soldiers next to him seemed too scared to make any moves, as the burning flesh rapidly regrouped into the form of a human body and unnerving croaking noise could be heard from what seemed to be the creature's mouth.
Slightly annoyed by the cowardice shown on his fellowmen's faces, the Chief hopped into the pit in person, landing nearby Kayako, which resulted in him being possessed instantly.
As with some previous incidents inside the Grudge universe, when two vengeful hearts met and fused with each other, the grudge got enhanced. And in this case, both of the vengeful hearts mentioned had been burning over a vendetta, leading to a grudge powerful enough to pierce through some of the thickest walls between dimensions and realms.
Overwhelmed with rage and power, Chief Trunchi tested his new powers by slaying the two poor Inca soldiers with his truncheon, which now shoots out demonic hair. Poking the stick into the ground, the Chief created a portal with ease.Drawing out the photo of Bernard Montgomery from his pocket, he beamed out an evil grin, as memories of Apache soldiers crushing his skull with Tomhawk flashed by. "After all these years, my revenge shall descend upon those who sent me to this realm of losers through voting and made me suffer from manual labor."
Laughing maniacally, Trunchi jumped into the hole and reached the long corridor, which took a couple of weeks. And it took him another two days to travel to EA's HQ because he had to take a long route in order to sneak behind the MP5-armed anime girls patrolling various sections.
Kicking the door open, he headed straight to EA's office, but couldn't find him for unspecified reasons. Before he could inspect other rooms, what seemed to be Sir. Montgomery himself appeared at the door. Turning around and finally meeting the man he hated with a passion, what first popped up in Chief's mind, however, was a simple question :
"Why the hell does the medal on his coat look like sticker ?"
Expert's Opinion[]
Although IT is arrogant and overconfident, constantly underestimating enemies, his advantage in experience, intelligence, as well as the ability to access other dimensions and stronger will, secured him the victory over Kayako, a being that is equally powerful but lacks experience and has a set of killing methods effective to humans but not-so-effective to non-humans.