Delinquency

by Daemon McRae

Rating: teen
Tags: Main 7 (EqG), Profanity, Violence, Dark, Alternate Universe, Other, Thriller, Original Character, Comedy, Equestria Girls
Length: 170017

The Rainbooms aren't CHS's only defense against the supernatural. Unfortunately, the alternative spends more time hanging out in abandoned buildings and landing themselves in detention than is normal for any teenager. At least they enjoy their work.

From the unraveled psyche behind The Corner of (Our) Eyes, Eyes Wide Shut, and Schadenfreude, comes a new adventure comedy of horrific proportions!

Ever since Sunset Shimmer, nay, Starswirl the Bearded himself crossed the threshold into the human realm, there have been traces of magic among us. And since that time, there have been those who stood against the creatures of the dark that would seek to do us harm.

Unfortunately, right now 'those' people are a group of high school delinquents who can barely keep out of detention long enough to get the job done. Armed with medium-speed wits, a minimal grasp of magic and monsters (mostly from the internet), and whatever heavy or sharp things they can get their hands on, these boys will stop at nothing to disperse the atrocities that threaten their daily lives.

Suddenly, violently, and all over the frickin' place.

Published 2017-08-31 20:00:07 UTC
Last updated 2018-06-19 18:57:58 UTC

Level Two: The Rainbooms

Level Two: The Rainbooms

Treble stared at the page of the wide open, old-ass book on the desk in front of him. A musty leather-bound monster of a book, it was Bones’ grandfather’s work. He’d been labeled a crazy old man years before he was even old, but had filled pages and pages of journal after journal with all kinds of paranormal research, mythologies, and notes. Most of which was a mixed bag as to whether or not it actually worked, but they’d been using the old man’s research for a year and they were still alive.

This particular page depicted a monstrosity of many heads, arms, and weapons. Swords, clubs, and even large boulders rested in its plethora of hands, and each face was a mighty scowl. The legend below it was chicken scratch to almost anyone but Bones, who’s handwriting was exactly the same. According to their resident “freakyologist”, as Rubble liked to call the gaunt teenager, this thing was called a-

“What the FUCK is a Hectacondries?”

Spooks sighed, rubbing his temple. “It’s pronounced Hecatoncheires. Also known as the Hundred-Handed Ones.”

“Gee, I fuckin wonder why,” Rubble groaned.

“BOYS,” Cheerilee barked from her desk. “Language!”

“Sorry, Miss Cheerilee,” the boys chorused. They were, technically, in detention. However, having saved aforementioned teacher from a swarm of Bya’kee over the Spring holiday, she tended to let them alone when they were working on “something god awful and evil and I want it away from my students, so kill it quickly.” She was their favorite teacher, easily.

Bones jabbed a specific paragraph of horrible scrawled writing with a finger. “These guys are legendary Greek giants. They’re basically walking hurricanes with swords. I mean, these things were stronger than the titans and they supposedly guard the gates of Tartarus.”

Dusty leaned back and whistled hard. “How the… hell are we going to take one of these things down?!”

“We’re not,” Spooks said simply. The other three boys sighed in relief. “We’re taking down three.”

“OH COME ON!” Rubble barked, throwing his hands in the air.

“Will you shut up about your stupid monsters?!” Growled a very aggressive voice from the other corner of the room.

“Says the siren!” Treble shot back. “How’s that warg bite healing, by the way?”

Aria opened her mouth to protest, then grumbled something they couldn’t quite make out. Most likely a not very creative threat.

Treble returned his attention to the book, sparing some side-eye for his scary friend. “No seriously, how do you expect us to take down three massive giants of literally Olympic proportions?”

“That’s the good news,” Spooky mused, smiling. It was one of three smiles they knew him for: this one being the genuine happy smile, which was still a little creepy. He also had an “I’m doing this to scare you” setting and a “Run” setting. “We don’t need to fight three massive giants.”

“The bad news?” Dusty asked, waiting for the other car-sized shoe to drop.

“We just have to fight a hundred and fifty flesh golems before they can merge into three storm giants with lots of pointy objects.”

Dusty just sat there with his mouth open while the other two boys voiced mixed protests. Bones waited for them to get the steam out, then explained, “Look. It’s still not even one hundred percent going to happen. But according to the old man-”

“Who’s the ultimate fucking-”

“RUBBLE!”

“-Sorry! Freakin’ coin flip of viable information,” Rubble finished, with a glance at the teacher.

“Yes, according to him, this is the first time since the Greek empire feel that both the planets and leylines will be aligned-”

“Nope! Nope nope nope we are not getting into old ass planetary alignment once every bajillion years prophecy bullshit again,” groaned Treble. “Just skip the mumbo-jumbo and tell us how to make this not a thing.”

Bones sighed, lamenting his friend’s lack of interest in mythology and ancient literature. “Right, fine, whatever. If this book is right, we’ve got a couple of options. We can either destroy the ‘core of the revival’, whatever the fuck that is, or we can take on a hundred and fifty single-minded flesh golems most likely armed to the teeth until there isn’t enough of them to make even one giant, and the whole thing will fail anyway.”

“'Core of the revival', huh? The hell does that mean?” Rubble mused, trying his best to read the book, and failing miserably.

“I have no idea,” Spooks groaned. “This is just like, the reference guide to all his other crazy crap. I think I know a couple of books that might have more answers. Dusty, you’re on internet duty.”

The brown-haired boy leaned his elbow pads on the desk. “Oh yay. The internet. So reliable.”

Treble shrugged. “About as reliable as Old Man Bones, so you might as well. How about me?”

Spooks gave him a short glance, then addressed Rubble. “RM, we’re gonna need a lot of weapons. Like, heavy beatsticks and sharp things.”

Grinning wildly, Rubble punched his palm. “Awww yisssss, armory duty.”

The wannabe musician, looking put off at getting ignored, groaned, “So what does that leave me with? All that’s left is- oh. Oh no. Nuh-uh.”

Spooks nodded. “Unfortunately, you’re the most interpersonally capable guy we have. Treble, you’re on Rainboom duty.”

“Fuck.”

“TREBLE!”

“Sorry!”

=============================

Treble hovered his hand over the door to the music room. He could hear the amicable chatter of the girls on the other side, discussing what sounded like a whole lot of high school nonsense. Why couldn’t that be me? Why do I gotta be on Team Monster Hunter? He sighed heavily, then knocked. Very, very lightly. “Oh well guess they’re busy I should come back later,” he reasoned, turning to walk away. Then the door flew open. Of course it was Pinkie Pie who heard him.

“What’s up? Oh, hi Treble!” the pink party girl greeted.

Treble flinched, having been caught, and spun on his heel. “Oh hey, Pinkie. You guys sound busy, I’ll just catch up with you later, so-”

“Nuh-uh, we were just talking about cake!”

A tomboyish voice called out from the room. “No, Pinkie, we were talking about the Fall Formal!”

Pinkie leaned her head back into the room. “Yeah, but the Fall Formal’s a party, Dashie, and parties have cakes, so we’re talking about cake!”

I hate how much sense that makes to me. He smiled forcefully. Pinkie didn’t seem to notice the effort it took him. “Right, so you girls obviously have a lot to deal with right now, I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

Another, slightly sultry voice rang out. One Treble was really hoping wouldn’t be here. “You might as well come in and tell us what’s going on, Treble. Come on in.”

Treble’s head dipped to his chest, and he walked slowly into the room. Sure enough, there she was, leaning on a desk, mile-long legs stretched out in front of her: Sunset Shimmer, the unfairly gorgeous root of all of their problems over the last year. Actually, the last three years, given her track record as a bully before all the magic shenanigans started happening. Treble greeted her, and the rest of the group, with a small wave, and took a seat in a cheap plastic chair near the door. He noticed that all of the girls in the band were present, because of course they were. There was even an addition: Flash Sentry was standing near the back of the room, next to Applejack. They both had their guitars out, and one was apparently teaching the other… something. Treble didn’t really care which.

Running a hand through his long, shaggy hair, Treble sighed. “Alright, so… there might be a thing.”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Of course there is. When is there not a thing with you guys?”

US guys?! Taking a deep breath and ignoring the obvious flawed logic, he pressed on, “Spooks found some stuff in the old man’s journals. He thought maybe something would happen on or around the Fall Formal, or Hallow’s Eve, so he did some digging. Turns out there’s this thing called a… how did he pronounce it? Heca...ton...chairs?”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, looking up from her book. “Hecatoncheires, the Greek giants of the storms? You’re joking.”

“The heck is a… whatever you jus’ said?” Applejack asked, a very confused expression on her face.

The chair creaked as Treble leaned back into it, letting it fall against the wall as he rested his head on a cork message board behind him. “Apparently they’re also called the ‘hundred-handed’ ones. They’re giants with a hundred arms and fifty faces, and there’s three of them. They’re supposed to be stronger than the titans.” He then went on to explain Old Man Bones’ theory about the flesh golems and the ritual, and their ideas to prevent it. “Rusty’s coming the web looking for some corroboration, or more information, or you know, probably porn. Spooks said he might have a couple more journals lying around with some more detail, but given the old man’s track record, it’s gonna be one of those ‘prepare for everything hope for nothing’ deals.”

Flash looked around the room like he was hoping it was a big joke. “You guys… uh… you’re pulling my leg, right? Like there’s not really a big army of flesh monsters with swords and maces and rocks trying to merge into one supergiant hurricane monster thing?”

The group stared at him flatly, waiting for him to catch up. Not responding verbally, they returned to the conversation. “Alright, Treble, what kind of chances are we looking at?” Sunset asked plainly, her arms crossed and expression stern. She and the other Rainbooms weren’t a fan of Treble’s motley crew.

Treble returned the glare. “Like 50/50, so knowing our luck a hundo percent.”

Rarity, rather pensive and quiet until now, spoke up. “Honestly dear, even for you, this sounds a little far-fetched. I mean, why should we believe this?”

Sitting up straight, Treble started counting on his fingers. “The Bya-kee, the wargs, the haunted mask, the goblins, the werewolf, the many, MANY ghosts, the cultists, the Tommyknockers-”

“OK!” Rainbow barked. “We get it! Look, just tell us what to point the Rainbow Friendship Laser Cannon thingy at and stand back,” the athlete said dismissively.

Her only response was an unappreciative glare. “Look,” Treble groaned, “I’m just here to tell you what I know so you all don’t jump out at us at some random interval while we’re working and nearly get someone killed, again.”

“I said I was sorry ‘bout that!” Applejack yelled defensively.

“I know,” Treble placated, holding up his hands in his own defense. “I’m just saying it’s better we keep you in the loop from now on. Now look, I’ve done my job, and I’m gonna go home. I’m already here like, two hours longer than I wanted to be, so I’m out.” He stood up and moved for the door, throwing it open and walking out before anyone could say anything else.

He got about ten steps before he heard Sunset call after him. “Treble, wait a second!”

Oh my GOD go away you perfect disaster. Keeping his distaste to himself, as well as he could, he turned to see Shimmer jogging up to him. She stopped just a couple of feet short. Treble noticed she smelled like oranges today. “What?”

“Look, I know you don’t like me, and I know why,” Sunset said, crossing her arms again and resuming her disapproving stare. “What I don’t get is why you’re so cold to all of my friends. And frankly, I don’t care. But I’m telling you, enough is enough. Either start being a team player or-”

“Or what?!” Treble barked, louder than he wanted to. Sunset took a surprised step back. “You’ll Rainbow Laser me, too? Or maybe you’ll use those fancy-schmancy super powers you found in a cave that you could be using to save lives, but instead reserve for movie studio drama and making your classes easier! Go ahead, what?! I’m not even ON your team! I’m on MY team! The guys without powers that have been fighting our way through stupid numbers of horrible monstrosities that wouldn’t even BE HERE if not your your stupid magic! So please, do tell me what you’re going to do if I don’t stop being a big ol’ meanie to the girls whose mess I CAN’T SEEM TO STOP CLEANING UP!”

Sunset looked both taken aback and slightly offended, but mostly at a loss for words. Which Treble took as the perfect moment to walk away.

=================================

Sunset returned to the group, significantly deflated. She plopped down into the chair Treble had left vacant, sighing like she was a tire letting the air out. Which is exactly what she felt like.

The other girls just looked between each other, having heard most if not all of the conversation. Flash, to his credit, spoke up first. “You shouldn’t listen to that a-hole. You girls do plenty of saving! Like, you’ve saved the universe!”

Sunset rolled her eyes so hard her head rolled with them. “Yeah, which wouldn’t even BE in danger if I hadn’t dragged Equestrian magic into this world.”

Flash didn’t really have a response to that, so instead he offered, “Want me to go talk some sense into him? I think I can handle some 80’s rock wannabe.”

Rarity scoffed. “Yes dear, I don’t doubt you could take him. But then that brute friend of his, what’s his name, Rubble Maker? He’d most likely break a trash can over your head, then shove you in it and roll you into traffic.”

Applejack puffed up. “Yeah, but I could take him.”

“Only with your powers,” Sunset argued. "And that would just give them more reason to hate us, using our abilities to beat them up instead of helping them save people. They may be a bunch of crazy violent weirdos, but they are trying to do the right thing.”

Pinkie Pie huffed. “And we’re not?! I mean, those meanies just go around punching monsters in the face! At least we all try to be like, positive and peaceful about it! We solve all our problems with friendship, for serious!”

A small voice spoke up from a far corner, where Fluttershy was playing with a few of the group’s pets. “Well, I mean, it’s not like you can make friends with a slime monster. We tried that. It was really, really gross.”

The group shuddered at the memory. Then Sunset groaned, and leaned back in her chair much like Treble had. “Are we… are we doing the right thing with our powers? I mean, they don’t even have reliable magic and they just keep fighting. We can like, fly and stuff. We have all kinds of power, but here we are talking about what to where to the dance while they’re planning to fight another doomsday scenario that might hot even happen just because they feel like they should. What does that say about us?”

Twilight closed her book and took a deep breath. “It says we don’t chase every little conspiracy theory that we find, and we save our powers for when we know something bad’s going to happen instead of jumping at shadows. They might have their heads in the right place, but they run face first into almost everything, armed to the teeth with whatever they hope works. Not to mention all the wanton destruction that follows them around, whether it’s their fault or not. And if we did start using our powers every time we thought something was going to happen, how long would it be until people started being afraid of us? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

The group looked at her strangely, until Sunset translated: “Who guards the guardians?”

Fluttershy piped up, “Sometimes I think they do.”

Level Three: Work, or Something Like It

Level Three: Work, or Something Like It

“I can’t believe you yelled at her,” Spooky said in awe.

Treble sat on the couch with his head in his hands. “I know.”

“I mean, you know her friends can like, puree you, right?”

The musician fell backwards into the wall of the couch dramatically, staring up at the ceiling. “I KNOW. She just… god she makes me so damn mad!”

They had all reconvened in their usual dump of a hideout later that afternoon, more out of habit than any kind of strategy meeting. The room was silent for a moment following Treble’s outburst, save for the clickety-clak of a keyboard on the far side of the couch. Distracted from his frustrations by the noise, he lazily slid his gave in that direction.

“Hey Dusty, how’s the research coming?” Treble asked.

“Fuckin eat me,” was the response.

Eyebrows met shaggy hair as Treble responded in surprise, “Whoa, dude. Sorry.”

Dusty sat back in his seat, glaring at the screen. “Sorry, it’s not you. Fuckin office next door changed their wifi password again. Been working on it for like the last half hour.”

Bones spoke up, “And you can’t exactly stroll over there and ask them. I think… aren’t we all banned from that coffee shop?”

“Everyone except Rubble,” Dusty agreed. Then he looked around, distracted from his monotonous task. “Hey, where the hell is that guy, anyway? Does he… is he working today?”

Treble leaned over the side of the couch, digging a pack of smokes out of an old trunk they used for storage. “Yeah, his uncle got a new contract putting in a roundabout out near Crystal Prep.” Tapping the pack on the arm of the couch, he pulled out two sticks: one he put in his mouth, the other he turned upside down and returned to the pack.

“Hey, hit me up, bitch,” grumbled Dusty, obviously in need of something relaxing. Or an approximation thereof.

Treble grinned around his smoke, and tossed his friend the pack. Then he patted his pockets looking for a lighter. “Wait… shit that’s right. I left it in the locker so Cranky wouldn’t fuckin confiscate it again.”

Dusty groaned, pack in one hand and a cigarette half out of the package in the other. “Man. You know I don’t carry lighters anymore.” He moved to hand the pack back when Spooks spoke up.

“I got a light.”

Treble and Dusty both gave their gaunt friend weird looks. Between the four of them, only Dusty and Treble smoked: the former because his parents always had, so he’d picked up on the habit; the latter because he thought it completed his grunge rocker image. Spooks was way to skinny to smoke, for fear he’d pass out in a day, and Rubble just hated the taste. And the smell. Really he just glared whenever someone lit up in his vicinity, save his friends. Because they didn’t care.

Dusty spoke up first, “Uh, you DO?”

Spooks nodded, and rummaged through a pile of miscellaneous crap behind his seat. A bowling ball rolled across the floor, making it’s escape from the heap as the ghostly kid made all kinds of uncharacteristically loud noise digging through scrap. He returned to his seat, holding his ‘light’: an acetylene torch. “Yeah.” The torch blazed to life with a small click. The light blazed bright, reflecting in what the other boys noticed were a pair of welding goggles Spooky hadn’t been wearing a few moments ago.

The smokers traded a slightly worried glance, until Treble shrugged with a blase’ expression. “Eh, fuck it. Better than trying to dig a match out of the kitchen again.” He leaned across the couch and poked the end of his cigarette into the flame. For about a second. “FUCK ME that’s hot!” he yelped, barely holding onto his smoke as he pulled his hand back. He raised an eyebrow as Dusty just lit his smoke off the tip of Treble’s.

“Also better than digging matches out of the kitchen. Fuckin knife drawer,” Dusty grumbled, taking a drag off his fag and returning to the computer.

Spooks put the torch away, setting it a distance from the pile lest the hot metal ignite something else, and picked up a book from a small stack on the other side of his chair. Maybe about ten books in total, they all looked to have seen better days, and were practically bursting at the seems with extra notes, paper clips, and Post-It’s shoved in.

Dusty heard the paper rustle and asked, not turning his head, “How’s your gramps’ notes comin’? Anything decent this time?”

“Not yet,” came the wispy reply. “Hees got a lot from the time he wrote about the hecatoncheires. Bunch of wild stuff about like, other All Hallow’s rituals and junk. MAN people get crazy on Halloween.”

Treble lounged against the back of the couch, returning his gaze to the ever-interesting ceiling. A lock of hair fell in his face, and he blew it away, a puff of smoke pushing it aside. “Yeah they do. So how do we know it’s these hecta… hecate… hundred-handed dealies this time instead of one of the million fuckin other things that like to pop up this time of year?”

Bones shrugged. “I don’t, not a hundred percent. But it’s the best match. It’s like, think of it like a Google search. You’re gonna get a bunch of responses no matter what you type in, cause the internet’s crazy like that. But it tries to sort everything by the best matches. Sometimes it’s spot on, sometimes the information just isn’t there, and sometimes there’s so fuckin much of it it just gives you what you think the best fit is. Right now this Greek giant freak show is the best I got. Or, at least, the most likely. It certainly ticks the most boxes, anyway.”

Treble nodded, his gaze still skyward. “Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but what do we do if it’s, you know, not that at all?”

Bones closed the book he was working on, and traded it back into the pile for another one. A piece of paper fell out, and he looked at it interestingly, until deciding it wasn’t relevant. Flipping the new book open carefully, he answered, “Why do you think I gave Rubble armory duty this time? He might come back with like, a tank. Name me one fight an M1-Abrahms doesn’t make easier.”

“Cloverfield,” the other two boys responded.

*DING* "HA! Got it!" Dusty exclaimed, and went to work with renewed vigor.

Rubble leaned against the side of a cement mixer, catching his breath. The sun had started to set, and the rest of the crew were packing up. He felt a tap on his shoulder, and looked up to see his uncle staring down at him. Which, given how tall Rubble was for his age, said something about the middle-aged bear of a man getting his attention.

“What’s up, Uncle Hammer?”

Jack Hammer, a career foreman and the closest thing Canterlot probably had to the tank his friends were hoping he’d bring home, gave him a wide smile that was missing some teeth. “Ya done good today, son. Hop inna truck, I’ll give ya a ride home.” Though with his accent it sounded more like “yaride”.

Rubble nodded appreciatively, following the big man to an even bigger truck: the kind of heavy-duty modern pickup that tows other pickups when they get tired. Throwing his bag in the back, along with is tool belt and hard hat, Rubble slid into the passenger seat and almost melted into the custom leather. Since the days were getting colder the seats no longer stuck to him like glue after a long day. He felt the truck dip as Jack climbed in, and shake slightly as his uncle slammed the door. There was a slight jingle of keys, then the beast roared to life with vim, vigor, and a lot of horses. A couple of seat belt clicks later, and they pulled out of the site, peeling into traffic with slightly more reckless abandon that would make a normal person comfortable. Rubble relaxed as the pur of the engine reverberated through the seat, into his back.

“So, kid, your mom tells me you got a dance comin’ up. That Fall Formal thing? In’t that where everything went to hellenahandbasket last year?” Jack’s particular dialect had a habit of running words together like freeway accidents.

“Yeah,” Rubble groaned. “Boys’n’me’re tryin’ ta’ keep it from happenin’ again.” Rubble’s own country roots always let slip around his family, though he could make himself sound ‘normal’ with relative ease. He was just too tired to try.

Hammer shook his head as he gave traffic a once-over, his blinker on only for a second as he passed some mini-van with a rather irate mother at the wheel. “Yeah, well, jus’ don’ die. I mean, a year ago I wouldn’ even believe in all this monster fuckery. Now is’ like… what next?” Their family’s specific brand of country also had a tendency to drop ‘unnecessary’ letters like fourth period french.

Rubble straightened himself in his seat, leaning against the window. “God, do I know what you mean.” He let out a sigh as the city passed him, the blur of the paint on the road a stark contrast to the seemingly slow pace of the faraway buildings. He found himself wondering what kind of lives the occupants had, and whether it really was just him and a dozen kids in high school against the world.

Jack gave his nephew a sideways glance, worry tugging at the corners of his eyes like fishhooks. “Rubble, I want you to know… I’m proud of ya’. I know yer mom an’ I say it all the time, but we really mean it. I mean, I know y’all get into trouble more often’n’not, but yer a good kid. Hell, yer spendin’ your afernoon diggin’ ditches an’ haulin’ broke rocks ‘stead’a hangin’ wit yer friends. I know yer grades ain’ all that an’ a bag a’ chips, but who’s worried about straight A’s when yer savin’ the world?”

Rubble looked to his uncle long enough to give him a grateful smile. It wasn’t like people didn’t know what they did. There weren’t many, but their families at least had some idea. Most of Canterlot, if not the county, had an inkling of the supernatural happenings in the city, mainly because a bunch of them had gone viral over the last year or two. Not everyone knew everything, of course not. And only a small handful of folks knew what Rubble and his friends got up to in the dark. They’d decided a long time ago that their families should know, had to know, in case something happened to them. They didn’t all approve, and at first there had been more than enough resistance to their shenanigans to make things difficult, but now it was just… something they did. Something they lived with.

Uncle Jack Hammer was one of those that had fought tooth and nail at first when he’d heard about their antics. Actually, his first response was that they were making up bullshit to cover the other trouble he thought they were getting into. There had been a moment, much like with the other boys’ families, where he’d been forced to accept the truth of what was going on, and at that point he’d adamantly objected to Rubble’s monster-fighting “hobby”. ’I already lost a brother to one war, I ain’t losin’ a nephew to another’, he’d argued. But that hadn’t stopped Rubble, or any of the boys. They’d just kept fighting. Sneaking out when they had to. They’d all gotten good at picking locks and jumping out of second-story windows.

Eventually, Hammer had come to the realization that there wasn’t any stopping the boy. Kicking and screaming he’d been, but he’d come. So he did the next best thing he could to keep his nephew alive: teach him how to fight. How to really fight. None of that swing-wild hope-you-hit-something back-alley brawling that had left Rubble with more injuries than answers. Hammer hadn’t always been a foreman, but he also hadn’t been a military man like his brother. He’d learned all his fighting in the ring in high school and college: kickboxing, akido, and a little good old fashioned karate. He’d grown out of some of it, and wasn’t the best teacher, but he knew enough to make him dangerous, and to keep his ‘student’ alive.

At his behest, though Hammer would never use that word in his lifetime, Rubble had also started taking actual self-defence classes. The kid had learned his way around a combat knife, a set of brass knuckles, and was slowly but surely learning akido from someone with more recent training than twenty years ago.

Truth be told, Hammer was almost glad his almost-a-son had started fighting monsters. That way he wouldn’t work out his aggression on someone that didn’t deserve it. He also wanted the boy to learn a bit more discipline than he seemed to demonstrate, if only so the boy could keep his head about him when he had to go into the real world. Of course, between the fighting, the lessons, school, and the odd job he did for his uncle’s construction company, the boy really had no hope of a social life outside of his monster-fighting club.

Which frankly saved Jack the trouble of the birds-and-the-bees talk, although he had an idea the kid probably knew more than he did. Damn internet.

After what seemed like an eternity, they’d turned onto the road Rubble lived on with his mom: a segment of military housing that, while not grand, did its best to cater to widows and widowers of servicemen and women. Jack pulled into the driveway of the small two-bedroom house, and put the truck in park. He left the engine running, though, to have a word or two more before they got out of the car. “Listen, kid. We are proud a ya’. An’… an’ he would be, too.”

Rubble started a bit at the rare mention of his father, but smiled despite himself. “Yeah. Maybe. Maybe he wouldn’t want his son off fighting battles before he’d even trudged his way through high school.”

“Or maybe,” Hammer retorted, in a rare moment of insight, “Your old man would’ve picked up somethin’ heavy and ran in swingin’ right next to ya.”

Level Four: Break it Down

Level Four: Break it Down

The weekend had come quicker than they boys anticipated. Of course, it usually feels like that, once Friday afternoon happens. Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays feel like the weekend will never come. Thursday you make plans. Friday you just stare at the clock. Given all that went on in their lives, however, it was easy to keep yourself so busy you didn’t notice until that final bell rang. Normally, they’d spend their weekends relaxing. Unfortunately the upcoming Fall Formal, which was now only a week away, left them with plenty to do, both socially and personally.

Like most afternoons, they’d all hitched a ride in Rubble’s station wagon. Yet another hand-me-down from his father. He’d gotten his license as soon as he could so that he could throw himself behind the wheel, and it had been quite the useful tool in their last year of monster-hunting. Of course, this led to more than a few bumps and bruises along the way, and the normally once-pristine white four door was now a tragic shade of spotted brown, with several dents and scratches along its hide. The rear passenger window was in fact just a sheet of plastic held in place with a generous amount of tape, only two of the tires matched, and the trunk never quite opened and closed right after Dusty had landed on it wrong.

The engine itself worked as well as it should for its age, through the combined efforts of Rubble and Uncle Jack, and it got from point A to point B without much to-do. Even though it looked like it had gone a few rounds with a landslide, that only gave it the perfect camouflage in the neighborhood where they’d set up their hideout; it looked like every other beat-down relic of machinery that littered the roadside here. Just parked better.

As it pulled into a makeshift parking space comprised of a tarp fastened to some old fencing and a generous square of shoveled-out gravel, ‘Bumper’, as Rubble affectionately referred to it came to a halt, the engine barely clicking off before four boys piled out of it. Dusty and Treble moved to the back of the car, where the former fought with the trunk handle for a minute or so before the latter gave it a swift kick in the side, prompting the hatch door to pop open and catch Dusty in the nose.

“OW. You FUCK I hate it when you do that,” Dusty grumbled, holding his face in his hand and checking for blood. Finding none, he leaned under the hatch and lugged out a large metal lockbox only a couple feet shorter than he was. Seeing his friend struggle with the weight, Treble grabbed the other end, throwing the backpack he’d dug out over his shoulder.

“Sorry, Double D. Lemme help. Hey, you bring your laptop?” Treble added as an afterthought, not seeing the bag in the back with the rest of their stuff.

“I got it!” rasped Spooks. Treble turned his head to see the spotted kid pat a black square bag on his side, which fit oddly well with his usual old-timey attire. He’d left the vest at home this time, settling instead for a large wool jacket. It was starting to get cold and the skinny kid had problems with low temperatures. More than a few ‘cold spot’ jokes had been made at his expense.

Dusty just grunted, nodded, and surged forward with the huge metal box in one arm, almost pushing Treble over, who quickly fell into step. Rubble ducked in behind the two as they hauled the crate into the hideout, digging the last few bags (another backpack and his large duffel), out of the trunk, before slamming it shut. He then kicked it a couple of times until he heard it latch with a satisfying ‘clunck”.

“Right, you guys set up in the sitting room, I bought stuff for burgers tonight. And yes, Spooks, I also bought some TV trays. Uncle Jack swung me by the store yesterday and I dropped ‘em off last night. I’d’a told y’all yesterday but you lot had already gone home,” Rubble explained, shifting the backpack, which he had soon discovered was full of more of Spooky’s books, farther up on his shoulder. Falling in line with the rest of the group, who were all chatting happily about the concept of food, they all marched into their ‘secret’ base.

It took a few minutes until everything was set down and stashed somewhere they weren’t going to trip on it. The large trunk they’d just set in front of the couch as a makeshift table/footrest. Stretching out on the juryrig furniture, Dusty mused, “Ey. We should leave this big-ass box here when we’re done. Makes a great table thing.”

Treble, who was currently digging out the food from the backpack he’d hauled in and handing it to Rubble, gave Dusty a sideways glance. “Table thing? You mean, you know, a table?”

Rubble rolled his eyes, taking the bag of burger patties and assorted fixings back to the kitchen while Treble and Dusty argued semantics. Spooky made himself at home in his usual lounge chair, leaning the book bag against one side and fishing out a rather sizeable tome. Contrary to the usual raggedy and well-read journals and references his grandfather had left behind, this one looked new-ish. There was still some wear around the edges, some yellowing of the pages, and more than a bit of tarnish on the cover. Compared to the usual faire, however, it looked basically freshly minted.

Rubble glanced up from the cooking station and, noticing the large book in Spooky’s lap, asked, “Where’d that mother of an encyclopedia come from? That’s new.”

The other two boys, who had resorted to immature scuffling on the couch, stopped long enough to glance at the large book. Spooky looked even smaller than usual by comparison, but somehow the image of him in an old reading chair with a grand tome in his lap suited him. Treble and Dusty unpinned each other from the couch, and moved to sit on their knees in front of Bones.

“Tell us a story, Grandpa,” said Treble, his voice raising a few octaves in a childish impression.

“Story time, story time!” Dusty bounced in his seat, looking like an excited five-year old.

Bones was used to the reaction. To him it was an old joke, one they’d used many times. “Alright, you little shits, gather ‘round. This is the story of how I bought a book on the internet.”

Dusty stopped mid-bounce, his childish impersonation giving way to confusion. “Where the hell did you get money? That book doesn’t look cheap, even if it is almost as beat-ass-old as Rubble’s car.”

Bones just raised an eyebrow, idly turning the page. “I sold some of my paintings.”

The whole room cringed. Treble gave up his kiddish charade and jumped back into the couch. “Who the hell would by that nightmare fuel?”

Now, normally, such a comment would be rather offensive to an artist. Spooks, however, had long since accepted that his paintings were anything but ordinary. He had a talent for… evoking certain emotions with his work. Not to say he wasn’t a skilled artist. In fact, that was part of the problem. He was excellent at detail, and color, and several more technical artistic terms that the other boys had never bothered to learn how to spell, much less their meanings. It just so happened that his talent and eye for detail lent itself to some truly horrific imagery. Usually involving things with too many limbs, eyes, or appendages of the indescribable variety. “Found a guy in Manehatten who runs a production company that does indie horror films and this web series about like, haunted stores and office buildings and junk. It’s not that great.”

The rest of the group dismissed the subject, not really wanting to know more. Dusty, who had also reclaimed his spot on the couch, finally asked, “So what the hell is that book, anyway?”

Not looking up from the page, Bones explained, “It’s an old grimoire put together from a now-defunct coven from Trottingham. There’s a bunch of stuff in here about old rituals and material spellwork. You know, the kind of stuff that doesn’t require extradimensional horse magic. I actually bought it last month, but didn’t get it in the mail until like, a week ago. I dug it out cause I thought it might have something about this Hundred-Handed One ritual. So far, nothing specific, but there’s some tangentially related stuff here that is giving me some ideas.”

Rubble gave him a knowing smirk, the burger patties just starting to sizzle on the griddle. “What kind of ideas?”

“Like, ‘where to put the dynamite’ ideas,” Bones answered, his gaze still focused on the pages. His smile mirrored his friends, however.

Treble and Dusty traded excited glances, but their barely-concealed glee gave way to confusion and concern as an unfamiliar sound rung out through the room.

Someone was knocking on the door.

The group looked to the big metal security door that served as the front entrance to their home away from home, as another knock rang out. It was polite, short, and evenly spaced. So, in short, no one they knew. At least not off the top of their heads.

“I’ll get it,” Treble said with no lack of sarcasm, making a show of standing up and striding over to the door. His hand rested on the door handle, though he didn’t open it. Instead, he called through the thick metal, “Who is iiiiit?”

“Just open the damn door, Deep,” game a familiar feminine voice. It sounded angry, which wasn’t unusual for him, but he couldn’t quite place it.

Treble undid a few locking mechanisms, including a bolt that led into the concrete wall (courtesy of Uncle Jack), and pulled the door open with some to-do. His curious expression gave way to a distressed glare as he saw who it was. “The fuck do you want, Baconator?”

Sunset Shimmer crossed her arms and glared daggers at the greeting. “We need to talk. You gonna invite us in, or not?”

“Us?” Treble asked, curiosity mixing its way back into his features as he glanced behind Sunset. Tucked away almost into a corner, was Twilight sparkle, holding a large bag of her own. Only a few feet away from her was, to Treble’s surprise, another Twilight Sparkle. “Oh, FUCK me!” he cried, throwing his hands in the air and marching back to the couch.

The three girls strode into the room, taking in the less-than-pristine surroundings with a mixture of curiosity, appall, and hesitation. They were met with an almost matching set of glares from the residents.

Dusty rolled his eyes and dug out a pack of cigarette, passing one to Treble. The green-skinned boy occupied himself with lighting his as Dusty asked, not-so-politely, “The hell are you doing here? How do you even know where this place is?”

Sunset opened her mouth to retort, when the Twilight who wasn’t wearing glasses offered sheepishly, “We, uh, we followed your car. It’s not exactly hard to find.”

Spooks sighed heavily, slamming his book shut and setting it aside. He stood up and walked into the kitchen, where he gently removed a rather sharp spatula from the angry grip of a visibly distressed Rubble. The scrappy kid took the hint and stepped away from the kitchen, where they kept all the sharp things and hot metal. Bones took over cooking while Rubble took the reading chair, his expression not lightening in the least.

“You followed us?! Why?!” Rubble growled, partially wishing he still had something sharp in his hands. He looked at the trunk for half a second with a sense of longing.

Sunset glared at the Twilight who had spoken up, then launched into her explanation. “Because if we leave you alone to do whatever it is you guys are going to do to stop this… giant monster hand thing-”

“Hecatoncheires,” both Twilights and Spooks said in chorus.

“-whatever. Look, I don’t know what kind of game plan you had, but it sounded an awful lot like throwing yourselves into an army of armed golems hoping to take out as many as you can before you do something stupid like die. So I asked Princess Twilight-” she gestured to the one without glasses, “-if she’d ever heard of these things. And she had some insight into the subject I thought you might want to hear.”

“And you decided to invite yourselves into our humble abode, why exactly?” Dusty grunted.

Sunset returned his glare. “Because you skate away as soon as you see us. You,” she pointed to Treble, “Spent a good five minutes earlier this week explaining exactly what your problem with me is. This one,” she jabbed a thumb at Rubble, “had to have a metal spatula taken away from him just because I walked into the room. “And frankly, Spooks, you scare the crap out of me.”

“No, that’s fair,” Bones agreed, with a satisfied smile.

“Right. So I figured the best way for you lot to actually stand still and listen to what we had to say was to corner you here, instead of at school where you could just run off or find any number of excuses to ignore us,” Sunset concluded.

“You,” Treble corrected.

Shimmer’s eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”

Rubble crossed his arms and smiled mirthlessly. “He said you. This one,” he jabbed a thumb at the Twilight with glasses, who had stepped off to the side and was standing in the cleanest spot of room she could find, “just got dragged into all of this, and is making the best of it. And the Princess here, well, we’ve met her all of twice, and frankly, she’s not that bad. You’re the one we generally have a problem with.”

As if to demonstrate this fact, Spooks stepped away from the griddle long enough to find a fold-out metal chair in the corner. He unfolded it and set it on the floor, dusting it off with a paper towel and gesturing for the more timid Twilight to take a seat, which she did so hesitantly.

Sunset just spluttered indignantly, while the princess asked, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to know exactly what your problem with my friend is,” she said sternly, looking very much in that moment like the royalty she was. An effect that was only slightly diminished by the purple t-shirt and dark blue jeans she was wearing.

Dusty’s eyes made the return trip around his orbital sockets, pulling a now-lit cigarette out of his mouth and counting off on his fingers. “Let’s see. She made our freshman year a living hell, hijacked our minds and tried to send us unarmed into a world full of magic ponies and fire-breathing dragons to fight a war for her, unleashed an ungodly amount of magic into the world, which we’ve been spending the last year hack-and-slashing our way through the rabble and leftovers of trying to keep people alive, and then she thinks all she has to do is fire a bunch of ‘Friendship Lasers’ everywhere and everyone just suddenly loves her. No, honestly I can’t think of anything,” he finished, his voice so thick with sarcasm he felt like he might need to wash his shirt twice.

Sunset’s eye twitched indignantly, while Princess Twilight spoke up again. “Setting aside most of those grievances, which I’m sure you’re going to want to settle on your own time-”

“-this IS our own time!” Rubble barked, leaning forward in his chair. Treble motioned for him to lean back, and take a breath. Rubble complied, although it didn’t make him feel any better.

“-fair enough. But there are a few things in that list I’d like to address. For one, the presence of magic in this world isn’t Sunset’s fault,” the Princess explained.

The room went a bit quiet after that, as this news was met with both disbelief and confusion. Even Sunset was taken aback. “Um… what do you mean? There was no magic in this world until I brought the crown here.”

Princess Twilight sighed, and walked over to a loose beanbag chair a few feet from Rubble’s chair. “No, Sunset, you didn’t. Think about it. If there was no magic in this world, how had the sirens been able to stay alive so long? How did Starswirl even forge a connection between the two worlds if there wasn’t enough energy on this side of the portal to keep it open? There’s been magic in this world just as long as there has in Equestria: it’s just so drastically different than what we use that we’re basically incompatible. That’s why Equestrian magic works so differently here. The ambient magic of this realm interferes with it at almost a fundamental level. I mean, would anything like the geodes be even remotely possible in Equestria?”

Sunset tapped her chin in thought. “Well… ok, I guess that all makes sense. So none of this stuff has been my fault?”

Twilight shook her head. “I didn’t say that. The crown was definitely your fault,” Twilight said with a smirk. Sunset smiled guiltily. “And the sirens wouldn’t have come to the school if they hadn’t detected the Equestrian magic we had to use to stop you.”

Glasses Twilight spoke up, raising her hand like she was in class. “And I wouldn’t have built that magic detector if not for all the magic you girls threw around fighting the sirens and… well… each other.”

Spooks pulled a few burgers off the grill, setting up buns on plates and laying out the fixings for dinner. Treble and Dusty stood up to get food; Rubble was still fuming slightly. “Also,” Spooks added, “If Adorkable here,” he gestured to Not-Princess Twilight, who blushed, “Hadn’t Hadokened the statue holding the portal, none of that extradimensional magic would have escaped, hit the cave in the Everfree -yes we know about that we’re not stupid- and that mess wouldn’t have gone down. So you should really be thanking her for your super powers.”

Rubble grinned malevolently. “So yeah, really all of that is exactly your fault. So wait,” he added, giving an attentive glance to the Princess now sitting beside him. “Where did all these monsters and crap come from? If there’s always been magic here, the monsters must have been around this whole time, right? So why are we only seeing them in droves over the last year or so.”

The Princess gave an apologetic look to Sunset. “Well, actually, that part is all of our fault. With all of the magic we’ve all been throwing around, we’re basically a lighthouse to the monster’s boats.”

Rubble raised an eyebrow. “So… what your saying is we should be mad at all of you?”

Princess Twilight sighed. “No. What I’m saying is that, while you do have some valid complaints against Sunset-”

“-HEY!-”

“-you shouldn’t just be shoveling all of your frustration at your current situation on her. No, she isn’t making things any easier, but she’s also trying to do her part to clean up the mess. That’s what she did with the Sirens, and the Friendship Games, and Gaia Everfree. She might not be diving headfirst into every supernatural problem you guys are, but they’re not all just sitting on their haunches, either,” she offered.

Sunset just stood there, slightly uncomfortable. Spooks sighed, picking up his own plate of food, and pulled another fold-out chair out of the corner. He dropped it with a bit less ceremony than Twilight’s, and didn’t bother cleaning it up, but he dropped it just a few feet away from their ‘guest’. “Uh, thanks. Look, I know I treated you all horribly before. I treated everyone horribly before. And I’m still trying to make up for that. But you can’t just stay mad at me all the time, right?”

Treble took a deep drag from his cigarette, and exhaled showily. “You make it kind of easy, actually.”

“What?” Shimmer asked, confused.

“I mean, it’s been almost a whole year, and you’ve never once apologized to us,” the wannabe musician explained, not looking at her. Apparently the ceiling was far more interesting.

Both Twilights looked at her, with varying degrees of incredulity. “You never said ‘I’m sorry’?”

Sunset looked around sheepishly, with a guilty smile. “Um… maybe? I thought it was kind of implied with the whole saving the world thing?”

Bespectacled Twilight smacked her forehead while the Princess just groaned. “Oh, my god, Sunset,” the former groaned.

Level Five: BOOKS

Level Five: BOOKS

Spooky found his “new” book far more interesting than the arguing going on around him. Something about forcing an apology and not really meaning it, on top of all the usual things the two crowds argued about whenever they were in proximity too long. Like both halves of a binary agent being compressed into a single cylinder, something was going to explode. He just hoped it wasn’t a literal explosion this time. That deep fryer was a gift, and replacing it had proven to be more money than they’d hoped.

While the ruckus roared on around him, Bones felt a gentle hand tap his shoulder. He looked up to see the non-Princess Twilight glancing at the tome over his shoulder. This close up, she really was ‘adorkable’. “Sup?” Spooks asked, regretting it almost instantly. ’Sup’? That’s the best you can do? Good job, Bonehead.

Apparently Twilight hadn’t noticed him mentally scolding himself, as she asked, “What is that text, anyway. It doesn’t look like any reference I’ve seen.”

“It’s not, really,” he explained, lifting the front cover slightly to show her the Wiccan symbolism on the binding. “It’s a Book of Shadows from a now-defunct coven from Lower Manehatten. Apparently they’d split up after too many moved away for one reason or another. I bought it on the internet after talking to one of the witches, she’s a friend of mine in this occult chat room. They specialized in research and ritual magic, so she pawned it off on me, since I collect books like that. It’s significantly easier to read than my grandfather’s work, I’ll tell you that.”

She sat down in the folding chair that Bones just now noticed she’d dragged with him. They’d long since eaten, so it made sense that she didn’t want to sit in the far corner all day. And this was technically the quietest place in the room, save for the makeshift bedroom in back. “I’ll be honest,” she said, “I have no idea what a lot of what you just said is. I’m still getting used to the whole ‘magic is real’ thing, and most of my experience is with Equestrian magic.”

Spooks marked the page with a dog-ear, and set the book aside, going into what his friends affectionately referred to as “Professor mode”. Which basically meant he was going to talk a lot about stuff that made their heads hurt. “A coven is a group of witches. They vary in number, depending on their purpose or availability. Most witches are actually just spiritualists from very specific disciplines. They worship the Earth, nature, the elements, and the human form. Some prescribe to a ruling deity of some kind or another. Most of their practices involve small rituals that include herbal treatments, symbolic gestures, and specific prayers. A Book of Shadows is a tome or grimoire that belongs either to the entire coven or a single witch, depending. It’s a collection of their experiences, spells, and rituals they’ve held or witnessed over the years. Each one is wildly different, and contains vastly different information.

“This one in particular interested me because the coven it belonged to focused mainly on collecting and sharing information. Debunking a lot of the myths around Wicca and Paganism, as well as individual practices of witchcraft. They tried to collect as much relevant information as they could. Most of what I’ve read so far is a combination of general information available to everyone in the craft, as well as some more specific subjects that seem to hold some semblance of universal truth. That’s the problem with magic here. It doesn’t work the same way everywhere, because a lot of it has to do with the environment your in. But there are certain aspects that are as close to fact as you can get with a subject this fickle. Things that work the same no matter where you are. Like the rule of three, for example.

“That’s a little more in-depth than I need to go right now, but what I’m looking for here is basically the fundamentals of ritual magic, specifically focusing on certain days of the year. Many rituals involve a holy day of some kind or another, but others, like the one we think someone’s going to try to cast to summon this Hundred-Handed one, require specific calendar dates that have some historical meaning. Usually an anniversary of a specific event, or a numerological oddity,” he paused, worried he might be overloading her with information. To his surprise, however, she seemed to be following along just fine. In fact, she looked downright fascinated.

“Mm-hmm,” she hummed, indicating she was following along, “What do you mean by numerological oddity?”

Spooks smiled despite himself. Usually his lectures were met with fake, or even real, snores. Or yawns. Or balls of paper at his head. “Like a calendar date that doesn’t happen very often. Such as the seventh of July in 2007. A date where the numbers meat a specific pattern of some kind, usually described in some prophecy or religious text. Like Nostradamus’s prediction of the world ending on December 12th, 2012. I think there’s something special about the days surrounding the Fall Formal that are either a requirement for this ritual, or that increase it’s chances for success. Unfortunately all I have to go on is a best guess of what the purpose of the ritual is, as well as some cryptic warnings from my grandfather about what and how to stop it. Nothing concrete. Which to be honest is more common than I’d like.”

Twilight leaned back in her chair, pensive. “You mentioned your grandfather before. What kind of work did he do?”

“His actual job was just some factory worker, but his major passion, at at times, obsession,” Spooks conceded, “Was that of occult lore and cryptozoology. He also studied numerology and cryptology. The work from his early years, unfortunately, is rather sparse, as he was just starting out and learning what was and wasn’t important. I have a feeling he wrote a lot more than I’ve been able to find, but either it’s been degraded or discarded. My mother was never a very big fan of her father-in-laws hobbies. The only reason there’s still any of his work left is that my dad fought tooth and nail to keep it, if only to preserve what little legacy he had. He wasn’t some great businessman or public figure, but he did a lot of work in his time that my father and I would rather not be thrown away.

“Most of what I have that he had written is only slightly before, during, and after he’d lost himself to his work entirely. The notes are sporadic and poorly organized, but there’s some solid information. The major problems with trying to read any of it is that most of it is out of order, and his handwriting was atrocious. There’s a small stack of his later journals right next to you if you want to see what I mean,” Bones added, gesturing to his miniature tower of degrading books.

Twilight looked at them curiously, and picked one off the top. She’d only thumbed through a few pages, collecting the loose notes as they fell out, when she grimaced and put it back down. “You’re not joking. He could have been a doctor.”

Bones laughed, joined soon after by a bright chuckle from the nerdy girl. He started to say more, when he felt a large hand clap him on the back. “Any luck over here? Looks like you’ve got all the brainpower stacked in one corner. Is it helping?”

Bones glanced over his shoulder to see Rubble leaning against the side of his chair. “Well, we haven’t really started. I was just explaining the basics of my research materials, what I’m looking for, the criteria I-”

“Whoa, whoa. Fifty-cent words, dude. There’s a reason the biggest book I read all year was Dorian Gray,” Rubble joked, raising his hands as if to shield himself from his friend’s lecture.

Twilight laughed quietly again, eliciting both an eye roll and smile from Spooks, who explained, in much simpler terms, “No, we haven’t found anything. I was telling her where I got all the books and why they’re so damn hard to read.”

Twilight reached across Bones’ lap, picking up the much larger tome, and pulled it into her lap. The ghastly boy blushed slightly which, given his pale features, made him look like a spotted tomato. He ducked his head, hoping to hide it behind his scraggly hair.

Rubble, of course, noticed his friend’s embarrassment, deciding to catalog it for later verbal abuse. “Yeah, those books are like playing Keno at the library. And you need like, a decoder ring to read the numbers. Fortunately,” he added, patting Spooks on the head, “We have one of those.”

Bones swatted the hand away playfully, his blush all but dissipated. “Yes, but this decoder ring only works when it can focus.”

Rubble shrugged and backed away, slow enough to remain in the conversation. “Yeah. Sure. Focus. That’s what your doing.” Before the gangly boy could respond, he turned and walked away.

The sound of paper on paper drew Bones’ attention as Twilight mused out loud, “Wow. This book is terribly well organized. You’d think for something they wrote in while they leaned that it would be a bit more… scattered.”

“Yeah, I asked about that,” Bones explained, “Turns out this is like, the second edition. They’d rearranged all the information from their original grimoire into this new book. Well, ‘new’. Apparently the book is older than the coven. I’d believe it, anyway. But my friend said they’d reorganized it all into this new book because they’d wanted to publish it at some point, but had a hard time finding an agent. After a while they’d mostly given up. She was pretty excited that I’d shown an interest in buying it, but she didn’t make it easy. I’d love to see the original text, just out of curiosity. I imagine not everything they’d learned made it into the revised addition.”

He noticed after a moment that she was looking at him with a certain interest. “What?”

She started, apparently just realizing she was staring. “Oh, sorry! It’s just… you’re usually really quiet in class. I think this is the most I’ve ever heard you say since I transferred.”

A deeper male voice rang out across the room. “Hah! Try hanging out with him regularly. He doesn’t shut up sometimes!”

Spooks’ eyes took a trip around their sockets. “Gee, thanks Dusty.”

“No problem.”

Bones and not-Princess Twilight seemed to be chatting amicably, as Princess Twilight sat with Dusty and Rubble in their own conversation. Treble and Sunset sat in folding chairs, facing the wall. They’d been put in time-out by majority rule, because they seemed to be more interested in arguing than being productive. Every once in a while one of them would grumble, only to get shushed by the rest of the group.

“Right,” Rubble groaned, sinking into the couch. He waved away a puff of smoke from Dusty’s direction. “So it looks like we’re basically exactly where we were when you lot showed up, except quieter.”

“To be honest,” Dusty chuckled around his cigarette, “That is an improvement. At least nerdpocolypse over there is getting something done. So… what do we do?”

Twilight tucked her hair behind her ear. “Honestly? I’m not even sure we have anything to do. I mean,” she added quickly, seeing the glares on the boys’ faces, “Anything for us girls to do. We don’t have any real experience in Earthly magic. Actually, we don’t have any experience. I can’t really think how we’d be really any help besides our super powers, and even then we’d need to know what we’re doing. As much as I dislike sitting on my haunches and waiting for somepo-somebody else to do the work, it looks like that’s what we’re going to have to do. I’d love to stick around and help with the research, believe me, having a whole new school of magic to learn is like a dream come true, but I can’t. I have to return to Equestria very soon.”

Rubble thought for a second. “Why not take some of the research with you. NOT THE JOURNALS,” he added, as Spooks looked more than ready to protest. “But there’s plenty of books about like, magic and rituals and stuff at the book store. Maybe it would give you a leg up on how things work here.”

The princess shook her head. “That won’t work, unfortunately. I’ve tried. The portal… tends to change things that travel through it. I mean, I’m not even sure where these clothes come from. And any books I bring over are basically gibberish on the other side. No, I’d need an extended stay here to get any real research done, so unfortunately I have to leave that to you guys. Or, well,” she added considering her company. “Those two over there, at any rate. I doubt Treble is any more academically inclined than you two are.”

“HEY!” Treble protested.

“Quiet corner!” Rubble barked back. “You’re not wrong. Our grades don’t suck, mainly because we really don’t need another reason to end up in detention, but we’re not exactly the learning type. I really just kind of hang around until someone points out something that needs a beating.”

Dusty nodded, aiming his next puff of smoke away from the couch. “Yeah, same here. I mean, I’ve learned some wards and seals and stuff, which I seem to have a knack for, but really it’s just small potatoes. Mostly Rubble and I are just the muscle here.”

Princess Twilight cocked her head to the side. “So what does Treble do?”

“Public relations,” came the resounding reply, from all four boys. Both Twilights jumped a little.

“I… see. Well, I don’t really see what else we can do here. More yelling certainly isn’t the answer, and it doesn’t exactly seem like we’re making any headway in the friendship department,” she said with a not-so-sublte glance in Sunset’s direction. The redhead was busy “not glaring” at Treble. “I guess we should just head out. I was really hoping we could make some progress here. But if you guys don’t really have any answers yet, I can’t imagine we’re just going to stumble across some magical mcguffin that’s gonna make all this go away. I really wish I could be more help, but Equestrian mythology is vastly different from yours. I mean, we have dragons and pegasi and hydras, but from what I understand they’re very different here, even. And I’ve never even heard of these hecatoncheires before Sunset wrote me. Although I would like to do a bit more research into… what did you call it, Greek mythology?”

The boys nodded. Then Rubble sighed. “Well, so much for the Orbital Friendship cannon. Not like we could even tell you where to aim the damn thing. Or when.”

“I’m working on it!” Spooks groaned loudly.

“I know!” The scrappy youth stood up, straightening his clothes a little. “Alright, look. I know we don’t all get along like some after-school special, but if we learn anything concrete, we’ll tell you.”

“Yeah,” Dusty agreed. “If only so you know all the right places to stand so you don’t get squished when the debris starts flying.”

Princess Twilight nodded, and called over her shoulder, “Sunset! We’re going!”

Sunset stood up from her time-out spot with much to-do, almost knocking the chair over. She marched to the door rather quickly. “Neat! Let’s go! Twilight!” she barked, diecting her voice at the not-Princess sitting next to Spooks.

The bespectacled girl glanced up from the small book in her hands.. “Actually, I was going to stay here for a bit. I think I can actually read most of this, and I’d like to help.”

Sunset looked ready to Protest, until the other Twilight jumped in. “That sounds like a great idea. Can you guys give her a ride home?” she asked, looking to the rest of the boys.

Dusty nodded. “Yeah, I got room in the car. A couple of us are probably going to spend the night here, anyway. I know that one is.” He jabbed a thumb in Bones’ direction.

The Princess nodded, and Sunset just grumbled something in a low voice. The former ushered her disgruntled friend out the front door, calling back to her counterpart, “See you later!” The other Twilight just smiled and waved, returning her attention to the book.

As the two girls walked out, Treble called from his seat, “Can I get up yet?”

“NO,” came the four replies.

Level Six: FIGHT

Level Six: FIGHT

Dust Devil didn’t do well with sitting around. When it came to his friends, at least they usually had something to do. For now, though, Spooks was nerding it up with Twilight, Treble was sitting in his time-out chair, and Rubble had taken off to answer a last-minute call from his mom. With assurances that he’d be back to give a ride home to anyone who needed it, he’d left the group stranded, and worst of all, he’d left Dusty with nothing to do.

Being the kind of kid who always wanted to challenge himself one way or another, he didn’t do very well just sitting around. Sure, he enjoyed relaxing with the occasional smoke, but he didn’t light up anywhere near as often as Treble did. He was, after all, an athlete of sorts. Lung capacity was mildly important. They’d already eaten, as well, so he couldn’t really occupy himself in the kitchen without wasting food, something the group had already chastised him for on earlier occasions. Not to mention he wasn’t exactly the academic type, so joining the study buddies on the far side of the room was about as appealing as, well, doing nothing like he was right now.

So he settled for the next best thing: going outside. The building they’d taken to holing up in was one of many abandoned sites in the area. What wasn’t abandoned was permanently “under construction” or “opening soon”. It was a small two or three blocks of outer South Canterlot, where a variety of former gang activity, earthquakes, and union strikes had made the place a realtor’s hellhole. Not wanting to put the time or money into revitalizing it, and instead spending all their funding on the parts of Canterlot that looked best in the tourism brochures, the city council had basically left the place to rot.

Which worked out fine for kids like Dust Devil and his friends. It also left quite a bit of open space, mostly concrete, where Dusty could really let loose with his skating. One of the many reasons he never took of his elbow and knee pads anymore, besides the benefit of improvised armor whenever they were fighting god-knows-what, was the freedom to take to the streets wherever he was. He’d been all over this area on a skateboard, scooter, in-line skates, and his current attire, his Heeley’s. Basically tennis shoes with skate wheels built into them, they were one of the few pieces of athletic equipment he was allowed to wear in class. He made a point of not skating in the halls for fear of losing that privilege, too.

They hadn’t been too happy with the black marks his longboard had left on the gym floor last year.

Of course, Dusty wasn’t really an in-school delinquent, like his friends. While Rubble had a tendency to get into fight, Treble was a hopeless flirt who spent a little too much time worrying about girls than grades, and Spooks just kind of terrorized the general population (if mostly on accident), Dusty was the closest to an actual juvenile delinquent out of the crowd. He was developing a nice rap sheet for trespassing and reckless behavior, with a minor in graffiti.

Taking to the streets with a little less reckless abandon as usual, he took a moment to gather his thoughts. How, exactly, were they going to stop a ritual they couldn’t even describe, let alone find? What if they couldn’t stop it at all? How were they going to take down a five-story giant armed literally to the teeth?

What if this wasn’t even the monster they were supposed to be worrying about?

Spooks’ intel was the closest thing they had to reliable, and he’d been wrong a couple of times before. Dusty still had the scars from when they’d all geared up to fight a pack of ghouls, only to find a pack of werewolves instead. Werewolves were much better hunters.

The little wraith had explained his suspicions before (in a way that made Dusty and Rubble doze off halfway through), but honestly they all knew they were shooting in the dark pretty much every time they tried getting ahead of the game. Spooky was a bit more confident in his findings than usual, however, which gave Dusty some confidence of his own, but really all he could do was sit back and wait, hope for the best, and start swinging when the bad guys showed up.

The skater braked to a halt, not realizing he’d done a full lap around the block in his reverie, and stared at the front of the building they’d appropriated. Covered in all kinds of strange graffiti, mostly Dusty’s, to anyone else it just looked like a favorite spot for taggers. He knew better, though. Spooky Bones had given him a series of sigils to put up around the building, wards and charms to keep them protected from scrying and various other mystical bullshit, and Dusty had taken to it like a champ. At least, he thought so. Giving his handiwork a once-over, he noticed some smart-ass had left another tag in the corner, overlapping one of the smaller symbols. “Son of a bitch. It’s not even the right color,” Dusty groaned, giving up his skating in favor of his due diligence as “wardmaster”.

He snapped his wheels back into his shoes, and started digging around a small hiding spot in the rubble for a spare can of paint. Just as his fingers met the familiar metal cylinder, he heard a rustle in the bushes on the back side of the building, just out of view of where he was. Ignoring it at first, making the assumption that some local wildlife was scurrying about, the sound drew his attention again when it got louder. And closer.

Then it showed up. Crashing its way through the bushes came a figure Dusty could only ever describe as a monster: humanoid only in the loosest sense, in that it stood on two legs and had two arms and a head, everything else about it was… wrong. The head itself was misshapen, as if it had been a painting that had melted slowly, the round features of a normal face giving way to an angular visage of distorted flesh that looked more like a growth than a proper body part. Too many eyes blinked from all the wrong directions, running from the top of its bald head down to it’s chest, like rain drops that spun in their sockets. The arms were less arms and more ‘logs of flesh that bent in certain places’. The hands were just as disturbing: large stumps with negligible digits, like the palm had overgrown the rest of the hand.

Its legs were tree stumps made of rippling, disturbing flesh, and its torso was all over scar tissue, like someone had had to sew it together over and over until they got it right. Which, Dusty imagined, was the most likely scenario. Of course, the worst part was the mouth. It was always the mouth. It was a gaping wound where the creature’s neck should have been, like someone had just learned to slit throats and taken to it with the kind of eager zealotry you’d expect from a beginner. The only thing keeping it from unhinging the head was the flesh on the shoulders that fused to the face. Dusty doubted there was even room for a throat: the mouth hung open wide, and all he could see was teeth, misaligned, unmatched, teeth of all sizes and shapes.

He didn’t know what was worse: how ugly it was, or how quiet. All that flesh, all that mouth, and it wasn’t making a sound beyond the slap of its footfalls.

“Greetings, Fuglimous Maximus the Third!” Dusty cheered, not moving from his post. His hand groped quietly amongst the rubble, foregoing the spray can in favor of one of the other items in his stash.

Namely, the big fucking metal wrench.

Dusty beat the heels of his shoes on the sidewalk, feeling the wheels pop back out again, and he rolled backwards to give himself some space to gain momentum. “Ain’t no place like home,” he mused, an in-joke of his that only Spooks really ever got.

The beast had obviously seen him, and shambled forth with a speed Dusty hadn’t expected. Fortunately, it wasn’t as fast as his running, which was nowhere near as fast as his skating. He backed up, slowly at first, luring the creature into the street. When it had lined itself up in the middle of the road like a good little bowling pin, Dusty turned around and bolted. Only for a block or two, mind, as he drifted to the right. Hooking the wrench on an old, bent signpost, he pivoted around, all but launching himself in the flesh beast’s direction.

“Swing battah battah!” he jeered, the wrench dragging on the sidewalk, sparks flying behind it. He leaned forward, pulling his improvised weapon into both hands as he made a beeline for his opponent. The lumbering mutation lurched forward, meeting the challenge with all the intelligence of a bag of skin and muscle (which it was), as Dusty again drifted to the right.

He brought the wrench up in an arc that carried with it all the momentum and force Devil could muster, connecting with the creature’s upper jaw, and tearing it’s mouth all the way open. The sickening ‘squish-crack’ sound it made echoed over the buzzing of Dusty’s wheels, a sound he wouldn’t soon forget. The skater made it a dozen feet or so before he wheeled himself around, braking to a stop to get a good look at his handiwork.

The thing’s entire head had been knocked back, but not off, as it’s mouth was now a plateau of flesh and teeth atop a mountain of freak show. And still it shambled. Dusty doubted it had a brain in it’s head to even shut down, let alone an obvious weak spot. So he did what any good soldier does: call for backup.

He beat the wrench on the pavement, the metal clanking echoing through the silent streets. “FIGHT!” he yelled, and charged the beast again, not waiting for a response.

He was all ready to take another swing at the beast, when he learned a moment to late that it, too, learned. He’d drifted to the side, mush like last time, only to be met with a log-like arm across the face as the beast swung wildly at his head.

The blow knocked stars into his vision as he tumbled an uncomfortable speed down the road, rolling end-over-end on the sidewalk. When he finally came to a stop, a trickle of red in his vision served as an uncomfortable reminder. “Oh, right. Forgot a helmet. Shitty,” he groaned, pulling himself to his hands and knees. The rest of him hadn’t fared nearly as bad. Always wear your elbow and knee pads, kids. He looked around for his wrench, only to see the blow had knocked it right out of his hands, and it was currently in a rather suboptimal position: on the other side of the monster.

The beast surged forward, and even made it a few heavy steps before another sound drew its attention. The slamming of a big metal door as Treble, Spooks, and then Twilight all ran into the street.

“THE FUCK IS THAT?!” Treble shrieked, in a rather unmanly voice. One that Dusty filed away for later under ‘Things to Mock DT With’.

Spooks took a moment to answer. “Well, the good news is, we now know for sure that the hecatoncheires is a thing.”

“And the bad?!” Teble asked, in a slightly lower pitch. Still sounded like a girl, Dusty thought.

“THAT is a flesh golem,” Spooks said simply, as he rummaged through his messenger bag; an accessory Dusty hadn’t noticed until now. The kid pulled out a spray can and a lighter, and inched towards the beast.

Treble just shook his head, “Well, fuck me. We gotta fight like a hundred of these things?” He dug his hands into his pockets, and came up with brass knuckles on each hand. Not strictly illegal in Canterlot, but frowned upon. Mostly. When there was someone around to do the frowning.

The golem lunged towards the new threat, as Treble took advantage of its slow speed and minimal intelligence, ducking under it and landing a blow to its torso that, on any regular person, might have broken ribs. To the golem it was like a clap on the back that missed.

Dusty took advantage of the distraction to put his wheels back in his shoes, and close the distance between him and his wrench. The beast took notice, most likely because it now literally had eyes in all directions, and stumbled backwards after him. There was a sickening crack and pop as its arms reoriented themselves, so they could reach behind it like it was the front all along.

“Oh that’s just wrong,” Dusty groaned, almost ready to hurl. He led his wrench like a sword, and steadied himself to take a swing, when he heard a slight clicking sound.

Then it got really bright and hot, as Spooks turned his spray can and lighter into an improvised flamethrower. Searing heat and bright light washed over the plateau of teeth and rows of eyes in a moment, as the arms flailed about wildly. Dusty stepped back in case one of the meat logs caught him in the shoulder, or worse, the head again. The golem seemed to finally realize exactly what part of itself was on fire, as it smacked itself wildly about the head and neck.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Dusty mused, changing stances and holding the wrench above his head like a hammer. He brought it down with all the weight and strength he had, catching the top half of the beast’s head, and tearing it the rest of the way off.

It flailed for a bit longer, then fell to its knees. Then finally, it fell all the way forward, as the flames sought out the rest of their fuel in its flesh.

In a few minutes it would be nothing but ash and bone.

“Well, good news good news bad news time,” Dusty grinned, tasting blood through the smile.

“Good news?” Spooks asked.

“You were right about the golems and the Hundred-handed ones,” Dusty answered.

“Bad news?” Treble followed up, looking for the world like he was trying not to hurl.

“These things hit like fucking mach trucks,” Dusty groaned, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck.

There was an uncomfortable splashing sound as Twilight lost her lunch against a street sign. “Wha-what’s the...” she stopped as another wave of bile hit the pavement. “What’s the other good news?” she asked weakly, wiping her mouth. She looked up in time to see a familiar station wagon pull op the road with its headlights on.

“We know how to kill them: break off their heads and burn them,” Dusty explained, gesturing to the diminishing pile of flesh and flames in the middle of the street as an example.

The station wagon’s driver door slammed as Rubble got out. “Aw, man?! You fuckers got to the fighting without me?! You all suck!”

Level Eight: Sunset Shimmer?

Level Eight: Sunset Shimmer?

Ruble Maker hadn’t always been an aggressive kid. Which was one of the primary reasons his teachers were so disappointed in him. When he’d first started high school, his grades had been average, his friends had been average, and he’d joined maybe one or two clubs at different times. In short, he basically blended into the background like everyone else, which was something most of his teachers appreciated, although they’d never say it outright.

To say the loss of his father changed him would not only be an understatement, it would be a grievous misjudgment of character. Rubble had taken his time with the stages of grief, getting to know each one personally and sitting down to lunch with it. Of course, grief never really leaves you, and even though he’d made some small semblance of peace with it, he seemed to have not only had lunch with anger, but regularly invited it over to hang out.

Over the course of the last year Rubble’s reputation had flown in so many different directions as to be able to complain that the frequent flier miles were garbage, and they needed to change credit cards. He’d gone from the tall kind of beefy kid who didn’t do any sport, to the kid who’d lost his father and now everyone felt sorry for him, to the boy who would pick fights with people twice his size on a daily basis. From there he’d taken a short pit stop at the scary brute looking for a reason to fight, finally settling in as one of a group of misfit delinquents who didn’t actually cause any real trouble (Dust Devil notwithstanding).

Of course, he hadn’t done much to curb people’s idea of him as an angry brute, despite having a much more viable, and productive, use for all of his outrage, and so most the other students -and some teachers- opted to just let him be.

One of those students was NOT Sunset Shimmer.

Rubble had been sitting in the library in a rare moment of research, as he was now tasked with the job of finding more effective ways to light things on fire without breaking any laws. Namely, they needed a better weapon against the golems than a lighter and hairspray, and none of them was old enough to purchase a flamethrower, legal as they might be in this state. So he was spending his Monday afternoon digging through chemistry and engineering textbooks looking for new and exciting ways to commit very, very individualized arson. Again, without actually breaking the law. The last thing any of them needed was a felony.

It was here Sunset Shimmer found him, nose-deep in a book that he not only looked out of place holding, but was actually having a difficult time reading. She sat down across from him without so much as a hello, and asked in a rather accusatory whisper, “Do I even want to know what you’re doing with AP Chem books?”

Now, it should be said that while Rubble wasn’t Treble’s biggest fan, he also didn’t share the 80’s throwback’s active distaste for the girl. Of course he wasn’t at all pleased at the situation he’d found himself in over the last year, although admittedly it was his choice to be there in the first place. In addition, like the rest of the group, he laid at least a little bit of blame at Sunset’s feet for having dragged this mess with her in the first place. This didn’t mean he disliked her, however. Of course the memory of her reign of tyranny still lingered in his mind, slowly growing stale, but he’d also dabbled in being a bitch, and thought it might be a bit hypocritical of him to deny the former bully the chance to redeem herself. Even if her sudden change in temperament was a bit suspicious.

In fact, he was actually relatively okay with having her around sometimes. His biggest issue with her presence was Treble’s tendency to pick a fight with her at the drop of a hat, and the two were rarely apart nowadays, so he mostly avoided her just to keep the noise down. Moments like this, on the other hand, were fine with him. She didn’t leave a bad taste in his mouth like some of his friends, and she wasn’t bad to look at.

He did, however, bring issue with her always accusing him of something. Even if the majority of the time she was right. “Looking for new and inspiring methods of flame-eology.”

She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Rubble, I know you’re not the brightest bulb in the box, bot we both know that isn’t a word.”

“You don’t know my life,” he argued, albeit through a small smile.

“Wha-no. Not… I’m not having that conversation. Look, why are you… why are you looking up ways to set things on fire?” And what is wrong with me that I understood what he meant? she mentally berated herself.

“Ok, so you know the whole flesh golem other-dimensional monstrosity thing going on?” he asked, setting his book down in favor of another, heavier text on pyrotechnical engineering (not that he knew that’s what it was called).

“...not a sentence I’d ever thought I’d be able to follow in my lifetime, but sure, go on,” Shimmer groaned, resting her head in her hand and her elbow on the table.

“Well, apparently we gotta set them on fire. Spooks explained it to me, but really all I got was something something burning flesh something something can’t regenerate. So then Treble explained it to me, and he was all ‘We have to burn them because that way they don’t have enough gross meat stuff to throw together to summon the big ugly thing.’ I thought that was a bit condescending so I smacked him around with a newspaper-”

“-of course you did-”

“-of course I did. See, you get it,” Rubble added cheerfully.

The former pony just groaned, her head slipping from her hand onto the table with a dull thud.

“But anyway,” Rubble continued, “Even though he was being a rude prick, I understood it after that, so they told me to go find ways to make all kinds of stuff to light them on fire, cause we’re not old enough to buy a flamethrower, and most of the other ideas were illegal. So now I’m neck-deep in nerdling trying to find something that makes a lot of fire very quickly that won’t get us all arrested for arson. Oh, and Spooks says he wants to talk to you, for some reason. Something about finding the spot where the monsters are going to pop up. He said you would want to know.”

The redhead’s eyebrows rose quickly into her hairline as she sat up and gave the boy across from her a weird look. “Why me? He has classes with like, half of us girls.”

Her question was met with a shrug. “Dunno. But you might want to talk to him soon. We’ve only got a few days to put this all together before all hell breaks loose. He said he’d wait for you at your house.”

“...WHAT?”

“Shhhhhhhhhhhh!” came the reply from an assortment of students and staff.

Sunset groaned again as her head met the desk with slightly more gusto this time.

One of the many advantages to living alone, Sunset had discovered, was not having to explain your house guests to anyone. Of course, it would help if [they explained themselves to her most of the time. Her friends dropping by at random points was to be expected, as Rainbow had discovered that it was basically the perfect hang out spot, with no adults around. Unfortunately, her principal had developed a habit of stopping by unannounced, so as to keep abreast with the supernatural events surrounding the school. One of the stipulations to her apparently punishment-free attempt at redemption over the last year was that she had become Celestia’s go-to for information on the weird and magical. Which left her with little room to argue, as the leader of the school had been more than gracious in allowing her to go about her rather complicated life with little interference, though not without the occasional reminder that such things could change rather quickly.

Which is why Sunset met the presence of the older woman with little more than a sigh as she walked up the sidewalk to her front porch. The other person sitting there was also to be expected, since Rubble had been nice enough to warn her ahead of time. If he hadn’t she might not have noticed him until he snuck up on her and scared the absolute crap out of her. Not on purpose, of course. His tendency to jumpscare people was merely an unfortunate side effect of his diminished presence. Hello, Principal Celestia. Hello, Spooks,” she muttered, making her lack of enthusiasm rather apparent. She unlocked the door, and motioned for them to follow her in.

“Hello, Sunset Shimmer,” Celestia said politely, accepting the invitation and walking gracefully into the living room, being rather familiar with the layout of Sunset’s house.

All Spooks said was “Hey,” as he followed their principle and took a seat on a low-sitting couch, while Celestia had opted for a lounge chair against the wall, giving her full view of the room.

Sunset made a beeline for the kitchen, throwing her book bag on a stool near the counter, and rummaging through her cabinet for some much-needed chocolate. She rejoined her ‘guests’ in the living room, shoving a handful of small candies in her mouth as she sat down on the couch next to Bones.

Celestia was the first to speak. “So Mr. Bones here has been enlightening me on the most recent development. I have to say, I would think that ‘extra-dimensional demonic entities’ would be rather high on the list of things you’d want to share with me at your earliest convenience, Sunset,” she noted with a hint of disapproval. A statement that was met with another handful of chocolate.

“They’re not demons,” Spooks argued, saving Sunset from having to respond.

“Excuse me?” Celestia asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Not demons,” he reiterated. “Demons are specifically an infernal presence who’s physical manifestation on our plane requires both human interdiction and a set amount of predetermined physical and metaphysical criteria. Their primary motivation is the corruption and consumption of human souls and the inciting of violence and debauchery on mass scales to doom the human race to an eternity of unknowable tortures. This thing is a Beast. A monstrosity from a far-reaching dimension whose laws surpass and differentiate themselves from our own in such drastic ways that most any creature who spawns from those conditions festers an all-consuming hate for all forms of life as we understand it in such copious amounts and to such violent degrees that they desire nothing more than to shatter the barriers between all worlds and consume or destroy us in unspeakable and incomprehensible manners.”

Sunset shuddered impressively. “And this is why you scare the absolute fuck out of people.”

Their principal frowned deeply at the language, but Sunset had long ago laid down the law of ‘my house, my vocabulary’, and so she merely said, “Well, despite that… alarming and rather disturbingly-detailed contrast, the general impression I get is that they are both very, very bad for the well-being of my students. And, well, the human race, I guess.”

Spooks gave her a concerned look. “You guess?”

Celestia sighed wearily. “Spooky, I’m a high school principal at a school that seems to attract monsters and magical girls at regular intervals. I barely like my students. Other people are just a thing that exist to me, now.”

“No, that’s fair,” Spooks said encouragingly.

“So,” Sunset interjected, trying to re-rail the conversation. “What exactly are you both doing here?”

Spooks motioned for their principal to go first. “I decided to drop by after Twilight Sparkle gave me a rather alarming account of the events this weekend, leading me to believe we needed to have a conversation,” she explained.

“Of course,” Sunset drawled, with more than a little sarcasm. “And you?” she looked to Spooks, wanting less and less for him to answer that question.

“Well,” he started, “I assume Rubble told you that I’d figured out the ‘where’ of this particular unnatural disaster.” When Sunset merely nodded, he pressed on, “As it turns out, there’s a few locations we need to worry about. There’s going to be a few places the golems show up at, kind of like holes in a strainer where the… necessary material is draining through. They aren’t going to stay there, however, and I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. Guess we’ll find out. Apparently the golems need to ‘accumulate’ at a specific location where their amassed presence can force open a hole large enough for the Beast’s energy to manifest and draw them all together into a single physical form for it to use.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow. “So… all we have to do is stop enough of them gathering at this one spot to bust down the door?”

“Basically, yes,” Spooks answered. It was obvious there was something else he wanted to say, and at the same time, didn’t.

“Spooks?” Sunset asked, after an uncomfortable pause.

“Yes?”

“Where, exactly, is this… meeting spot?” she pressed, growing both impatient and increasingly hesitant in regards to the answer.

Bones looked around the room, as if deciding which window to dive through when Sunset started getting mad. “Your… uh, your house.”

Sunset blinked. Then blinked again. “Ex-CUSE me?!”

Celestia, both having gathered enough information to be disturbed, and not wanting to have to play either referee or witness to a murder, stood up to leave. “Well, thank you for that… information, Spooks. Even if I can never unhear it.” She quickly made for the door at an impressive walking stride. “And Sunset?”

“Yyyyeeesss?” she growled through clenched teeth.

“If your house explodes, let me know and I’ll write you a note for excused absence. Also, don’t die."

Level Nine: From Zero to One Hundred REAL Quick

Level Nine: From Zero to One Hundred REAL Quick

The days leading up to an attack were always the most stressful. Not having any specific time and date on hand, the boys were forced to go AHOD as soon as the week started, and would be that way all week. They were hearing stories of strange figures lurching around from students all over the school. Most of which were just local creeps or false sightings, but it was only Tuesday and they’d already fought another golem.

Which was smarter, faster, and more properly constructed than the first iteration. None the more fireproof, though. So it was with this great threat looming over their heads, and the emotional and physical wear of the last few days, that Deep Treble stumbled a moment late into History class and fell into his seat like he’d been shot.

“Nice of you to join us, Mister Treble,” their History teacher, Cranky Doodle, mused. He gave an impatient glare over top of his bifocals, one that Treble ignored with much practice.

“Thanks fer’ noticin’,” Treble remarked, in a slow drawl reminiscent of a certain childhood donkey.

Cranky coughed, and went on with his lesson. “Now, as I was about to say, today we will be discussing a much more local history lesson: one about the city of Canterlot itself. The city was founded...”

For the next several minutes all Treble heard was random words that couldn’t really string themselves together. He was tired, his muscles ached, and his back roared with a dull pain from a particularly ungentlemanly attack from the last golem. He did his best to pay attention, however, as Cranky had a penchant for throwing things at his head if he fell asleep, and a headache would only exacerbate his discomfort.

“...and here we see the factory fire of 1950, an inferno so intense it melted the freshly-laid asphalt on the nearby roads...”

Oh joy, he’s learned how to make massive tragedies and horrible building fires seem boring. Treble let his eyes pan over the map of Canterlot, where Cranky had laid out the major catastrophes of the last century in the dullest way possible. Then the tired little hamster in his head noticed something, and hopped back on the wheel. It took the rest of him a moment to catch up.

“Uh...” he muttered, having caught up with the rest of his brain. His eyes darted back and forth across the map as he connected some invisible dots. There’s the office fire. That house is where the lord went mad and killed his servants, then tore the house to studs to bury the bodies… overkill, much? And that’s where the schoolbus went over the side of the lake twenty years ago and drowned a bunch of kids… fuck. Fuck fuck FUCK. The hamster on the wheel accosted him for his language, before he threw his hand in the air. “Mr. Doodle?!”

The chalk in Cranky’s hand snapped against the board mid-letter as he turned to Treble. “What IS IT, Mister Treble?” he growled.

“Can I get a copy of that map?” DT asked, again ignoring his teacher’s aggravated mood. It was a near-constant, after all.

The teacher gave him a curious look. “Deep, this map is available in basically any city guide, almanac, or other local resource. They literally hand out copies-”

“No, not the boring one, the one you mapped out all this horrible stuff on!” Treble interrupted. Several students turned to stare at him, and a few scooted their seats a few inches away.

“Wha-why would you-no. No, I’m not asking that question again. I still have nightmares. Just… just take it. WHEN CLASS IS OVER, TREBLE,” he added harshly, as DT stood up.

Then he sat back down. “Fine...”

“Guys!” Treble yelled across the room, as soon as he’d burst through the steel door. “Guys guys guys guys guys guys!”

It was the afternoon, and they’d all gathered at their hideout. Dust Devil and Rubble Maker looked at him like he was crazy, and had just jumped out of a closet with a knife. Spooks reveled in the fact that he wasn’t the one getting that look this time. Their shaggy friend ran up to the table they’d almost literally just sat down at, and slammed a map down in front of them.

Rubble blinked at it a few times. “Did… did you steal Cranky’s map of horrible accidents?” he asked slowly.

“What? No, he gave it to me. On the grounds that I never ever tell him why I need it,” he elaborated, a statement that was met with less concern than was probably necessary.

Dusty gave it a once-over. “Ok, so besides the fact that our city is a terrible nexus of death and destruction and monsters, what am I looking at?”

Treble sat down, and pulled out a pencil. “Ok, so you know how we’d all… ok, SPOOKS figured out that Sunset’s house was gonna be ground zero for the Golempocalypse?” They all nodded. “Well, I don’t remember the details, cause you talk like, a whole lot all at once, but you’d said something about leylines. And we, the uneducated masses, just nodded and rolled with it. Well, I remembered something you’d said during Winter Break last year, when we thought we were going to have to fight like, Krampus or something? Yeah, thank god we didn’t. Anyway, Cranky was rambling on and on about all this horrible shit that had happened over the last hundred years or so, and I noticed something.”

He drew a circle around the office fire Cranky had lectured on, then drew a curved line from there to a smaller apartment fire where only a couple of people had died, some twenty years later. The line carried on to a car accident where a truck had hit a guard rail and flipped over onto a parked car, igniting both and killing the passengers. “Ok, so that’s one line,” he muttered.

“Um, Treble? Leylines are, well, lines,” Dusty pointed out. “Like straight lines.”

“Shh,” the wannabe rocker barked, his hair draping over his face as he concentrated. “Right, now here’s where that big real estate tycoon flew south for the winter and took his whole house with him, including the walls,” he explained, circling the mass murder and demolition. He traced another curved line. “This is where that serial killer hung himself in public a decade and a half later. Then there was that double murder...” he continued, finishing the curve.

Spooks’s eyes widened, and he took the pencil from Treble. DT saw that Spooks had picked up the pattern, and let him have it. “Ok, so this is the flipped bus from twenty years ago,” Bones pressed on, picking up where Treble left off. “Then there was that water tower that fell apart on top of that apartment complex… and here I think is where that lady drowned her kids in the tub...”

“Jesus,” Dusty groaned. “Are we sure we’re fighting the right monsters? The hell is wrong with this city?”

“You see it, right?” Treble asked, shaking slightly.

Spooks met his friend’s troubled gaze with one of his own. Though, given his penchant for looking dour and scary all the time, it wasn’t that much of a difference. “Yeah, I do,” he said quietly.

Rubble leaned over the map. “And for the less gifted people in the room?”

Treble and Spooks looked up at him, then back down at the map, where Spooks filled in the rest of the curve on each line. They all met at a familiar location.

Rubble winced. “Why do all those leylines lead to the school?”

Bones looked to Treble, giving his friend the chance to explain for once. “Because it’s not leylines. We thought that’s what it was, which is why we said Sunset’s house was the center. She’s just a point on the map, see? Her house is right next to that public suicide. And the building we’re in right now-”

“-is the converted apartment building where the fire happened. I remember that story, they had to turn the whole building into an office complex just to get it back up to code, and it still failed,” Dusty recalled. “But what the hell IS IT?” he added, gesturing at the map.

“It’s a Tragedy Nexus,” Treble explained. Spooks was the only one who looked like he understood the implications, so he elaborated, “Spooks explained this concept last year, with the whole Krampus thing. Where if you do enough bad stuff in one place, or enough horrible shit happens on the same spot-”

“-it creates all kinds of bad juju. Yeah, I remember,” Rubble interjected. “But this is all over the map. How’s that the same thing?”

Spooks took over explaining. “It’s like setting off a chain of controlled explosions in a building, to direct the energy inwards. That’s how you implode a building and make sure it only collapses in on itself. Horrible events create horrible energy, and that energy spreads. That’s why whole houses are haunted instead of just one room when someone dies bloody. In this case, it started off big -the bus, the mass murder, the fire- and smaller and smaller events just carried the energy inwards, like flushing a toilet. It creates a vortex that compresses all that negative energy into one place. I wouldn’t be surprised if these lines were littered with death and tragedy, in some weird chronological order. Add to that all the bullshit that happens at this school, all that magic with malevolent intent, and it’s like a giant pressure cooker. With a very, very thin wall.”

Treble nodded along, and added, “The Beast isn’t coming through at Sunset’s house. That’s just where some of the golems are popping out. It’s using the points on the Tragedy Nexus like a sieve to force it’s way through where all this bad juju has weakened the walls. And it’s gonna drop right in front of the school.”

Rubble’s eyes grew wide “So, if we don’t stop all these golems, who apparently can now appear ALL OVER THE CITY-”

“-then Equestria is doomed?” Princess Twilight asked, very shakily.

It was Late Tuesday night, and the boys had gathered all of the Rainbooms with as much urgency as they could. They’d even told Sunset to ‘summon horse-princess, NOW’ for this conversation. There wasn’t even enough room to seat everyone, even with the boys standing around the map and explaining the situation.

“Yeah,” Spooks explained. “If these things come together and manifest this big bad, it’s gonna have free reign over both dimensions. I mean, it’s literally crashing its way into our world through force of will. Imagine what it could do with an open door like the portal.”

Rainbow waved a hand in a poor attempt to look dismissive. “So why don’t we just, like, close the portal? Keep it locked down here?”

Rubble groaned. “Because even if we only kept it in one dimension, it would still kill everyone here. Not to mention it’s dragging its way into our dimension the long way ‘round because IT WANTS TO. Just closing the door isn’t gonna do jack shit. It’d be like putting up a wall made of tinder in front of someone with a flamethrower. Which, as I’ve been told, would do even more damage than just leaving the door open and letting it walk through.”

Not-Princess Twilight nodded. “Right, like I almost did at the Friendship Games,” she explained.

Applejack just punched her palm. “Well, all’s we gotta do is take down these golems, right? Should be easy ‘nuff.”

As much as Dusty wanted to agree with that sentiment, there was one glaring problem. “Except these things can apparently pop up all over the city. Which means either we spread ourselves thin trying to get ahead of the game-”

“-or we batten down the hatches at CHS and play tower defense,” Sunset groaned. “Even with our superpowers, none of us are exactly experts at the whole ‘fire and explosions’ thing.”

“AHEM,” Pinkie grunted, juggling a can of sprinkles in one hand.

“...MOST of us,” Sunset corrected.

That’s when Rubble surprised them all, and scared most of them, with a big maniacal grin. “That’s where there’s GOOD news!” he cheered.

“...oh god, no,” groaned Rarity, burying her face in her hands. “...I just wanted a normal Fall Formal! A nice dance, maybe meet a cute boy, get lost in the glamour-” THUNK. Her pity party was interrupted by the sound of a very large object being hefted onto the trunk. It was… another trunk.

“...um,” Fluttershy started.

Only to be talked over by Rainbow Dash. “What’s in the box?”

Rubble kept smiling, then kicked it. Hard. It popped open with a suddenness that startled Fluttershy farther into the couch cushions. He reached in, and pulled out what looked like large metal waterguns with extra attachment. “As it turns out, it’s illegal to buy flamethrowers if you’re underage. But there’s surprisingly little legislation about BUILDING them!”

Sunset felt a migraine coming on. “You… built flamethrowers?”

“Pffft, no,” Rubble scoffed. “I’d blow myself up. Uncle JACK built flamethrowers! And phosphorous grenades! I’m pretty sure there’s a few bricks of thermite in one of the other trunks...”

“...one of...” Rarity trailed off.

“The OTHER?” Sunset added in alarm.

“THERMITE?!” Not-Princess Twilight shrieked.

Rubble nodded. “Yeah-huh. See, all those engineering books and chemistry stuff I was reading were all like, ‘Hey, this is illegal without a permit!’ And I was thinking… how do I get a permit? I barely even work construction! Then I remembered I have an Uncle who blows stuff up for a living!”

Treble groaned and rubbed his temples, while Dusty picked up a flamethrower like a child at Christmas. “This is the greatest thing you’ve ever done. I mean it.”

“You DO realize this is all really, really illegal to stockpile all this stuff, right?” Sunset growled, her face all over disapproval.

“Actually, it’s not,” Not Princess groaned.

“...what.”

The bespectacled girl took off her glasses, cleaned them out of habit, and put them back on. “He’s right. The legislation in Canterlot regarding flamethrowers is really, really lax. The only reason it’s illegal to buy one if you’re underage is because all of the companies that sell them list them as weapons, and you have to be eighteen to have a carry permit. So until someone does something inordinately stupid,” she glared at Rubble here, who just beamed with pride, “With one of these, it’s not illegal to own one. And seeing as how we’re fighting a bunch of constructs, and not like, wildlife or people or anything, there aren’t any laws regarding that either. Smaller handheld throwers are used for controlled burns in the surrounding farmlands, and a lot of those farmers have teenage workers. This is what happens when you unionize.”

Applejack nodded. “She’s right, y’know. Granny lets me do the burnin’ of all the dry crop every year to keep it from sparkin’ and causing a bigger, uncontrolled fire.”

“Ok, but… phosphorous grenades!” Sunset barked.

Earth Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, how’d you get that one sorted out?”

Rubble grinned sheepishly. “Well, technically, there’s only one law being broken, and since I’m a minor, it’s technically a misdemeanor. See, the kind of phosphorous grenades my uncle has are flash-bangs. They’re less-lethal weaponry, which he has a permit for.”

Rarity crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “And the law you’re breaking is?”

“Um… illegally modifying a less-lethal weapon? Uncle Jack taught me how to pack flash-bangs, so now they have, well, a little bit more explodey behind them than is legal for a less-lethal option.” Rubble admitted.

Treble hadn’t looked up from the table, trying his best to subside what he was sure was going to be one hell of a migraine. “Exactly how much is ‘a little bit’?

Rubble thought about it. “...five times?”

“Ok, ok, speeding past the somehow only a misdemeanor you just admitted to, I’m pretty sure, no, POSITIVE, that thermite is super illegal,” Sunset protested, stamping a foot.

“...actually,” Earth Twilight started.

“Oh COME ON!”

Ruble grinned. “Yup, you only need a certain number of man-hours and the appropriate safety classes. Plus a legal guardian’s permission. And my mom signed off on all that shit like, forever ago.”

“...why? Why would she do that?” Rarity groaned, more lamenting to herself than actually asking the question.

“Well, I had to promise not to enlist in the military when I graduated,” he explained. A statement that was met with a great deal of silence.

“DUDE. Is that a landmine?!” Dusty asked.

“SUNUVABITCH!” Sunset roared.

Level Ten: Cafeteria Meltdown

Level Ten: Cafeteria Meltdown

Nothing is quite so worrisome as paranoia. At its most basic, it is simply another type of fear. However, it’s the subtle complexities of a paranoid mind that wreak the most havoc. The fundamental problem with paranoia in comparison to a simple phobia is that there is no one source of danger. No single threat. As an example, an arachnophobe is wary specifically of spiders, so they look for signs of their presence: webbing, nests, and that prickly feeling on your skin that feels like tiny legs. Paranoia takes simple fear and supplants it into every aspect of life. Every shadow is a hiding place. Every slightly ajar door is a trap, and every noise is not what it sounds like.

It gets even worse when something is, in fact, out to get you.

“Can it be Tuesday yet?” Devil groaned, leaning into the back of the cafeteria booth as if he was trying to merge with it and escape into another, more comfortable reality of fake leather seats. Which was likely his motivation.

Treble fiddled with a lighter under the table, an old nervous habit that had become somewhat practical given recent events. He felt the comforting rattle of the can of hair spray in his hoodie pocket, which did little to naught to ease his tension. “No fucking joke. I keep hearing students and teachers all day talk about the ‘weird people’ in town. This morning I had to barbeque some flesh mannequin just walking to school. Mother fucker didn’t even attack me, it was just, standing there. Under a lamppost. Like a cheap horror movie monster. Let me tell you, that shit is much scarier in real life.”

Rubble had buried his head in his hands. “At least you got to take one down. You remember I’m like, right on this curved line of horrible shit, right? I keep thinking I see them everywhere. Can’t we pull the plug on this thing early? Find the asshat doing the ritual and just… do something about him?”

Spooks shook his head, eliciting a heavy groan from Rubble. “Nope. The ritual isn’t the cause of all these monsters. It’s just an attempt to scoop up some power and make a mad dash for the exit before everything hits the fan. Like grabbing as much money as you can before the last lifeboat leaves. This thing’s been in the works for a while. That’s the problem with fighting Beasts; their sense of time is so radically different from ours I don’t think they even understand linearity as a concept. Either these are all random accidents leading to one really big cosmic meltdown, or this thing’s been reaching across the veil for decades knocking over the right dominoes.”

“How do we even know someone’s gonna go for the gold on this anyway? I mean, sure, someone could have figured it out, but who’s stupid enough to try and hijack a Beast?” Treble asked pointedly.

Rubble leaned his head on one hand while the other dug through his backpack. “Yeah, I did some digging on that, cause Spooks had the same question. If it’s any consolation, they’re the type to announce their bullshit schemes on the internet,” he muttered, pulling out a crumpled bunch of papers and dropping them on the table.

Dusty gave the cover page a once over. “Wanted: Seeking subordinates for cosmic ritual magic to assimilate the power of a Being Beyond Time and Space to ride out the end of the wrold.”

“I think you mean world,” Spooks pointed out.

“Nope,” Dusty deadpanned, shaking his head. “Wrold. What kind of magical psychopath doesn’t use spellcheck on a recruitment page? He he… spellcheck.”

The rest of the boys groaned. “Oh my god Dusty. It’s not even Monday,” Rubble protested.

“I think you mean Punday,” Dusty corrected in an annoying, nasally voice.

“You remember I still have my lighter and hairspray, right?” Treble growled.

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t use those in the cafete-”

His argument was met with a loud crash and a lot of screaming. The boys looked up as the remains of one of the cafeteria windows cascaded to the floor, no doubt caused by the large, nondescript arm now occupying the space where the glass used to be. It gripped the window sill, paying no mind to the shards now embedding itself in it’s palm, and lurched forward, carrying with it the rest of one of the flesh golems.

Unlike its predecessor, this golem was a perfect imitation of human form, barring one major detail: the lack of any defining features. It had no face, hair, fingernails, and besides the cuts on the arm and hand on it’s right side, no blemishes. Fortunately for those present with a sense of decency, it also had no defining sexual characteristics. It was like a blank template for printing a human.

A well-toned, fast human, as it charged straight for the boy’s position. “Oh come ON!” Treble shouted, diving headfirst under a neighboring table. Dusty and Rubble jumped up to meet the interloper, as Spooks just ran for the other side of the room. Unarmed, he posed little threat.

Dust Devil and Rubble Maker, however, did. Gleefully and with much abandon. Their shoulders met the golem’s as they crashed together, and their faces registered a second of surprise as it managed to push them a few inches backwards.

It didn’t get farther than that, however, as Rubble twisted around it’s side, wrapping one arm around a leg and the other around it’s neck, dead-lifting the creature while Dusty stepped aside. Very aside.

“Table for one!” Rubble shouted, a declaration that was met with much eye-rolling from those not currently running away and screaming. The scrapper launched himself backwards, putting all of his weight into the creature’s back as it’s back met the not-quite-sturdy enough cafeteria table, which broke under the unwelcome weight, sending both crashing to the ground. Rubble recovered first, getting to his feet with a groan, though not completely upright. Which was unfortunate, as a meaty arm swung out from the crash site and knocked him off his feet, as he was propelled back a good meter or two.

“I don’t think you’re getting a tip,” Dusty quipped, picking up one of the broken slats of wood from the now-ruined table. Swinging to break it over the creature’s head, it instead split in two on contact with the golem’s other fist. The skater jumped back, turned around, and ran for the exit. “Be right back!” He called as his friends stared at him incredulously.

Treble crawled out from under his table to help Rubble to his feet. As they stood up, he fumbled with the lighter and spray can, putting up his makeshift flamethrower in time to give the freshly-recovered monster a face full of burning aerosol.

Which, while effective in slowing it down, did little to actually stop the creature. It still surged forth, stopping only as a very large book met the back of its head. It turned slowly to face a now-shaking Bones, who seemed to be both rather disappointed in the effectiveness of his attack, and apologetic for having disturbed the monster’s fight can he please leave now thank you very much.

Had the golem possessed a face, Spooks was certain it would be wearing an expression of incredulity, as it turned slowly and rapidly raised an arm to swipe him aside. An action that was interrupted by another surge of fire against its back. It convulsed briefly, as if in pain, and returned its attention to the main threat: the snarky kid with the hair spray. As it turned around, Rubble took a great big swing at its head, making a solid connection. Unfortunately, with no bones to break, and no pain receptors, it was little more effective than his daily use of a punching bag.

The golem’s punch, however, was far more effective. Even as Rubble raised his arms in a boxer’s defensive stance, the mighty blow rattles his forearms and knocked him off his feat again. It stepped forward, only to be met with yet another burst of fire. This one smaller than the others, however, as it soon became apparent that the spray can was now empty. “Oh for FUCK’S sake!” Treble barked, dropping the can, pocketing the lighter, and backpedaling in a rather impressively athletic interpretation of a moonwalk.

The golem seemed to pause for a second, as if deciding who the more imminent target was: the boy who had run out of ammo, or the one getting back to his feet for round three. He lunged at Rubble, only to be interrupted by a third option, as the cafeteria doors burst open, and Dust Devil skated in, carrying Pinkie Pie on his back. He came to a halt in front of Treble, as Pinkie Pie bounced off his back and glared daggers at the golem.

“Seriously? Pinkie Pie? SERIOUSLY?!” Treble protested, ducking behind a booth for cover.

Rubble raised an eyebrow at the bubbly girl, the newest entrant into the fray. “Tell me you have something,” he pleaded.

Pinkie Pie rummaged through a pocket, eyes on the golem. “Ooooohhhhh, yeaaahhhhh,” she said smugly, pulling out her weapon of choice.

Dusty took one look at it and ducked behind the same booth Treble was occupying. Rubble’s eyes widened as he took a few steps back. “Is that…?”

“Five-inch jawbreaker, baby!” Pinkie yelled, as the solid mass of hard candy glowed a dangerous pink. The golem surged forward, having chosen a new threat. It hadn’t made it more than one step before Pinkie reeled back like a pitcher at the mound, and launched the makeshift hand grenade with impressive force.

“HIT THE DECK!” Rubble barked, diving under a long table and covering his ears with his hands. Pinkie Pie simply stood in place as the hard candy met the golem’s face.

The explosion was deafening. Glass shattered out of the windows, yet another table was destroyed, and chunks of now-dead golem rained about the room like atrocious hail.

After the debris settled, Treble poked his head out. “Pinkie?”

“Yeah-huh?” she asked cheerfully, turning on her heel and breaking her victory pose.

“The next time you do that, please save it for more than one golem in a wide open space,” he groaned, picking pieces of… stuff out of his hair. “Oh god, I need a thousand showers now.”

Pinkie was also all-over monster bits, but seemed almost entirely unfazed. Save for the fact that her hair now pointed entirely in one direction. She shook herself off, and almost impossible, she was clean again, her large pink poofy mane returning to its original, only mildly gravity-defying position. “Okie-dokie-loki!”

Spooks stood up from his hiding place in the far corner. “Is it gone?”

Rubble also resurfaced. “Infinitely so. Now, we just have to worry about-”

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!” came the rather impressively loud voice of Vice-Principal Luna.

“That,” Rubble finished, jabbing a thumb at the door their VP had just burst through.

“Ok, so we know they’re not explosion-proof,” Spooks groaned, push broom in hand as he gathered up the last of the debris into the dustpan Pinkie was holding.

“Well, duh!” Pinkie exclaimed. “Like, nothing is explosion proof!”

“Ghosts,” Rubble corrected.

“Wraiths,” added Treble.

“Beasts.”

“Reapers.”

“You, apparently.”

Pinkie’s smug smile was now accompanied by a slight eye twitch. “Right! Almost nothing is explosion-proof!”

Treble slumped back into the ruined upholstery of their usual booth as he watched Pinkie dump the last of the debris into the trashcan. “Well, she’s definitely coming with us for the big endgame fight. Hell, I’ll even buy her ammunition. As least I won’t get funny looks for walking around with twenty lbs of jawbreakers.”

Pinkie flopped into the seat next to him. “Well, I don’t know what my schedule is, but if you’re buying the candy, I’m totes in!”

“That’s ok,” Dusty grunted, lifting the new tabletop onto the stand, to replace the one Rubble had suplexed. The later picked up a toolbox and crawled under the table to fasten it into place. “We don’t even know when this fight thingy is supposed to happen,” Dusty groaned.

Spooks raised a hand, fishing out a book from his backpack. “Actually, we do. I’ve been telling you guys this whole time that all these signs and shit are pointing to a specific universal alignment-”

“At which point we all tune you out in favor of words that don’t make our retinas fall out,” Rubble grunted, as he fought with a particularly stubborn nut.

“Well, if you hadn’t, you would know that the most likely time and place is eleven P.M. Friday evening,” Spooks protested, once again incensed at his friend’s lack of interest in the important details.

“Isn’t that-OW!” Rubble exclaimed, sitting up too quickly and beaning himself against the table.

Pinkie took over. “But that’s like, the end of the Fall Formal! Ohhh… Sunset’s gonna be maaaad.”

“What else is new?” Treble groaned. “That girl is MAD about EVERYTHING.”

“Not really,” Pinkie corrected. “Just mostly around you. Not sure why she gets all angry-pants with you, though.”

Spooks rolled his eyes. “Yes. It’s a total mystery.”

Dusty snickered as he handed Rubble both new tools and an icepack. “Well, at least this is the worst of it today. I mean, yeah, spending the rest of our afternoon cleaning out the cafeteria blows, but it’s not like we weren’t gonna get saddled with that anyways. Nice of Luna not to, you know, press charges.”

“I think the two-hundred something students screaming about a faceless monster crashing through the window had something to do with that,” Spooks pointed out.

“Why did it even come after you guys, anyway?” Pinkie wondered aloud. She rocked back and forth in her seat as the boys finished up their work.

Spooks had an answer for that. “Probably because someone told it too. I think whoever is gonna try for this power-grab ritual knows we’re on to them. And since these things are basically blank slates with no direction, they would be much easier to hijack than, well, most anything else. These things were made to be controlled, mind you. And until this big bad pops up, they don’t exactly have a prime direction. Probably the same person who cobbled together that spare parts monstrosity that came for Dusty last week.”

“Is there any good news here?” Rubble groaned, joining Pinkie and Treble on the couch as he held the icepack to his head.

“Well,” Spooks said, in a voice that basically meant yes and no in a way nobody approved of. “Once the Beasts starts asserting its presence I doubt the caster will be able to control it at all, so there will be less of them trying to kill us while they focus on their gathering point. Should make it easier to ambush them.”

This explanation was met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “Yeah,” Spooks said in a hollow voice. “I don’t like our chances, either.”

Level Eleven: Cue the Emergency Sirens

Level Eleven: Cue the Emergency SIrens

The days leading up to the dance were about as stressful as you’d expect. Between poorly coordinated attacks from the empty shells, golem sightings all over town, and the rather daunting task of convincing both Principals that the large trunks of incendiary devices they were asking to stash around the school were not, in fact, major felonies (a feat made easier by Principal Luna’s unused law degree), the boys had nearly run out of steam come lunch on Thursday. Which didn’t bode well for the weekend’s scheduled programming.

They’d all gathered under a large tree some yards away from the school for lunch, having been asked politely to stay outside whenever possible until the golems stopped attacking them. Spooks had buried himself in a large tome again, finding the crisp autumn air a rather conductive environment for reading. Rubble and Dusty had taken to a game of cards, while Treble simply poured over his smartphone with mild interest. “Hey,” he said after a few moments of silence.

“Sup,” came Rubble’s response, not looking up from his hand of cards.

“So, like, you know how Celestia said they weren’t going to cancel the dance, come hell or high water, cause the school had already but a buttload of money into it?” Treble mused.

Dusty gave half a glance over the top of his cards. “Yeah?”

“So, I know we’re gonna probably be spending the whole night fighting monsters or something stupid, but I mean, it’s still a dance. Should we like, get… dates, or something?” Treble asked.

Rubble and Dusty traded unamused glances, before pulling out their wallets. Each of them then dropped a ten-dollar bill into Spook’s outstretched hand, whose owner hadn’t even looked up from his book. “Told you so,” Spooks said with a smile.

Rubble groaned. “Yeah, yeah.” Ignoring the somewhat indignant look on Treble’s face, he asked, “Do I even want to know who you have in mind?”

Treble scrolled through his phone. “Not really sure, actually. Just thought maybe it’d be nice to have something to, you know, look forward to beyond the whole extra-dimensional Satan thingy.”

“STILL not a demon,” Spooks grunted, turning a page.

“Whatever,” DT groaned. “I’m just saying it’d be nice to have like a moment of normality in all this bullshit, you know? I’d like to maybe have a pretty girl around if I’m gonna have to go full Rambo on a bunch of faceless freakshows.”

The rest of the boys thought about that sentiment, imagining various scenarios in which a grateful girl looked on as they performed daring and heroic feats, protecting the school. “Ok, yeah, that’s be kind of cool,” Dusty conceded. “But I mean, the dance is tomorrow. Who would we even get to go with us?”

Rubble gave Treble a mischievous grin. “You could ask Sunset.”

The glare he got in return would ignite thermite if it could. “I’d rather tongue a snake. I mean, really. But what about you, Spooks? You and Nerdlight seemed to have a thing goin’ on the other day.”

“She has a boyfriend,” Spooks said, punctuating his sentence with the turn of a page.

The other boys looked at him consolingly. “Welp,” Rubble muttered. “I can’t think of anyone. If anybody’s got any suggestions, I’m all ears.”

The group was silent for a moment, until Treble stopped scrolling on his phone. Then a devious grin arose on his face. “I may actually have an idea.”

The other boys gave him a worried look. “I know that voice,” Dusty said cautiously. “That’s your I have a really horrible idea and nobody’s going to like it but me voice.”

“He-he, yeah...” Treble chuckled. He continued to laugh as the rest of the group traded extremely worried glances.

It was after school on Thursday, and the boys had all gathered in a relatively foreign spot to all of them: the lobby of Deep Treble’s apartment building.

“This is the worst idea you’ve ever had,” Rubble groaned, as they marched for the elevator.

“Oh please, nothing’s ever gonna beat ‘Ultimate Fireball’ in that category,” Treble responded with a misplaced sense of pride.

“I don’t know, this comes pretty close,” Spooks conceded, as Treble hit the button.

Dusty looked around the lobby with interest. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to your place,” he mused out loud.

“That’s because my parents are ‘cats in the washing machine’ crazy. Trust me, you’re lucky they both work tonight,” Treble groaned.

Dusty looked to the other boys for confirmation, and got grim nods from both. “Yeesh.”

The elevator dinged, and they piled in. “So, how long have these girls been your neighbors, anyway?” Rubble asked hesitantly, in an effort to keep the conversation going to drown out the rather horrible elevator music that had kicked up. “I didn’t see them the last few times I was here.”

“That’s because they’re on a different floor,” Treble explained, pressing a button. “Also they don’t really leave the apartment except for school. And I think one or two of them have part-time jobs.”

Dusty nodded. “Well, they’d have to, wouldn’t they?”

The elevator lurched upwards with a start, dragging its occupants up the building with a bit of effort. The building itself wasn’t exactly amongst the higher-end apartment complexes in the city, occupied mostly by middle-class families and individual tenants with slightly better than no money. Not that it was a terrible place to live, but it was obvious that this wasn’t exactly the glory days of its existence. Some remnants of those days still shone through, however, and so the building had a bit of a homey quality, and was far from disrepair.

Rubble noted the floors as they passed by. “Wait, they live on a floor above you? I thought that’s where the decent suites were?”

Treble shrugged. “Almost. They had to start renting out the upper floors to regular tenants after some newer properties cropped up. Now only the top two floors are really the fancy-schmancy stuff. They’re like two or three floors below that.”

“Still a horrible idea, by the way,” Spooks grunted, as the elevator dinged and let them all out.

Treble led them down a well-decorated, if somewhat paling, hallway. Yellow wallpaper with floral decorations, red and gold checkered carpet, and some impressive-looking chandeliers (which in all honesty wouldn’t pass closer scrutiny before they were discovered to be merely clever imitations of a more impressive decor). They stopped at an apartment door that looked much like all the other doors, save for the numbers on the front, indicating the address. Also, the faint scratch marks in the door frame.

The boys took a step back as Treble knocked. “Coming!” A husky female voice said. There was some commotion, and some metallic clicking indicative of a lock being fiddled with. The door flew open, and the girl on the other side met her guests with a look of surprise. “Oh! Well hello!”

“Hi, Adagio,” Treble said.

The boys sat in various seats around a polished oak coffee table, in chairs and a couch much more comfortable than the furniture in their usual hideout. Adagio brought them a tray of glasses, with a large pitcher of water, as they admired the rather well-decorated apartment.

Dusty let out an appreciative whistle. “I gotta admit, I was expecting something a bit more… run down than this.”

Adagio raised an eyebrow as she took a seat next to Treble, taking a sip of water from her own glass. “And why is that? It’s not exactly like we’ve been sitting on our haunches for the last several hundred years.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t exactly the Hampton Inn,” Rubble piped up. “I figured it’d either be a total dump or the Taj Mahal.”

Adagio chuckled. “Well, you learn to be a bit more careful with your expenses as time goes on. And let’s just say the invention of the IRS did us no favors when it came to our spending habits. Besides, now we actually are the teenagers we’ve looked for centuries. And teenagers don’t exactly own Penthouse Condominiums in the center of town. Anymore.”

Rubble shrugged, taking a gulp of water.

“Hey Dagi, who was at the do-” a rather sharp, gravely voice cut out as Aria Blaze rounded the corner from the kitchen and answered her own question. “What. The FUCK. Are the Beater Boys doing here?”

The so-called ‘Boys’ traded glances. “Um… what?” Spooks asked, tilting his head.

Adagio frowned prettily. “It’s a term she came up with some time ago. Sunset and her friends are the Rainbooms, we’re the Sirens, and you lot are the ‘Beater Boys’,” she explained, air quotes included. “Aria finds it easier to address the world as a whole with labels. Although she does have a point. What are you doing here?”

The rest of the group looked to Treble to explain, since the whole thing was his idea. He sighed, put his glass down, and said, “Ok, so I don’t know how well informed you all are about the weird shit going down around town.”

Adagio shrugged. “Well enough. I’ve put together bits and pieces from gossip, and Aria’s been filling in the gaps with internet research. Plenty of conspiracy theorists losing their minds over the ‘Blank Slates’ popping up all over town. Her words, not mine.”

Spooks looked at Aria appreciatively. “That’s a much better name than what we’ve been calling them. We just say golems or monsters.”

The abrasive siren shrugged. “Whatever. Still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing in our house,” she growled.

“Who’s in our house?” came a chipper voice from around the corner, soon followed by Sonata Dusk poking her head into the room. She let out a loud gasp. “TREBBY!” she shrieked, throwing herself at Tebble and catching him in a big hug.

“Yes, it’s good to see you too, ‘Nata,” he mused, patting the girl on the back. She squirmed to make herself more comfortable, sitting in his lap and not relenting on her hug.

Aria rolled her eyes at her younger sister, and took a seat on the arm of the chair Spooks had occupied. “Right. I forgot you two actually got along, somehow.”

“...Trebby? Exactly… how much time do you spend around these girls?” Spooks asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

“Not as much as he shooouuuld,” Adagio said in a singsong voice, tracing a finger on Treble’s shoulder.

Aria rolled her eyes. “Don’t read too much into it. He drops by once in a while to play video games with me and Sonata. And he and Adagio have this weird super-flirty relationship going on.”

Rubble leaned away from the couch. “You guys haven’t, y’know...”

“Not for lack of trying,” Treble lamented. “But no, we haven’t.”

“Trying on whose part?” Dusty asked.

Treble grinned, then resumed his explanation. “So, right. You know basically that there’s a bunch of weird flesh golems traipsing about-” he started, filling them in on the rest of the details they’d been able to put together so far.

His explanation was met with a strange mix of curiosity and alarm. “So what, you came to warn us from going to the dance?” Adagio asked, with a puzzled expression.

“Actually, just the opposite,” Treble continued. “We-ok, I figured that you girls knew how to handle yourselves,” he reasoned, correcting himself at the many glares his friends were giving him. “And I thought that maybe, just maybe, you’d want to join in on the fun.”

“Aaaannnnnnnd?” Rubble interjected, giving Treble an annoyed look.

“...aaannnnnd maybe go as our dates?” Treble finished.

Whatever the response the newly crowned ‘Beater Boys’ had been expecting, it hadn’t been the one they got. The girls looked at each other, and traded rather mischievous gins. “...ok, what?” Dusty asked finally.

Sonata hopped off of Treble’s lap, and stood off to the side, while Adagio explained. “Well, it’s no secret that we aren’t exactly the Rainboom’s biggest fans. Of course, I understand that you aren’t, either, but for entirely different reasons.”

Rubble nodded. “Go on...”

“We are also well aware that the Rainbooms neither approve of your… methods, nor of us in general. In fact, we’d been talking about something similar to this very situation not too long ago. Of course, not these circumstances, but one of us might have pointed out what an amusing shade of vermilion Sunset would have turned if she’d seen, oh, say, you and I on a date together,” she gestured to Treble, in possibly a more suggestive manner than was necessary.

Which, in all honesty, the boy had to quarrels with. “Actually, yeah, that would be amusing. I mean, I was just looking to have a date to a school dance for the first time in like, a year, but your idea is much more fun.”

“Wait, what idea?” Spooks piped up. “All she did was talk about how much none of us really like the Rainbooms, and vice vers-oooohhhh. Oh, ok,” he finished, catching on.

Rubble raised an eyebrow. “So, what you’re saying is you’ll go to the dance with us, but only to piss off Sunset and her friends?”

Sonata smiled wide, an innocent looking smile in a naughty sort of way. “Totally.”

“I’m in,” Rubble clapped his hands, excited at the prospect.

Aria raised a hand. “Hold on! So if pissing off the Rainbooms wasn’t your primary reason for asking us to the dance, what was? And what makes you think we didn’t already have dates?”

Treble jabbed a thumb in Adagio’s direction. “There’s my primary motivation right there. Not to be crude, but hot damn.”

Adagio smiled and flipped her hair. “Much appreciated, dear.”

Spooks elaborated, “Treble’s idea was actually just to ask Adagio for himself, then thought that maybe he could get you two to maybe to with two of us.”

Sonata leaned against the back of the couch. “You don’t seem particularly excited about this idea. Kinda offended, actually.”

Spooks shrugged. “I just figured I’d be the odd man out. I’m not exactly dating gold.”

Sonata gave him an appraising look. “Well, you’re not terrible looking. And I’ve met scarier stuff than you before. I mean, ‘Dark Ages’, seriously. Aight’, dibs on the skinny one.”

Aria got huffy. “Hey!”

Adagio rolled her eyes while Sonata smirked. “Oh please. Like you’d be caught dead on a date with anyone that couldn’t take you in a fight. There’s no way you’d go with anyone other than Punchy McFightclub over here,” she reasoned, jabbing a thumb at Rubble. Aria rolle her eyes, but conceded the argument.

Dusty looked around. “Wait, so I’m the spare tire? What?!”

Adagio looked him up and down. “Well, I might be able to find you someone. You know, if you don’t mind the hourly.”

Dusty stared into space for a second as he processed this. “No. No I think I’m good. Besides, someone needs to be on weapon duty all night. And it’s not like I can’t get around faster than you losers.”

Adagio crossed her legs suggestively, resting one on Treble’s thigh. “I doubt that, darling.”

“NOT WHAT I MEANT.”

Level Twelve: Choose Your Character

Level Twelve: Choose Your Character

There’s something terrifying about a school at night. The empty, soulless hallways. The bare classrooms which just a few hours ago thrived with life. The bright youthful colors of cork board displays and welcome signs dampened by the lack of any illumination to highlight there gaudy sheen. Normally the school is a cacophony of sound, as thousands of footfalls echo through each crack and crevice, dispelling any sense of isolation, or indeed, privacy. Yet at night those footsteps echo in the emptiness with a sense of almost theatrical dread as a grave reminder of the lack of any other people.

Or, at least, that’s what it’s supposed to be like. The eve of the dance was just as lively as if no one had even bothered to leave the school. They had though, and come back, as evidenced by the formal attire, the suits and dresses, the bouquets of flowers that would normally have never survived an hour in a normal school environment. Bright fluorescent lights illuminated the front of the school, drawing the eye towards the “approved” entryway into the school for the evening, guiding students down an easily monitored path to the gym, where the dance was being held.

Barring a few choice outliers, of course. “Why the hell are we here so early?” Dusty groaned. Without a date, he had spent the night lamenting that his presence leading up to the “big showdown” was almost entirely ornamental. Ornamental was Treble’s shtick. Even the simple black tux he was wearing bothered him, not in the least because of how restricting it was. He was looking forward to ditching it at the first chance he got.

Rubble, neck deep in a large black trunk full of shiny metal objects, lifted an arm to hand Dusty a brick of some brown-and-silver material, wrapped in warning labels. The tag on the back of his neck from his own tux rental stuck out like a tongue. “Because we need to scatter this stuff throughout the school. Kind of hard to store thermite and technically-illegal flashbangs in strategic places when those places are full of students who snuck off to do God knows what to each other.”

“Oh please,” Dusty rolled his eyes. “Like any of these Teletubbies are gonna roll off into the darkity-dark to get their groove on. The most rebellious students in the school are literally right here. Who do you know that would sneak off for a quick shag in the middle of the dance?”

“I know I would,” came a sultry voice from the end of the hall. Dusty turned his head to see Adagio and Treble walking arm-in-arm towards them. Treble’s tux was decidedly more ornate than the other two boys, a dark blue coat and slacks with a white button-down shirt and green tie. Unlike tDusty and Rubble, who had rented theirs, Treble had gone out and bought his own tux over a year ago, for last year’s dance. It was a miracle that it had survived the night, let alone fit him a year later. Although the sleeves were dangerously close to being considered too short.

Adagio had opted for a simple over-the shoulder number in her typical shade of purple, a slit down one side, with long gloves to match. Her hair was, in contrast to it’s usual style, done in gentle waves down her back. Dusty could only imagine how much time, effort, and flammable chemicals they’d wasted taming that beast.

Treble nodded his agreement. “Yeah, me too. I think that’s the plan, actually. Set up weapons caches, make out a bit, dance, maybe tome heavy petting, more dance, shag, dance, then fight. Lots and lots of fight.”

“And here I was thinking we’d shown up for nothing.” The group turned to look behind Treble and Adagio, where the latter’s sisters were standing. Their outfits were almost identical to their sister’s, save for Aria’s choice of black, and Sonata’s light blue. In fact, Sonata had chosen a dress so close to her own skin tone that in certain lights she looked almost risque. They had also both let their hair down, although it most likely took much less taming for the same effect. Aria leaned against a locker, watching Rubble fish through the large crate for… something. “I thought we were just here to look pretty.”

Ruble grunted in satisfaction as he found his target. “AHA. Come to papa!” He stood up proudly, holding a pair of black sheaths no longer than his forearm.

Treble sighed. “Really? The knives? You do know we gotta set these things on fire, right? Like, I think that’s been a major point of conversation the last couple of days.”

Rubble tutted, waving a sheathed knife back and forth disapprovingly. “Poor, misguided Treble. These aren’t for the golems. They’re for the asshat controlling them. I seriously doubt the dude’s not gonna make some kind of personal appearance during the night. Probably with lots of smoke and flashing lights in the middle of the stage while they make some big speech about becoming a god and demanding our worship.”

“What if it’s a girl?” said Spooks, behind Rubble.

The entire group jumped, some of them rather impressively. “God-DAMMIT Spooks what have I told you about sneaking up behind me when I’m armed?!” Rubble barked.

Spooks took a moment to give a pointed look at the ten or so feet between himself and his friends. “Do so from a safe distance?”

Rubble’s eye twitched. “Fine. You got the other side of the school taken care of?”

Aria rolled her eyes. “Noooo, we just left an entire crate of incendiary devices in the middle of the hall where anyone could find it.” Again, the group looked at her. “Wha-THAT WAS ONE TIME. Fine, YES. We did the thing!”

Treble chuckled smugly to himself, then gave his friend a once-over. “Lookin sharp, Bones.”

He was, indeed, well dressed. A black suit akin to most butlers in most horror stories, with a pitch undershirt and a simple red-string tie. He’d even gone out of his way to slick his hair back, which did little more than accentuate his pale, black-spotted complexion. On anyone else, the suit would look spot-on. On Spooky Bones, he might as well have hopped out of a Stephen King novel with the intent on collecting the reader’s eternal soul. “Thanks,” he said in a voice little more than a whisper.

“Right!” Dusty exclaimed, clapping his hands. “Gang’s all here, weapons are stashed, we’re all prettied up for the little boys and girls. What’s next?”

“Oh, you have GOT to be KIDDING ME,” came a very angry voice from a very angry redhead at the other end of the hall.

Treble frowned and pointed at the newly arrived Sunset Shimmer. “THAT.”

“The SIRENS?! Are you CRAZY?!” Sunset yelled, jabbing a finger in Treble’s face. They had since dispersed from the hallway, Rubble hauling the crate and it’s remaining contents to a hiding spot in the gym. The same room where a certain ex-pony was berating a certain wannabe-rocker.

“And what’s your problem with the Sirens?” Treble asked pointedly.

Sunset opened her mouth to reply, then stopped short. “Ohhh, no. I’m not getting into THAT argument again. But seriously, you couldn’t, like, find anyone else to bring here? We have enough to worry about, thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” Treble added smugly. When Sunset looked ready to go off again, he added, “Look, they’re not here to cause trouble. Mostly. But they’ve been around for god knows how long, and know a thing or two about keeping themselves alive when shit goes south for the winter. The boys and I weren’t about to bring a bunch of girls who were just gonna get in the way or get themselves killed while we did our thing.”

Sunset groaned, and rubbed her temples. “Why… why did you need to bring anyone at ALL?! You could have just like, shown up as security or something! Who said you needed to bring a date?!”

At that point, Treble gave Sunset a very, very pointed look. “Maybe because my last two Fall Formals were, I don’t know, total garbage? I’d like at least one with some fond memories before I graduate, you know.”

Sunset had the courtesy to look sheepish. “I said I was sorry.”

“NO YOU DIDN’T!” Treble barked, throwing his hands in the air. “That’s LITERALLY half my problem with you!”

“I… fine! Look, just go back to Sonata or whatever, try not to light anything important on fire, and just… don’t do anything stupid, ok? Sunset growled.

“See, right there! You can’t even apologize now! Not that I blame you, I wouldn’t believe it if you did. But still, the point stands!” Treble fumed, marching past Sunset with an aggressive shoulder. “And I came here with Adagio, thank you very much.”

Sunset watched him leave, rubbing the spot on her arm where he’d shouldered her out of the way. As he stormed off to join his friends, only relaxing his stride once there was a sizable distance between them, she muttered, “Goddammit.”

Spooks and Sonata watched the exchange with mixed levels of interest. Sonata turned to her date and pointed a finger at Sunset as Treble marched off towards Adagio. “What’s their deal?”

Spooks sighed wearily. “It’s a really long story. When Sunset first showed up here, Treble was basically over the moon for her. Mind you, he was nowhere near as outgoing and flirtatious as he is now. The first Fall Formal after she popped up, he’d asked her out, and she’d said yes. Then she showed up at the dance arm-in-arm with Flash Sentry, and completely ignored him. He was miserable for a while. I think that’s about the time he met Rubble. Or was it Dusty? I can’t remember. I just know I was late to the party there. But anyway, he’d spent the next several months trying to get over her, while she basically mocked him for being some gullible lovesick puppy.

“Then the next Fall Formal happened. You know most of the story there. Except Treble had actually found a date that was happy to go with him. I don’t remember who, I think she graduated last year. But Sunset just saw it as another opportunity to make him miserable again. To her, he was just another easy target. So she dropped a few hints around the dance, before and during, that he’d gone and slept with, I think it was the girl’s sister or something, I don’t know. But a bunch of girls cornered her in the bathroom at the Formal, and ripped into her about dating some backstabbing cheat. She confronted him, and of course he denied it, because it wasn’t true. But she didn’t believe him. She even put her cigarette out on his collar bone. He’s still got the mark,” Spooks finished sadly.

Sonata raised an eyebrow and whistled, impressed. “Dayum. She would have made a great Siren if we were still, you know, evil. Or whatever. But that’s just harsh.”

Spooks nodded slowly. “Yeah. But he’s… well, he’s not over it, obviously. More like he’s ignoring it. Mostly. Until Shimmer walks in the room. I don’t know why she hasn’t apologized to him directly. It might have something to do with the fact that they fight every time they’re in a room together. Kind of hard to convince the other person you’re sorry when you’re yelling all the time.”

Sonata gave a sagely nod. “I can see that.” She paused for a moment, then looked around the room, her eyes settling on the refreshments table. “Wanna get punch?”

“Sure,” Spooks said with a nod, following her across the room.

“Jesus, seriously?” Aria asked, leaning back in her chair and staring at Treble, who was now talking adamantly to her eldest sister. “That’s fucked up. That’s like, pre-Rainbow-Rape-Laser-Siren fucked up,” Aria noted.

Rubble took a swig of his drink, which was decidedly a different color than the punch. He made a face, then grunted. “Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, Treble’s one of my best buds, but they’re both basically little toddlers when it comes to each other. They get all huffy and start yelling and never make any progress. Sometimes I think they only talk to each other when they have something to say the other won’t like. If not for the fact I was there for the latter half of that story, I’d think Treble actually enjoyed this.”

“He’d almost have to to put up with it this long. Why doesn’t he just like, ignore her completely?” Aria asked, sitting up in her seat and returning her gaze to her conversation partner. At this point, the dance had picked up somewhat, so they’d had to raise their voices to be heard.

“We all have ways to vent. I punch stuff. Dusty goes skating and drops graffiti. Spooks reads. I’m pretty sure Treble’s outlet is just yelling at Sunset now. Not the healthiest thing. Part of me expects them to break down one day and have angry sex in an empty classroom,” he joked, taking another sip.

When his face tightened again, Aria raised an eyebrow. “You… ok? What even is that stuff?”

“You don’t wanna know. Want some?” Rubble offered, handing her the glass.

She took it. “Hell yeah I do.”

Adagio patted Treble’s shoulder. “Well, don’t think about her too much, OK? You’re here to have fun. Then fight some horrible monstrosity with your friends. Which I think also counts as fun?”

Treble let out a short, but genuine, laugh. “Naw, that’s Rubble. Mostly I just do my best to get everyone out of the way who isn’t there to do any fighting.” He looked around the room, gauging the crowd. The Rainbooms had spread out a little, still bunched up, but in smaller groups. Rarity and Twilight were talking with a still-bitter-looking Sunset, who looked up, caught his eye, and turned away huffily. The rest of the crowd looked like any typical high school dance. “The question is how we’re going to get all the civies out of here, and how much time we’re gonna have to do it. According to Spooks, showtime’s in like four hours.”

Adagio ran a hand up his thigh. “That should be plenty of time to do all that ‘dancing’ you were talking about earlier,” she said in a husky whisper.

Sunset looked around the room at her friends and the… other kids involved in tonight’s “big event”. Her eyes settled on Treble and Adagio again, in time to watch her make some rather inappropriate advances. She scoffed and marched off to look for someone to dance with.

Level Thirteen: Omens

Level Thirteen: Omens

There exist many unfortunate aspects of the Outer Rings. Setting aside the pure malevolence of some of its occupancy, the landscape itself is not only incomprehensible to creatures of fewer dimensions, but outright hostile. To say nothing of the fauna, the flora, if one could call it such a thing, Is of such a disposition as to not only survive in such a dangerous environment, but thrive in it. Needless to say even some of the local ‘wildlife’ knows better than to go into the jungles.

Should one find themselves in the Outer, and find a way to evade the things that live there, there exists a much more dire problem, especially for meager carbon-based lifeforms such as humans: the very air is so drastically different from our own that, should any soul be unfortunate enough to take it in, they would not only die (which may be the gentlest response), but the alien components of such an atmosphere run the risk of reacting violently with our own organic composition that the results are nothing less than Cronenbergian in wretchedness and Biblical in scope.

Of course, barring all of that, the greatest contender for ‘Most Inconvenient Aspect’ may not in itself be the most dangerous, but is certainly the most unpredictable. Time, in the Outer, is nearly incalculable from our world. In fact, the only law it can be found to follow is Murphy’s, in which it seems to have a Master’s Degree from whatever prestigious university lay outside our realities.

So trying to pin down something as specific as an Eleven O’Clock deadline is not only foolish, but dangerous. Which is one of the many reasons the students at CHS deigned it necessary to prepare several hours ahead of time. The Outer is nothing if not unpredictable. You would think this would mean it great fun at parties, but alas.

“Tell me that’s not what I think it is,” groaned Dusty, staring dejectedly at a wall some feet away from him.

Bones, the only other person at the table, was looking in the opposite direction, at the crowd.. He’d found out after a couple of hours that not only did his date have much more energy than he did, but was in danger of depleting whatever reserves he might need for later on that night. That girl could dance. “I don’t know, Dusty, I can’t say I find the wall as interesting as y-ack!” he cried, as Devil grabbed him by the top of the head and forced his gaze in the same direction. He blinked. Then blinked again, multiple times. “Well, I don’t know what you think it is, but that looks like blood. In the wall.”

“I told you NOT to tell me that, Bones,” DD grunted, releasing his captive and standing up to further investigate the phenomenon. Indeed, it seemed as if the wall had suddenly engorged itself with blood. Not in the ‘bleeding walls’ trope, of course. No, that would be slightly easier to stomach. Instead, the poorly decorated wood paneling of the gym appeared to have developed deep, pulsing veins of a dark blue hue. Dusty imagined that if he stood close enough to it, he could hear a pulse. Not that he had any such plans. “That is seriously gross.”

Bones groaned, pulling out his cell phone. “It’s also seriously bad.”

“How so?” Dusty asked over his shoulder, in a tone that not only suggested, but demanded no one answer that question.

A demand that went wholly ignored. “Because if the walls are mutating, it means they’re getting weaker. Not just the physical walls of the building, but of reality. Multidimensional phenomena are surprisingly metaphorical.” Bones dialed a number in his phone, and held it up to his ear as it rung.

Dusty turned all the way back around. “You’re telling me the universe actually does have a sense of humor?”

“More like poetry. Really bad poetry.” Spooky held up a finger to silence Dusty’s reply as the other end of the phone picked up. “Hey, Rubble? Where are you? No, I can’t see you, that’s why I asked. Well, come back to the gym, far corner from the punch bowl. Yes, the one with the ‘sad people’ tables. Because we’re starting early. Wha-NO I CAN’T PUT IT ON HOLD. JUST GET HERE,” Bones shouted into the phone. Either through the increasing volume of music and people, or just pure frustration, was anyone’s guess. Although, should the guesser know Rubble for any length of time, the latter was the safest bet. He pressed the hang-up button on his touch screen with a rather aggressive finger. “God I wish they made a mobile phone you could slam.”

“They do,” Dusty pointed out. “But you can only do it once.”

Bones raised an annoyed eyebrow as a small group of students approached their table. “Hey, guys!” cheered Sonata. Flanked by Treble and Adagio, the group fanned out briefly to pull up chairs. “What’s going on?”

Bones and Dusty exchanged a look that Treble caught instantly. “What? What is it?” he asked, again suggesting he’d rather not know.

The other two boys pointed at the wall. Treble and the girls leaned closer to get a good look, then recoiled quickly, almost falling out of her chair. “Oh, my god,” groaned Adagio. “I think I’m going to be ill.”

Spooks rolled his eyes. “Then you might want to check out now. In our experience it only gets worse from here.” He thought for a moment. Then, his face lit up in alarm.

Treble flinched, as if seeing the wall for a second time. “Ooooh, I know that face. That’s the ‘I just had a thought nobody’s going to like’ face.”

Dusty groaned and stomped off, disappearing into a closet nearby. “Um, where’s he going?” Sonata asked.

Bones didn’t bother looking to answer. “We stashed some of the weapons in there. And yes, I did have a thought. Remember how the Tragedy Nexus was an inward spiral?”

Treble hated when he started explanations with a question. “Yesss?”

“And how the school was the center of the spiral?” Spooks added. He started rummaging through his pockets, finally pulling out a familiar map of the town.

“Also yes,” DT added. “Now stop doing that thing that you do where you ask a bunch of questions waiting for us to catch up with your big-ass brain. What IS it?”

Spooks rolled his eyes over the map. “Well, if we’re seeing weird shit here, at the center-”

The closet door flew open, striking the wall. Dusty strutted out, no longer in his tux, instead having opted for jeans, an A-shirt, and his skating pads, which the boys had no doubt he was wearing underneath the entire time. “Then there’s gonna be all kinds of bad shit outside this room,” Dusty finished, tossing a jury-rig flamethrower to Treble.

Treble caught it with all the grace of a fish on land, but he caught it. Giving it a once-over to make sure his fumbling hadn’t broken anything important, he rested it on the table.. “So what your saying is this ‘eleven o’clock’ stuff was total bullshit?”

Bones rolled his eyes till they reached the ceiling. “Well, I’m sorry if my watch doesn’t set itself to multidimensional time zones!” He stood up with a huff, tucking the map away again. Dusty handed him a couple of grenades, which he disappeared about his person with a flourish.

Adagio leaned against the table with an elbow, resting her head in her hands. “This is the part where things stop being fun, isn’t it?”

The boys looked at each other, then gave a resounding “Yes.”

“Well, that depends on your definition of ‘fun’,” said a deeper male voice behind them. The group turned as one to see Rubble and Aria stepping up tho them, Rubble having ‘changed’ into his favorite military fatigues, jacket, cap and all.

Treble looked at both Dusty and Rubble indignantly. “Did both of you psychos wear combat gear under your tuxes?!”

The two accused traded glances that said ‘No duh.’ “Of course we did,” Dusty replied. “Didn’t you?”

“I don’t have a ‘Designated Fighting Outfit’, thank you!”

Bones shrugged, undoing his string tie. “Your loss.” In a few moments he had removed his own suit to reveal a black undershirt that matched his slacks, and a black face-shield that he pulled up over his nose. Combined with the black silk gloves that came with the suit, the only patch of white on the kid was the bit over his right eye above the mask.

Treble looked around. “Oh, come ON!”

The sirens, to Treble’s relief, did not have ‘Designated Fighting Outfits’. Instead, they had opted for formal wear they could actually move freely in, hence the slit down the side. The lot had gathered in the large hallway leading to the gym, garnering panicked expressions from onlookers. At least, the ones who hadn’t up and ran away at the sight of them.

It didn’t help they were each carrying a weapon of some kind. Dusty had distributed flamethrowers to each of the girls, who reacted more like children on Christmas than soldiers on a battlefield. DD was grateful he was on their side, given their level of enthusiasm. Rubble had unsheathed his knives, and pulled a set of knuckle dusters from somewhere. Even after having it pointed out to him that punching and stabbing was the least useful thing he could be doing right now, he wanted, in his own words, “To be prepared for the event that your giant birthday candles get blown out.” Treble also had one of these ‘birthday candles’, and had also stashed a few explosives in is pockets. Though they were easier to notice in his pockets than Spooky’s. No one was even sure where he was keeping the stuff, let alone pulling out new stuff. Dusty himself had opted to be on thermite duty, carrying a satchel filled with the stuff over his shoulder, and a rather large, unnervingly sturdy metal pipe in one hand. Of course, he had since popped the wheels in his shoes, which the other boys had noticed he had worn instead of dress shoes.

The hall itself didn’t look anything special, besides the bright decorations and the few remaining students who either lacked the common sense to leave, or had grown so accustomed to the strange happenings at their school that they were simply waiting for someone to tell them it was over. The connecting hallways, however, were a slightly different story. As the group marched down the hall, they reached a three-way intersection, opting to split into two groups. Treble went with the girls in the direction of other people, as the other three boys took to the increasingly abandoned sections of the building.

Dusty looked around the darkened hallway, uncertain if the light pulsing he saw in the walls and lockers was his own eyes, or the increasing reach of the building’s newly acquired circulatory system. He liked to imagine that the pulsing he heard was his own heartbeat. He tried not to imagine what kind of heart would be pumping blood to a mess like this. “If someone finds anything more Looney Tunes than plaster with high blood pressure, feel free NOT to let me know.”

“You mean like that?” Bones responded unhelpfully, pointing down what should have been a dark hallway.

Dusty took one look, then glared at his friend. “Do you ever listen to anything I fucking say?”

“All the time. Then I promptly disregard it.”

The hallway in question, which should have had little to no light, instead pulsed with an unhealthy purplish glow. The walls pulsed with the same sickly veins they’d seen in the gym, though much more prominent and in greater numbers. The ceiling and walls merged at sickening angles, meeting in soft, fleshy angles instead of the sharp ninety degrees they had once done.

The glow in question came from the floor. Unlike the veiny walls and ceiling, the floor seemed almost translucent. Not quite see-through, it had taken on the appearance of thin skin, as unearthly lights and formless shadows moved beneath it. Had Rubble not stormed down the hall with the kind of abandon usually reserved for serial killers and idiots in horror movies, the boys would not have any trouble believing you could simply fall straight through the floor.

Rubble’s steps echoed through the hall as if it hadn’t changed at all. The sound of heavy rubber on linoleum echoed down the corridor just like it had every other day, and Bones noticed, and pointed out to Dusty, that a small circle had developed around Rubble, nearly restoring the appearance of the hall to its original mass-produced school setting.

Dusty blinked “Ok, either I’m actually losing it, or that is the weirdest thing I’ve seen all day. Or, you know, EVER.”

Bones shook his head. “It actually makes sense, kind of.”

Dusty rounded on him. “HOW?!”

Spooks leaned away from the yelling, plugging one ear with a sense of nonchalance. “Because it’s not actually there. I’m pretty sure this is either a psychic attack or a psychical manifestation. It’s just an illusion. Either we’re looking at a distraction, or our brains are trying to make sense of something they can’t quite process. Either way, this isn’t actually what’s going on.”

“So how is Rubble walking through it like a cheap haunted house?” Dusty asked, now following his battle-ready best friend.

Bones kept pace. “Because to him, it probably is a cheap haunted house. Or he wants it to be. I’m not a hundred percent, but it’s possible that he just doesn’t believe what’s going on around him, and that disbelief is dispelling the illusion around him.”

After a second of thought, Dusty let out an impressive sigh. “So what you’re saying is that our buddy is so stubborn and, to put it bluntly, stupid that these kind of mind games are literally above him?”

Bones mimicked the sigh. “Yeah, pretty much.”

Dusty had a disturbing thought. If one had been looking at his face, they’d seen an expression that nearly mirrored Bones’ own when the ghastly boy had realized the implications of the manifestation in the gym. “So what happens when it stops being an illusion?”

The two boys traded panicked glances, then tore down the hall after their friend. “RUBBLE!”

Treble led the girls down the hall with a sense of bravado that, even though he didn’t believe a word of it, he broadcast it so intently that one might be convinced he fully intended to find the Beast himself, have a few stern words with it, and send it packing home with nothing less than a well-placed boot firmly lodged in its arse.

The girls followed behind with a mixture of misplaced faith and novice enthusiasm one usually sees in fresh recruits looking to their staff sergeant for the first time.

Well, mostly. Aria wasn’t quite so easily impressed. Although she wasn’t about to let her sisters know that she was more than a little disturbed by the recent developments, and so her own bravado shone nearly as brightly, of equally as false.

They marched their way through a few hallways, clearing out people when they found them, either with some urgent words or raw intimidation, until the only people they could be sure had remained behind were those in the gym and immediately outside it (their reckless friends excluded.) It wasn’t until they’d turned a corner leading to the science labs that they met their first real scare.

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” Treble and the girls screamed, in equally high-pitched voices.

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” screamed Pinkie Pie and Twilight, in slightly higher-pitched voices.

Once the screaming subsided, all collected clutched their chests and gasped for breath. “What… what the HELL are you two doing out here?!” Treble demanded, in a voice much higher than he intended. He coughed, cleared his throat a few times, and lowered his octaves to a slightly moe respectable range. “We’ve been clearing people out before the shit hits the fan!”

Pinkie recovered from her jumpscare much more impressively. “Well, I was telling Twilight about how my jawbreaker went all BAKOOM and blew that super-icky meat thingy all over the cafeteria, and how you guys were saying we needed to be all FWOOOOSH with the fire and stuff, so she dragged us down here to make all kinds of big flammable stuff in the science labs!”

Treble’s eye twitch, and he brought a hand up to knead his temple. “Ok. And you couldn’t do this, you know, earlier?!”

Twilight spoke up, in a much more reserved voice. “Well, I had to wait until the lab was unguarded. They usually don’t let students handle the sodium on their own, so I had to break into the chem locker.”

Sonata tilted her head. “What does salt have to do with anything?”

Aria raised an eyebrow at her sister. “I don’t know if I’m more impressed that you know there’s salt in sodium, or more concerned that you don’t know what sodium does on it’s own.”

Treble said nothing, not wanting to indicate that he was in exactly the same boat as the youngest siren. Fortunately, Twilight was more than happy to answer. “Well, if you introduce raw and pure sodium to water, it produces a rapid exothermic reaction.”

Sonata’s head tilted the other way. “What?”

This time, Treble actually knew the answer. One of the quirks to having a friend who used four syllables when one would do. “Water plus sodium equals explode.”

The blue-skinned girl smiled widely, now that she got it. “Oh, ok! So… where’s the sodium?”

Twilight twisted, pulling a backpack Treble hadn’t noticed until now in front of her. She unzipped it and reached a hand in, then pulled out a large crystal of white mineral.

“Jesus,” Treble whispered, whistling appreciatively. “That’s the size of a baseball.”

Twilight smiled the same kind of mischievous smile that Rubble usually got when someone did something punch-worthy. “That’s the idea.”

Author's Note

Did I plan for the first Chapter of October to be Chapter Thirteen?

No.

But I did it anyway.

Level Fourteen: Bad to Worse

Level Fourteen: Bad to Worse

In most stories, when there is a single male among a myriad of females, the male will typically take the lead in a show of bravado and dominance. This is a trait that has been passed down genetically since cavemen first started leaving their mates at home to go hunting. It has, of course, evolved since then, and more recent gender equality movements have encouraged the undermining of this trope, but it still exists. The small lizard brain at the base of our own has more control than we’d like to believe, driving men to protect women at great risk, even that of looking like a fool.

Deep Treble, on the other hand, seems to have dodged this genetic trait entirely. Walking steadily, if not entirely confidently, in the middle of the group, he was more than happy to let an excitedly violent Aria and an over-eager Pinkie pie take the lead, while he stood in front of Adagio, flanked by Twilight and Sonata. Under normal circumstances, he would revel in the situation, if at least internally. Strutting down the hallway surrounded by cute girls was, is, and will probably always be a dream of his. Though he would never say it aloud, for fear of being verbally and physically assaulted by most if not all of the women he knows. He was unsure how he’d managed to fill his life with over-aggressive boys and girls, but decided many times not to dwell on it as long as he didn’t have to do too much fighting. Combat was not his strong point.

Returning to an earlier point, it bears stating that these were not normal circumstances, and in all honesty, the last thing on his mind was the bevy of pretty girls in his company. He was much more distracted by the fact that the walls seemed to be peeling off, revealing sickly, fleshy masses underneath.

The general consensus was that they were all going to be rather ill afterward. “What the hell is all this?!” Aria demanded, pointing her weapon at the walls, unsure of whether or not to open fire.

Treble fought back a rising tide of bile. “Well, if I remember my Spooks 101 well enough, this is what happens when stuff from outside our dimension starts forcing its way through. They start imposing the laws and nature of their reality onto our own in an attempt to create an environment they can exist in without collapsing into our limited number of dimensions.”

Twilight turned and blinked at him. “That was both very succinct and extremely terrifying.”

“You should sit in for the next class,” Treble replied dryly. “You’d be thoroughly impessed. If not traumatized.”

Pinkie Pie flinched away from a wall that had… pulsed at her. “Ok, this is like, SUPER-icky, can we light it on fire?”

Aria nodded. “Kinda wondering that myself.”

Adagio scoffed and cuffed her sister. “Of course not, moron. That’s still the WALL. You know, attached to the floor we’re standing on? Believe me when I tell you you don’t want to walk through melted linoleum.”

“Right,” Treble agreed, as Aria grumbled something rude, rubbing her head. “Also, there’s a chance this might not be real. And if it’s not, we don’t really want to introduce fire into this equation.”

“What do you mean?” Sonata asked hesitantly. She pulled a disgusted face as some of the wall dropped to the floor next to her, revealing more of the reddish, inflamed material underneath.

Treble gave an explanation rather similar to, if not significantly less wordy than, the one Spooks had provided earlier in regards to psychic projections and what the mind could and couldn’t process. “It’s possible that this isn’t actually what’s going on, that it’s just covering up something much worse that our brains refuse to process. And who knows what’ll happen if you add fire to that powder keg.”

Aria leaned away from the wall until she was in the middle of the corridor. “Wonderful. Is there anything I can light on fire?”

As if in answer to her question, a classroom door burst down behind them all. Strutting into the hallway with heavy footfalls was another of the Blank Slates, as the Sirens had called them. “THAT!” Treble barked, pulling up his own makeshift weapon. “YOU CAN KILL THAT!”

Adagio, who was, unfortunately, closest to the creature, had a bit of trouble figuring out which part of her flamethrower did what. Aria had no such qualms, practically sliding in front of her sister and opening fire on the advancing golem.

Open fire she did, as a matter of fact. The stream of flame that burst forth from the gun encapsulated the golem in a tide of heat and light, as it flailed wildly in a poor attempt to put itself out. Barring that, it opted to run forward, possibly in an attempt to catch its prey on fire. Of course, they were all too eager to step aside. As the creature ran forward, it met no resistance, instead charging blindly down the hallway where it eventually fell to its ‘knees’ and collapsed into a heap of burning flesh.

Sonata, unfortunately, had stepped too far aside, all but launching herself into the hideous fleshy walls. She met the pulsing meat with her shoulder, and tumbled into it.

Both of her sisters ran to her aid, screaming her name. “SONATA!” They yelled, as they reached the now hole in the wall where she fell through. They breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that she was, for the most part, unharmed. If not completely grossed out. Then they got a look at the other side of the wall. “Oh, that is GROSS!” Aria shrieked, her cry echoing into the cavernous opening.

Catching up to Rubble had been easier done than said, in fact. Spooks and Dusty had only had to run the length of maybe one corridor before they caught up to him. Of course, it helped that he’d stopped walking entirely. When they reached him, they too, stopped, seeing what it was that had drawn their friend to a halt.

Spooks took a moment to excuse himself to the nearest trash can, where he politely emptied his stomach.

The hallway had devolved, or evolved, somehow, into something much worse than pulsing veins and glowing skin. In the light of day, they would have been looking down the hallway leading to the rear of the building, where the motocross course had been built for the Friendship Games last year. In this increasingly alien, moonlit environment, however, it had mutated into something terrible. A jungle of flesh spread out before them, the walls, floor and ceiling an intricate web of tendons and stretched skin. Bands of taught muscle stretched out over thick layers of undefinable meat, all throbbing out of sync with one another, almost maliciously. Large fibrous bands of muscle hung from the ceiling, suspending large orbs, or sacks, of glowing skin and fluid in the air. Overgrown stumps of muscle and withered skin grew out of the ground until they reached the ceiling, where they ended in almost web-like intricate patters of tendons and nerves.

The hall itself was significantly larger, both in length, height, and width, than it had been when they’d patrolled it only hours before. In fact, if one had bothered to measure the dimensions, it would have outgrown the space of the building it occupied. It looked less like a hallway and more like an endless, macabre tunnel, dug out by a monstrous beast of ill intent. On top of it all, amidst the irregular, desynchronized pulsing and throbbing, the entire hallway expanded and contracted at regular intervals, and with each such contraction, a wave of hot, vile air rushed along it’s length.

It was breathing.

Spooks returned from evacuating his stomach contents, only to take another look at the manifestation and fight another rising tide. “There is no fucking way I’m walking down that hallway.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said a malicious, mature voice from behind them. The three turned to see an angry, familiar looking woman in purple robes approach them, hate burning in her eyes with the same unnatural light as the hanging pods. “You won’t make it that far.”

The rest of the girls, and Treble, gathered around the fallen Sonata to help her up. In doing so, they’d also caught sight of the world beyond the wall. In an opening no bigger than a classroom, which it might have been at one point, was a small cavern of the same flesh and otherwordly light the other boys had encountered. Although they had no way of knowing that. The major difference, however, was the lack of any tendons hanging from the ceiling, suspending the glowing pods. Instead, said pods seemed to line the walls and floor in places, gathering in nests in the corners, and covering what looked to be a massive tree trunk of heavy, fibrous muscle in the middle of the room.

“That is… oh my god that’s awful,” Adagio murmured, barely restraining the urge to vomit.

Twilight was less fortunate. Pinkie Pie patted her on the back as she leaned against a small, still regular-looking section of hallway, heaving her stomach contents onto the floor. Pinkie, of course, was having trouble not following suit.

Sonata had a rather different reaction. “Oh god it’s ON ME get it OFF I can FEEL it somebody give me a shower!!” she ranted, moving far away from the opening, and standing as dead-center in the hallway as she could. She adamantly refused to take a step that would draw her closer to the walls.

Aria gave Treble a look he had seen before. One that said ‘Ok, I should be freaked out, but somehow I’ve hit my maximum and come full circle to just being mad again.’ It was one Rubble had all but trademarked. “NOW can I light it on fire?”

Treble handed her his own flamethrower. “Be my fucking guest.”

Rubble almost smacked himself in exasperation. “Really? THIS was your big idea?! Throwing your chips in with some otherwordly monstrosity?!” he bellowed at the newcomer.

The newcomer being ex-Principal Cinch. “Why not? Your… ’school’ has already taken enough from me! My job, my reputation! My HOME! I was thrown out on the street! Thanks to that fiasco at the Friendship games, I’ve been blacklisted by the school board! Not even Private Schools will hire me!” she ranted, pacing madly back and forth across the hall, as if it weren’t made of horrible, unyielding meat. “There’s nothing you can do to stop It That Breathes Last, anyway! I just wanted to make sure your precious… institution was ground zero!”

Spooks raised a hand, currently buckled over, yet somehow on his feet. He didn’t bother looking up before he addressed the newcomer. “Problem. This shit’s been in motion for like a hundred years. And I doubt even a gargoyle like you has been around that long.”

Cinch scoffed at the petty jab. “Please, do insult me more if it makes you feel better. Of course I’m not the one who orchestrated all of those accidents. That was the Last’s work. We simply gathered to make sure you upstart children didn’t get any bright ideas about derailing His Monstrosity’s grand design.”

Dusty rolled his eyes. “Oh wonderful, a doomsday cult.”

Cinch snapped a finger, and a handful more robed figures stepped forward. Most of them were unrecognizable, save for one that Rubble pointed to indignantly. “Dude! We bought our kitchen stuff from you! Come ON!”

The man, a portly sort with a large mustache, nodded. “That you did, boy. I appreciate your patronage. Unfortunately, pocket money like that isn’t enough to turn the tide of Armageddon.”

Rubble thought for a second. “Well, ok, that’s fair.”

“DUDE!” Dusty barked, smacking Rubble upside the head.

“Enough of your squabbling,” Cinch growled, pulling out a large athame. Her cohorts did the same. “You children will be no more than extra flesh for the manifestation as he rises when we’re done with you.”

Despite her cliched threats, however, the boys’ next move served to surprise her. They did take a step back in fear, as she had expected, but not from her or her fellow cultists. Instead they’d opted to move as far away from Rubble as they could without touching… well, anything.

Rubble grinned widely, a maniacal, almost relaxed grin, as if all the tension had gone out of him. The kind of smile you see on a sociopath when he realizes the cops no longer suspect him. Pulling out his knives, and sliding on his knuckle dusters, he took a martial stance and stared down the advancing crowd with something in his eye that gave even Cinch a moment’s hesitation.

Happiness.

The scene in the gym had quickly devolved in the boys absence. More students had noticed the now-expanding veins in the walls, as well as other phenomena reflective of the rest of the school. Gathering in the center of the room, they had long since moved past panic, and were huddled together, looking to someone to save them.

That someone, of course, being the few Rainbooms still left in the room. Sunset had taken off to look for Pinkie and Twilight when Rainbow had let slip their idea to use the Chem Lab’s sodium supply. Which may have been the best move, given that using her power in such a crowded space, with such a rising tide of fear, might have shattered her psyche.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack were busy alternating between tearing down the encroaching forest of flesh, and fighting off the wave of golems coming through the gym doors. Applejack had taken point in guarding the entrance, as her enchanced strength was more than enough to take on one or two at a time. And as long as she kept picking them up and throwing them back out the door, into the advancing crowd, the golems weren’t gaining any ground.

Dash was dismantling the forest as quickly as it grew, though even with her speed being everywhere at once was impossible. She couldn’t risk setting fire to it, either, lest the entire gym catch and endanger or kill the students still trapped inside. “Where the hell is Fluttershy?!” Dash screamed, in a moment of passing by Applejack.

The farmgirl yelled back over her shoulder as she threw two more golems bodily into the doorway, knocking over a large portion of the crowd. She’d pushed them back enough that they were now on the other side of the doorway, and she took the opportunity to pull the door shut and lock it. “I don’t know! She said sumthin’ ‘bout goin’ to find help!”

Rainbow, seeing the now locked door, rushed tables and chairs into a pile in front of it for Applejack to build a barricade.

This lasted until one of the windows crashed in, and another tide of golems crawled through. “SUNUVABITCH.”

Sunset Shimmer was lost. The hallways she knew and trusted, even ruled at one point, had remapped themselves. Flesh covered the walls and lockers, growing unorganized in meaningless masses out of impossible angles. She ran, corridor after corridor, doing her best to ignore the surroundings. Eventually, she came to a halt, as she heard something familiar: voices. Lots of yelling. Some screaming.

She ran towards the commotion, turning one last corner and finding the source of the noise. In a large, an impossibly large, cavernous jungle of meat and light, were most of the boys, and a group of robed adults, some of which she recognized. Dancing among them, moving with more speed and aggression that she had ever seen, was Rubble. He ducked and spun, almost dancing as he dodged glints of steel and wildly aimed punches, cutting and jabbing at anything he could reach.

As Sunset watched the fight, it became apparent that the adults present had depended on their size, age, and a child’s natural cow to authority to win them the fight. What they hadn’t depended on was a professionally trained delinquent who’s favorite pastime was not only ignoring authority, but actively opposing it. Well, his second favorite.

As Sunset stared on, unsure of whether or not to be more afraid of the monsters, or the man, she realized his true favorite pastime, and what would have been his ‘special talent’ had he been born in Equestria: violence.

Level Fifteen: Please Approach the Psychopath From A Safe Distance

Level Fifteen: Please Approach the Psychopath From A Safe Distance

The cultists that had gathered around Rubble and were making a valiant attempt to surround him and his friends did so with apprehension they’d lacked only a few minutes ago. One particular member of the group, standing near the back, was torn between a sense of awe and dread. He shuffled back and forth from one foot to the other, trying to find a safe opening to approach. Barring that option, a good opportunity to run away without being chastised or punished by his order mates. He had the sneaking suspicion that if he’d simply waited for them all to be felled he would run the risk of the boy chasing him down.

Cinch had long since abandoned the post, citing something about “Keeping them busy.” Which was employer-speak for “Die slowly so I have time to get away.”

Not that Rubble had any intention of killing any of them. He wasn’t the sort that detested murder, or always went for a less-lethal option. On the contrary, he was of the school of “kill them all and let God sort it out.” However, he did have a sense of responsibility, and so going to jail for murder wasn’t exactly optimal. So he aimed for shoulders, arms, and ducked low for the occasional tendon or kneecap. While the robed figures surrounding him had the advantages of size and strength, they lacked most if not all of the traits that made Rubble a terrifying fighter: speed, training, and an overabundance of exuberance. It would be fair to say that, given the goings-on at the gym, the other hallways, and the rapidly decreasing morale of his assailants, he was the only one in the building happy to be there.

It was amidst this gruesome melee that Spooks, in looking for a way past the mass of fighters spanning from one side of the hallway to the next, caught sight of Sunset. Of course, she had to be on the far side of things. Which, for most anyone else, would be a major impediment. For Spooky Bones, a mild inconvenience. He’d learned at an early age how to sneak around, given his mother’s less-than-sunny disposition regarding her father-in-law. So, much to her distress, Spooks had learned rather quickly how to stalk about unnoticed, in pursuit of the knowledge his grandfather had left behind. He’d only refined this unique talent at school, in his efforts to avoid the bullies who viewed him as an easy target.

It also helped that nobody was paying attention to him, given the spectacle his friend was putting on.

He grabbed Dusty by the arm, and dragged him along the side of the hallway, ducking into an alcove where normally there was a classroom door. He tried not to think about the foreign organic material that currently occupied that space. Once the crowd had shifted farther down the mutated corridor, he again hauled Dusty with him, as they met up with Sunset. It was slightly difficult to get her attention, as she seemed entirely preoccupied with the fight in front of her, regarding it with the kind of terrified appreciation one would watch a car flipping over on the road next to them. In both cases, the instinct was to freeze and hope that the damage moved away from you.

“Sunset!” Spooks hissed, almost in her ear. She jumped and shrieked with surprise, a reaction he had long since learned to ignore. “What the hell are you doing here?!”

She looked from Spooks to Rubble and back, still not entirely grasping the situation. Spooks snapped his fingers in front of her face in a rare moment of impatience, and she shook her head, turning to address him. “I came looking for Twilight, she and Pinkie Pie ran off to the Chem Lab!”

Dusty looked puzzled. “But the lab’s on the other side of the school.”

Sunset threw her hands in the air. “I don’t know! None of the hallways were where they were supposed to be!”

Spooks barked a low series of swear words. When the others looked at him, he explained, “That’s psychoplanar terraforming. Which, for those of you who don’t read science fiction, is very, very bad. It takes an enormous amount of power to accomplish, which means the Last is really, really close.”

“The Last?” Sunset asked, focusing on the one part of the sentence she understood.

Dusty explained, “These robed schlubs called the Beast ‘It That Breathes Last’, which is basically a fancy way of saying they don’t know what it’s actual name is, and want it to sound as ominous as possible.”

She gestured at the alien corridor and quickly dwindling numbers of cultists. “AND THIS ISN’T OMINOUS?!”

Spooks gave her a stern look. “This is nothing compared to what’s coming. This is just window dressing and the local sales pitch. Trust me, we’ve got a lot of work to do in a short amount of time. What’s the gym like?”

Sunset paused for a moment, as she remembered the mess she’d left behind. “There’s a bunch of golems trying to force there way in! Applejack and Rainbow Dash are holding them off, and Rarity’s playing defense, but we’re short a bunch of help! Twilight and Pinkie ran to the labs, and Fluttershy took off to find help!”

“Why didn’t you start with that?!” Dusty barked, then popped the wheels on his skates again and buzzed down the hallway.

Sunset took a step after him, but felt a tug on her sleeve. She turned to see Spooks regarding her with the same stern look. Which was made distinctly more intense and creepy given the only part of his face she could see were his eyes. “We don’t have the time or energy to chase after him,” he explained. “Besides, he’s fast enough that, even with the changing hallways, he’s our best bet to get reinforcements to the gym. He’ll also be the only person in that room who knows where the explosives are. WE need to go find the girls and Treble. And the OTHER girls.”

Sunset regarded him a second, then nodded her agreement. The two took off down the same hallway as Dusty, albeit at a much slower pace, and started navigating the newly-formed maze.

Rubble raised an eyebrow as he watched his friends disappear around a corner, a sight that didn’t go unnoticed by his opponents. “Looks like all your backup ran off without you, boy!” One cultist, an older gentleman with a decent amount of muscle, jeered. He took a well-aimed swing at Rubble, but made the mistake of broadcasting his attacks with posturing and loud banter. Ducking under it would have been easy enough, but Rubble favored a side-step, raising his arms and lining his elbows up like brackets around his opponent’s own elbow.

The old man’s eyes widened in the split second before Rubble brought his elbows down on the arm, slamming the joint into his braced knee. There was a satisfying crack as the joint inverted under the pressure. Reversing his grip on the remaining dagger in his hand so that the blade sat above his thumb (the other was currently up to the hilt in the shoulder of the portly gentleman who had helped furnish their hideout. He wasn’t sorry), he dropped his arm low and brought it up with an enormous swing that took a large portion of his opponent’s cheek with it.

“You call them backup. I call them witnesses,” he growled through a tiger’s smile. A loud shout behind him brought his attention to one of the last cultists standing. He ducked down low, and as the lanky young man stumbled over his lowered form, he sprung up, providing the last bit of momentum necessary to flip the man onto his back.

The old man had since scooted back to nurse his shattered joint and bloody cheek, so Rubble had plenty of room to lift up a leg and stomp it as hard as he could on the shoulder of his failed attacker. There was another loud snapping sound, and a scream, followed by lots of cursing as the last cultist rolled around on the floor in agony.

Rubble looked around him at the mass of fallen cultists, nursing open wounds, broken bones, or worse. At least, those that were still conscious. Tucking his remaining blade into his belt, his eyes settled on the fat guy leaning against the wall, trying to slowly inch the blade out of his shoulder. He’d made some decent progress, which was immediately undone by Rubble’s heel on the hilt. The old man let out a shout as the blade sunk back in, then whimpered as Rubble leaned forward, putting his weight on the blade. “Right, little fat man who likes money. I imagine there’s not a whole lot you know about what you’re actually dealing with, so I’m gonna ask some really simple questions, and you-” he accented the word by flexing his leg to add a few pounds more pressure, “-are going to give me simple answers. Understood?”

His ‘victim’ laughed defiantly. “You think I’m afraid of you?! I welcome the death my master brings! What can an upstart juvenile like you threaten me with?”

Rubble rolled this sentence around in his head for a second. “How about the truth?” As a demonstration, he relented the pressure on the knife, walking over to the skinny young man with a broken shoulder. Throwing the man over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, he walked up to an expanse of fleshy wall with no defining features. He looked back over his shoulder and called, “You think death is what waits for you at the end of this tunnel? Try again!” He heaved the man over both shoulders, and dead lifted him a few inches above his head. Which he’d probably be feeling in the morning, the guy was heavier than he looked. With a solid grunt, he threw the cultist into the wall.

The effect was immediate, and tortuously slow. As soon as the man met the wall, it latched onto him, loose strands of flesh resembling gray bundles of nerves and skin snapped out, sticking to his clothes and pulling him in. The process was slow, and Rubble stood back as those still conscious watched in horror while the gray matter crept across the man’s robes. When they met his flesh, they began to burrow, melting into his skin and crawling into his nose, his eyes, even forcing their way slowly down his throat. His screams were quickly suppressed by alien tissue, and as the process accelerated, he was absorbed into the wall in moments.

He turned back to the old man, crouching down next to him and leaning his face next to the man’s ear. “Now, shut up and listen.”

There was a moment of horrified silence, as some cultists backed away from the teen, some stared open-mouthed at the wall, and the fat man with the knife in his shoulder said, in a voice little more than a whisper, “You killed him!”

“Nope,” Rubble said simply. “LISTEN.”

After a few seconds of silence, a small, familiar sound arose in the quiet. It was muffled, but identifiable: the man in the wall was still trying to scream with all that tissue in his throat. “My god,” the guy said quietly.

“Exactly,” Rubble said, in a similarly hushed voice. “Figured it out when I saw the hallway. This Beast you worship doesn’t want to kill anyone. Dead flesh is useless to it. It wants living flesh. It feeds by assimilating living things into it. Bone, brain, blood, skin, muscle, it doesn’t matter. It’s all food to these things. You think you’re worshiping a god? This creature is just a single fish in a cosmically large pond. The Outer Rings are full of these Beasts, and they all hate us. And do you think they’re going to stop at the one? Not a chance. As soon as it’s brethren realize there’s a way into our world, they’re going to force their way in by the dozen.

“So, I’m going to ask you some simple questions, and you’re going to give me simple answers, because not even a doomsday psycho like you wants to be a living buffet line for the rest of eternity. And trust me, it will keep you alive,” RM explained. He patted the hilt of the knife almost companionably, making the cultist flinch.

The portly old man considered the wall carefully, somehow still able to hear the muffled screams over the beating of his own heart, and his own ragged breaths. “What… what do you want?”

“Where’d Cinch go?” Rubble asked.

“She… she wants to try to hijack the Beast. She thinks she can control it,” the cultist answered. “How… how do you control that?”

“You DON’T,” Rubble said sternly. “You BURN it. Get all your friends that are still awake and have use of most of their limbs. It looks like they’re even less excited about this bait and switch than you are. Gather them all up, and find something that burns. Then start roasting the golems. Burn down the… that,” he added, pointing down the forest of flesh, not having any words to properly describe it. “Clean house, if you can. And if you even think-” he accented the word by pulling the knife out in one swift motion, eliciting a loud cry, “-about hurting any civilians, I will find you, [i[knife first.” He wiped the blade clean on the cultist’s robes, and slid it into his belt next to the other blade.

Standing up and walking down the hallway his friends had taken, he heard scrambling and shouting behind him, of cultists trying to get to there feet, and a general consensus that following Rubble’s orders were in their best interest, if only for now.

Spooks and Sunset had made it down a few hallways before Dusty zipped past them. He shouted a long string of words that Sunset couldn’t make out. “What?!” she called after him, but he’d already disappeared.

Spooks translated, “He said he hadn’t found the gym yet, but if we keep walking we’ll run into Treble and the girls.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow, but decided against asking how he understood any of that. “Ok, since we have a lot of wandering to do yet, there’s a question I’ve always wanted to ask.”

Spooks was not normally one for grand displays of emotion, but the sigh he heaved and the drooped shoulders were full of exasperation, even for a normal person. “Let me guess, you wanna know why I’m so quiet and creepy all the time?”

The redhead waived a dismissive hand. “No, I’ve long since filed that away in the same folder as Pinkie Pie’s exuberance. It’s labeled ‘DO NOT ASK’ in large, bold font.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, ok, that’s fair. So what’s up?”

She hesitated for a second, thinking about whether or not she really wanted an answer. “I was wondering, given all the freaky stuff you’ve seen today, and the monsters and stuff I’ve seen you guys fight, how are you always so… calm? I mean, I’ve seen you freak out, and panic and all that, so I know you’re not an emoitionless drone, but stuff like this could easily send someone to the nuthouse. Now, Rubble and Dusty, I’m convinced have already been there, and broke out based solely on the principal that there are still monsters to fight, and Treble reacts mostly like a normal person would, by which I mean he screams like a girl. But you seem to just… take it in stride.”

Spooks raised an eyebrow at her, and shrugged. “If it makes you feel better, I threw up as soon as I saw that meat jungle back there.”

“Actually, it does,” Sunset mused. “But that… even with that, you just press on. With all this alien bullshit going on, you can still keep going, and spout pseudo-scientific nonsense like ‘psychostatic formations’.”

“Psychoplanar terraforming,” he said with a sigh. “But yes, I get what you’re saying. Well, it’s kind of hard to explain. It feels like… like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. At school I just feel like a part of the wallpaper. And the guys, man, bless their hearts, but even they get creeped out every once in a while. They still haven’t gotten used to me popping up ‘randomly’,” he said with a hint of sarcasm and air quotes. “But when shit like this happens, it’s like I’m the tour guide. The local expert. Which, given how little any of us actually know about what’s going on, I probably am. Times like this are the closest I feel to being normal. Not to mention useful. I don’t exactly have a lot of other strengths.”

“Well, your grades don’t suck,” Sunset said encouragingly.

Spooks chuckled. “Yeah, ok. I have a head for facts and I enjoy studying. Comes with growing up reading the Old Man’s journals.”

“What was your ‘old man’ like, anyway?” Sunset asked, if only to continue the conversation.

“Fucking crazy,” said a new male voice in the conversation. Sunset jumped at the newcomer, then saw it was Treble and the sirens rounding the corner. Twilight and Pinkie Pie brought up the rear, then ran to give Sunset a hug when they all saw each other.

“Oh goody, the gang’s all here,” Aria chided.

Level Sixteen: Regroup

Level Sixteen: Regroup

When one reality encroaches on another, besides the obvious overlap, there are subtle changes in the atmosphere. Sometimes it becomes harder to breath. Sometimes gravity itself weakens or strengthens. It all depends on which reality has more presence, which laws contradict each other more drastically. The greater the difference, the greater the change.

Such as the reality of the school, not to say anything about what may lay outside the doors. As the halls gave way to labyrinthine caverns of meat and hatred, sickly light and hungry flesh, so to did the air give way to something foul and assertive. The vastly changing space now filled with an unstable miasma, a fog of varying thickness that smelled of something hot and vile. Grey mist seeped out of nowhere and settled intrusively on the floor, until some places were so dense that one’s own feet would disappear.

The golems had spread across the school now. Digging their way out of the walls, falling like corpses from gaping wounds in the ceiling. Hatching from the glowing pods like newborn monstrosities. They all, as soon as they reached their feet, marched towards the gym. With no eyes, no directions, they somehow navigated the shifting maze of alien corridors to their target. No doubt guided by an unseen hand (or other appendage).

It was their drone-like marching that Rubble had taken to following. At first, at a distance, as he was quickly running out of things to ignite them with. Then closer, and closer, until he realized that they were paying him no mind. Even when he broke the glass on a fire ax case to retrieve the new, heavier, sturdier weapon. As an experiment, he lobbed off one of their arms, a single golem at the back of the pack, hoping that, if it decided to attack him, or call for help, he could manage a head start.

Yet it didn’t. Its arm simply fell of its body as it was severed, falling lifeless to the floor. Still, the creature kept walking. So he lobbed the other arm off. Still no reaction. Whatever they were marching towards, it was a much greater purpose than the safety of one of their own. He cut off their heads, wondering aloud if they “Were just like horror movie zombies.” They were not. Onward it pressed, headless, armless, simply a stump on legs. It didn’t bleed, either. An inquisitive look down its neck revealed that there was little more than bloodless muscle under the single expanse of skin.

Then he cut its legs off. The stump fell to the floor, the legs collapsing underneath it, with no balance or structure to keep them marching on. The pile of limbs lay scattered across what should have been linoleum, but was now more like the padding of a gym mat. If that mat were made of living tissue. Rubble did his best not to think about it. Instead, he reveled in his new discovery, and set about his work like a lumberjack in a forest of mindless meat.

Finding the gym was proving to be much easier than any of them had thought. Spooks looked on, slightly amused, as Aria and Treble led the pack in burning rows of golems away, making sure to leave enough of them to follow to the other students. The rest of the girls seemed content to just sit back and let the two go to work, doing there level best not to freak out and take off for the hills.

They wouldn’t like what they found there, anyway. “You know what I’m surprised he haven’t seen?” Sonata asked suddenly.

Her sister didn’t even bother turning around. “What, Sonata?” Aria asked dryly, stomping out a particularly stubborn golem fire.

“Cops. I mean, somebody somewhere has got to have called the popo by now, right??” Sonata reasoned, looking around the group for confirmation.

Adagio tapped her chin lightly. “Surprisingly, she has a point. Where are the police at a time like this?”

Treble startled her by answering with a loud laugh. “HA! Please! The cops in this town are worse than useless! Do you girls remember even ONE boy in blue in all the weird magical shenanigans you got up to? You’d think giant floating horsefish in the sky, students blowing holes in the school grounds, and tears in the fabric of time and space would ring in a siren or two, but nope. Only time I’ve ever seen a cop is when nobody needs them. Hell, that warg that got lose in the theater over the summer? I found a couple cops like a day later just leaning on their patrol car talking about how it was ‘animal control’s’ problem.”

The girls looked around at each other in disappointed realization. “Wow,” Sunset said finally, “Way to make us all feel safe in our beds at night.”

Spooks gave a small smile. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s our job now.”

“A-fuckin’-men,” Treble agreed, kicking over a golem in his way and giving it a short burst from his flamethrower. Short in that it released a stream of flame, then stopped, making a clicking sound. “Shit. Out of ammo.”

Aria punched him in the shoulder, chastising him for being to liberal with his munitions, as they turned a corner into a familiar-looking corridor. They’d finally found the gym.

Though, like the rest of the school, it was not as they’d left it. The hallway leading up to the double doors had adopted the same motif as the rest of the skin labyrinth. The decorations had hung on for dear life, party streamers and bright colored letters beset by grey tendrils of muscle tissue, giving them an almost web-like appearance. The bulletin board on the wall had been overgrown like a scab, until all they could see was a veiny square of wall that stuck out slightly from the rest of it.

Even the balloons had met an unfortunate fate, having been popped and assimilated into the encroaching growth. The only evidence of their existence was a single scrap of blue rubber hanging from the ceiling, and the threads they’d been attached to that now reached taut into the walls.

Of course, the most distracting addition was the mass of several dozen golems trying to push forward through the locked double doors, which somehow had maintained their steely nature.

“Ex-CUSE ME?!” Pinkie Pie bellowed. “NOBODY RUINS MY DECORATIONS!”

The group took several well-advised steps back as she took out a rather large jawbreaker from her pocket, which lit, not with the standard pink glow, but an intense radiance that only seemed to get brighter. “EVERYBODY DOWN!” Aria yelled, as all but Pinkie Pie hit the floor some feet behind her.

She pitched the jawbreaker like she was going for a record, and it made a beeline between several of the golems, finally stopping as it hit one in the back of the head. Then it exploded.

The shockwave came first, then the sound. The teens felt the immense pressure of air escaping the space wash over their bodies a split second before a deafening roar filled the air, followed shortly by meaty bits raining from the ceiling. Pinkie stood defiantly in the debris, glaring angrily at the now-annihilated group of meat puppets that had bore the entirety of her sugary wrath.

After the last bits of golem fell to the ground, the rest of the group got to there feet, brushing off pieces of muscle and skin away. Treble looked forlornly at his suit. “Man, I knew this thing wasn’t gonna survive the night.” He gave his torso a few brush-offs, as the last bits fell from his jacket.

“Then why did you wear it?” Spooks asked dryly.

“Excuse me for wanting to look good on a day I might die,” DT retorted in a low growl. He felt a hand on his chest as Adagio shooed away a small piece he’d missed off his coat pocket.

“Well, I think you look just fine,” she crooned, resting her head on his shoulder.

Treble opened his mouth to say something, only to be interrupted by the door creaking open. Dusty and Applejack looked out at the crowd, eyes wide. “Uhhh… did ya get ‘im?” AJ asked, dumbfounded.

“No, we missed,” Pinkie Pie deadpanned, marching past them into the gym. Her hair had since deflated, now full of monster bits. The rest of the group followed suit, murmuring to each other and exchanging general greetings with their friends.

Spooks took up the rear, raising his eyebrows as he got a good look at the gym as a whole. Those who had stayed behind when things got bad had huddled into a large crowd near the stage, where Rainbow Dash was standing vigil with a fire ax and a flamethrower. The far wall, where the windows had once been, was now boarded up, with small slits of space where there hadn’t been enough wood. He could see more golems pressing in from the outside, not making much progress. The thought that muscle seemed to trump wood in this situation crossed his mind, until he noticed Rarity standing nearby, focusing intently. Closer inspection of their barricade revealed a pale blue glow on the other side of the barred windows, where her barriers seemed to be holding fast.

Below the windows, and across the floor, there were all kinds of burnt Blank Slates. Scorch marks on the floor, large piles of ash, and the occasional limb or two littered the once-pristine dance space. Although, amidst all of this, the weirdest thing he saw that night sat in the far corner from the windows, guarding a side entrance to the gym that had also been boarded over. Spooks blinked.

Fluttershy had gone for help, alright. The far side of the gym was currently occupied by a small pack of wolves, wild dogs, a bear, and, somehow, a giant tiger. “Wh..what the fuck?” he mused quietly. The sirens, and Treble followed his gaze, and their jaws dropped.

“What… what the hell?!” Treble exclaimed, gesturing wildly at the zoo of teeth and claws. “Where’d she get a tiger?!”

Applejack sighed. “Way she tells it, she found the wild dogs first. That big-ol Great Dane gave her a ride into the forest, where she found the bear and wolves. Then they went to the zoo,” she explained.

“The zoo,” Adagio said simply.

“Yup.”

Adagio sighed, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “Of course she did. Why the hell not.”

“Um, question,” Sonata said, raising a finger.

Her sisters looked at her suspiciously, then Aria sighed. “Why not. You’re one for one so far. Shoot.”

“Why aren’t the tiger and doggies and bear all like, horrible monsters? Shouldn’t the outside be like, all meaty and gross and stuff too?” the youngest siren asked.

The other sisters exchanged strange glances, not sure how to answer that. Neither, it seemed, did Spooks. “That makes no sense,” he said pointedly.

Sunset glared at him, the only Rainboom who had stayed behind instead of convening with the rest of her friends. Pinkie had joined Fluttershy by the animals, and Twilight was providing Rarity some structural support by reinforcing the wood with her telekinesis. “Makes no sense?! THIS WHOLE NIGHT MAKES NO SENSE! Please, PLEASE inform me what part of this, this nightmare makes no sense to you!”

“The part where it stops at the school,” he deadpanned, unimpressed by her tantrum.

Rubble was having a surprisingly good day. He hadn’t died yet, which was a plus. He’d given himself poor odds on making it past the first hour or two. He’d found a new hobby in dismantling the series of golems that he’d come across on his march to the gym. In fact, he was rather close, given the trail of burnt corpses he’d started following, obviously the work of his friends. When he doubted which way to follow the trail, he settled for the direction that was still smoking. This decision was reinforced with the sound of a rather large explosion.

He had looked better, all things considered. Still bearing the cuts and bruises from his fight with the horribly misguided cult figures, he had since accrued a rather gruesome layer of grime and offal in his Stephen King-like procession down the halls, hacking apart puppet after puppet, not bothering to clean much more than the blade of his axe. He’d tried his daggers, but they didn’t cut deep enough fast enough. It was more effort than it was worth to use the smaller weapons when the fire axe seemed to prove most useful.

He could do without the horrible surroundings, mind. The hallways, even as easy to follow as they were now, with a series of burning breadcrumbs to trace, were still rather unsavory to look at. Not to mention all the ducking and weaving he’d been doing to avoid the strange growths and mutations that he’d learned not to touch. Part of him felt terrible about what he’d done to that one cultist, but in all fairness, the guy had been trying to kill him. There was also the slight ease on his conscience that he’d heard the rabid scrambling and shouts of the other cultists crying to “Cut him out!” He felt better about that.

It also helped that Aria had let him grab her butt earlier. Well, less ‘let him’ and more ‘not cold-cocked him once he had’.

He rounded the corner to the hallway leading to the gym, and stopped in awe. The absolute mess of exploded golems and destroyed party supplies might as well have rearranged themselves into the words ‘Pinkie Pie was here’. He whistled appreciatively as he marched up to the secured gym door, making a mental note to ask exactly why it was still made of steel, and knocked with the blade of his axe.

There was a pregnant pause as he waited, then the door eased open slightly. “Yellow?” Spooks asked quietly.

“Green. Lemme in,” he answered.

The door swung open, and Spooks stepped forward to greet his friend, stopping short. “Dude, you look like a serial killer. The fuck?”

Rubble marched past his friend, into the gym, where the majority of its occupancy gave him much the same startled look. Some of the crowd huddled together on the far side of the room caught sight of him, their eyes widening as the scooted away. Treble looked ready to ask much the same question Spooks had, when Rubble volunteered, “Turns out you CAN cut them into tiny pieces.”

There was a whoosh of air as Rainbow Dash joined the group, followed shortly by Pinkie Pie. “Dude?! What did you do?!”

Rubble opted simply for a wide smile, and marched over to stand vigil with Twilight and Rarity, just in case the barrier gave out. Sunset stopped him with a hand on his chest. "That's like, the most horrible idea right now. If Rarity saw you like that she'd pass out, and the barrier would fall."

His smile faded slightly. "Hmmm, that's suboptimal."

Aria gave him a sideways glance, with a hint of a smile. "Well, you could always wait in the hallway for more golems."

Dash rolled her eyes. "Oh right, and come back with ANOTHER layer of yuck all over him?" She looked around, but Rubble had already left the room, his smile coming back in full force. "Goddammit."

Level Seventeen: Let’s Just Take a Deep Breath, Ki-WHAT THE %&$@ IS THAT?!

Level Seventeen: Let’s Just Take a Deep Breath, Ki-WHAT THE %&$@ IS THAT?!

Sunset’s friends had all taken posts in the gym. Fluttershy and Pinkie with the animals, Applejack and Rainbow Dash guarding the stage, and Twilight and Rarity doing a rather commendable job of holding the barricade together. The Sirens had also pitched in. Aria was standing vigil in the hallway with Rubble, Sonata was putting up more boards on the windows to cover the gaps, and replacing broken ones. Even Adagio had found a place to be helpful, doing her best to keep the crowds calm and collected while they all put together a plan. Which is what Spooks, Treble, and Dusty were working on at the moment. They’d gathered the remaining incendiaries, which equated to one working flamethrower with fuel left (technically their were two but the other was with Aria and Rubble), two phosphorous grenades, and a disturbingly large collection of thermite bricks that hadn’t proven useful yet.

The problem was, Sunset herself didn’t really have a place to be useful right now. Her powers were telepathic, and given the disturbing amounts of fear and malice radiating in the building, she didn’t even need her geode to tell her she’d completely overload. She’d tried just hanging out with the animals, but for some reason the tiger really didn’t like her. Fluttershy said something about her “looking like bacon he couldn’t eat”. Rainbow and AJ had the stage covered, should anybody try to slip in through the stage doors or the trapdoor beneath them. And the windows were right out. Rarity and Twilight had very politely pointed out that she was a bit distracting, while Sonata had run circles around her with the plywood. She’d wondered where they’d gotten all the wood from, up until she’d tripped on a missing floorboard.

There was also no way in hell she was going to stand guard with Rubble and Aria. She’d not only be a liability, but there are some things she was sure she didn’t want to see. That left the huddle of boys in the corner where only one of the tables had survived, albeit with a leg missing. It was currently being propped up with an empty flamethrower (with the tank removed, just in case), and was covered in small books, and a map of the school. What good the map would do them, she wasn’t sue, given the nature of the halls outside.

Heaving a sigh, she meandered over to join them, pulling up a slightly bent chair someone had used to fend off a golem, most likely to little avail. Taking up the only unoccupied quarter, she asked, “So… need any help?”

Treble surprised her by not immediately giving her attitude. “Honestly, I have no idea. I mean, your powers aren’t very conductive to psychoplanar phenomena-”

“Awww, baby’s first four-syllable word,” Spooks joked quietly, his nose buried in a book like usual.

“-die in a fire. And honestly, you’re not that great of a fighter. I mean, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, so maybe you can see something we-” Spooks coughed loudly. “DUSTY AND I can’t. Jesus, what is with you today?” he asked his gangly friend.

Dusty rolled his eyes as the other two boys quietly bickered. “Here, look. This is the map of the school we picked up forever ago. It doesn’t do us a whole lot of good outside the gym, but this part-” he pointed to the detailed layout of the gymnasium and connecting rooms, “-seems to be relatively stable. Spooks thinks its because of your girl’s Elements or something. Maybe having all that other-dimensional magic is making it hard for this freak from yet another dimension to get a foothold here. So we’re working with what we’ve got. Spook’s idea is that we find a way to either A: hold off the monsters until this thing grows too weak to force itself on us, which doesn’t seem likely,” Dusty groaned the last bit.

“Yeah,” Sunset agreed, “It does seem to be getting worse out there. Does that mean it’s getting stronger?”

“Most likely,” Spooks jumped in, holding up a hand to silence Treble. “Which leads us to Plan B. Which is to find a way to trap it once it summons itself, and burn it out with the thermite we have.”

Sunset’s eye twitched. “I don’t like Plan B. I thought you said that once it showed up it would basically destroy everything?”

The boys nodded. “There’s a small window,” Treble replied, “When it first gets here. While it’s still adapting to three dimensions. Right now it’s trying to convert the environment around it to be more hospitable, but so far we’re still only working in three-dimensional space. GET YOUR HAND OFF ME,” he barked, as Spooks pinched his cheek.

“I’m so proud of you,” Bones said with a fake sniffle.

“That’s it, you and Dusty aren’t allowed to hang out by yourselves any more,” he growled as the aforementioned teen laughed. He turned back to Sunset. “Ok, so here’s what we’re thinking. Since the gym seems to be relatively stable, we’re going to try and lure it in here, or get it to manifest here, or something. That way it has to force itself into three dimensions to fight us. That’s when it will be weakest, when it still has to obey our laws. Then we just flash-fry the bastard. At least, I hope.”

Dusty leaned back against his chair, his jovial mood giving way to a pensive one. “Yeah, the problem is, we can’t light it up here without endangering all the students and teachers. And, well, us.”

Sunset did a double take. “What? Teachers?! Where are they? Why haven’t they been doing anything to help?!”

A hand raised from the large crowd in the middle of the room. A pale, white hand with a gold bracelet. “Here!” Celestia called.

Sunset slowly turned her head to stae wide-eyed at her Principal, sitting in a small huddle with her sister and a group of students who had curled up to her for comfort. “What.”

Celestia rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes, because I’m totally going to march around this god-forsaken hellhole with a flamethrower in my hand while my students cower in a corner. Also, eeeewwwwwwww.”

“...what.”

Treble groaned. “That’s what I said. She gave me this big speech about ‘defending her students’ and ‘being there in their time of need’. Then she fell asleep like ten minutes later.”

“Yes, thanks for waking me up,” she yawned, curling up to Luna, who was thoroughly passed out on her shoulder. “That explosion was most appreciated,” she added, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She fluffed her hair, pulled it out of the way, and laid down against her sister’s head.

“Are you seriously-” Sunset started, only to be shushed by her Principal.

“Shhhh, sleep times now.”

“But-” her protests were cut off by Celestia’s fake snores, until she huffed and turned back around. “What about the chaperones? Weren’t there other adults here? I know for a fact Big Macintosh came with us!”

Dusty shrugged. “No idea. Last I saw he and Ms. Cheerilee were sneaking off somewhere. I hope it was the parking lot, I really don’t want to have to dig them out of the walls when this is over.”

“...do what now?” Sunset asked.

Treble looked up from the map he’d been studying, albeit unhelpfully. “Yeah, we talked to Rubble a bit. Apparently if you get too close to the walls out there, like, trip and fall into them or something, they eat you. And not in like the quick munchy death kind of way. You just get… sucked in. And kept alive or something. He went into more detail, but I’ve already hurled enough tonight, thank you.” Spooks nodded agreement at that sentiment.

Sunset shivered all over. “Ok. Ok, pushing past that right quick. You said something about how you hoped they’d gotten outside. Why? Isn’t it just as bad out there?”

Spooks shook his head, looking up this time. “No, actually. It’s completely normal out there, you know, despite the waves of Blank Slates coming at us. There were a few straggler cultists outside, but they couldn’t find a way in without getting eaten, or beat up.”

“Whatever happened to the cultists Rubble was fighting? He didn’t kill any of them, did he?” she asked hesitantly, with a careful look at the main entrance.

“Nah, he doesn’t do that. Too much trouble to dodge murder convictions. Self-defense is easier to claim when the witness is a live and totally nuts,” Dusty explained. “From what I understand, either they’re still wandering around out there, god help them, or they found a way out and just hightailed it out.”

An idea sprang to mind. “Why don’t we just leave?” Sunset proposed.

The boys all looked at her. Then at each other. “Spooks, you want to cover that one?” Treble asked.

The wispy kid shrugged. “Sure. Well, first off, there’s the logistical problem of navigating over a hundred people past an army of mindless muscle golems that are getting more aggressive by the minute. Barring that exit, we’d have to find a way to navigate all of them, and us, out of the nightmare labyrinth of the school. And even if we did all of that, somehow, that would only leave the Beast with no opposition as it just pulled itself together at its leisure and raised hell on Earth. Or whatever you call the place it’s from.”

Sunset rested her head on the table. “Ok, no Plan C. So, back to B. Any ideas?”

Dusty groaned, running a hand through his dirty brown hair. “Not a one. Man, I wish we could just like, drop it in a pit or something and burn it down there.”

“You mean like the maintenance tunnels?” Sunset volunteered. The boys all looked at her. “Oh come on, you guys have been traipsing around this place after dark for years, even before there were monsters to fight, and you never went into the tunnels?”

Dusty gathered the map and shook it at her. “Does this look like there are any tunnels here to you?!”

She swatted the paper away, where it landed on the floor. Treble sighed and picked it up. “No,” Sunset said flatly, “Because they’re not on the newer maps. The old tunnels were too unsafe after building codes got stricter, and the updates and new tunnels were put in with a bunch of cut corners. If they’d charted them out and submitted that information to the city there would have been all kinds of trouble. Apparently there was a big scandal when they’d failed to submit that paperwork, and the tunnels were shut down anyway.”

Treble resurfaced, looking curiously at the now less-than-useful paperwork. “So how do you even know about this stuff?”

Sunset got quiet, then blushed slightly. “I, um...” she coughed. “That was where I was living when I first got banished from Equestria.”

The boys exchanged worried glances. “Why didn’t you just go find your alternate parents or something?”

“I tried,” she huffed. They live in Manehatten. And when I got there and introduced myself, they thought I was crazy. I mean, this world’s Sunset was right in their living room, so why would they believe me when I said I was their daughter. They called the cops, and I hopped the first train back here. That was… not the best Summer ever.”

“Jesus, that sucks,” Dusty groaned. The other boys nodded their condolences, murmuring politely.

“Well, it’s not all bad, it-” BAKOOM. Sunset was interrupted by the main entrance flying open, as Aria and Rubble were thrown backwards into the room.

“Ow ow ow fuckin ow ow ow!” Rubble bitched, crawling to his knees. His face twisted into a snarl as he turned his attention to the doorway.

Which was now completely occupied by all kinds of gross. Grey tendrils crept along the doorframe as meaty, undefined appendages slapped their way across the floor, dragging with them a large, teeming mass of misshapen and horrible assembled body parts. Arms jutted out from a central mass at odd angles, grasping at anything within reach. Some had large wooden planks, others balled into fists, some tearing away the walls. Large twisted mouths lay patchwork across the monster’s surface, some full of gnashing, inhuman teeth, others with long tendril-like tongues, and still more with any number of eyes rolling madly in the mouths like sockets, sometimes grinding against each other.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!” Treble bellowed, in a surprisingly not-girly voice. Which was barely heard over the rising tide of screams from the students.

“OH COME THE FUCK ON!” Celestia bellowed, startling Luna awake. The Vice-Principal took one look at the monster, and passed back out.

Dusty wasted less time talking and more time scraping together the last two grenades. He ran forward,, helping Rubble to her feet. “Spooks, get Aria! She’s knocked out!”

Bones nodded, and abandoned his books in favor of attending to the fallen Siren. The other two, seeing their sister on the ground, sprang into action, along with the Rainbooms. Sonata stood back, out of the reach of the creature, throwing nails and hammers at it. Most either missed wildly or bounced off the beast with no effect. One particularly well-aimed hammer struck a large eyeball, rupturing it and causing the creature to recoil. About an inch.

Applejack had found something far more effective to throw- stage lights. Ripping the lighting off the front of the stage, she hurled the large spotlights like cannonballs at the creature, where some shattered, some erupted into sparks and flame, and one fell into an open mouth, disappearing entirely. Still, the Beast surged forward.

Rarity and Twilight were struggling with keeping the golems at bay and finding a way to contribute to the fight. Every once in a while Twilight would throw a loose plank or broken wood at the beast with her mind, but the few that hit were about as effective as Sonata’s nails.

Fluttershy had her own problems. As soon as the Beast had emerged, the animals had gone crazy. Any hope of getting them to contribute to the fight was lost, as she was spending all of her energy on getting them to calm down and not hurt themselves or someone else. Pinkie was doing her best to help, but she didn’t have her friend’s gift.

What Rubble had, though, was a plan. “Rarity, Twilight!” he barked, as the two girls turned to him for instruction. “Don’t worry about the barricade. Use what you’ve got to push it back into the hall!”

“ARE YOU CRAZY?!” Rarity shrieked.

“YES, but that’s not relevant right now!” He replied.

“I THINK IT’S PRETTY FUCKING RELEVANT!” Twilight shouted, then covered her mouth.

Rubble was impressed. “Ok, fine, yes I’m a little nuts. But just trust me, let it down!”

The two girls looked to each other, then dove out of the way as they dropped their powers. Moving as quickly as they could tp push back the encroaching monster, their unattended barrier fell in seconds.

Which is what Rubble had planned on. “Fluttershy! Get your animals out of here!”

“But there’s no way out!” she cried, obviously distressed.

“Yes there is!” Rubble answered encouragingly. “Through THEM!” he pointed a finger at the advancing mass of golems.

Flutterhy’s eyes widened in understanding as she nodded. Turning to her animal friends, she pointed at the army of flesh puppets. “Get them!” she ordered.

It was all the encouragement they needed. Having an outlet to siphon their panic and rage through, as well as a way out of the building, the dogs, wolves, bear and tiger tore through the crowd like furry chainsaws, leveling the advancing force in minutes. Soon, there was nothing left but a mess of undefined muscle and skin as the beasts ran off into the night.

Spooks saw an opening. “Rainbow Dash, Pinkie! Get the students out of here!”

“On it!” the girls said in unison, as Rainbow ran circles around the crowd, getting them on their feet and out the door. She cleared a path through the pool of offal to the now-leveled wall.

Pinkie had taken to disposing of a few straggling golems that had surged towards the procession of vacating students with lots of exploding marshmallows. Nowhere near as effective as the jawbreakers, they nevertheless did their jobs, severing arms, legs, and heads until the puppets were completely immobile. As the last few students ran off into the night, guided by a barely-helpful Celestia (who, to be fair, was hauling Luna off in a fireman’s carry), she turned her attention to the beast.

Now it was just the Rainbooms, the Sirens, and the boys against the new monstrosity, which proved far more stubborn than they, surging forward in spite of the onslaught, the barriers, and the magic being used to push it back. In a few minutes it had crawled halfway into the room, where a final, familiar appendage ducked under the gym door and resurfaced with a mad smile.

“Principal CINCH?!” Sunset bellowed. “WHAT?!”

There, atop the entire mass of appendages and horrible flesh, was the upper half of Cinch. Or, what was left of her. Her arms had mutated much like the creature, becoming large stumps ending in tendrils where her fingers should have been. There was no hair left on her head, which instead was covered with smaller, similar mouths to the rest of the Beast. Even her torso bore almost no resemblance to a humans, as it was merely a stump from which the rest of her grew. Really, the only features identifying her as the former Principal were her eyes, her skin tone, and the horrible echo of her old voice beating on the air like a shockwave. “EAT!” she shrieked, in a terrible, reverberating bellow. “EAT ALL!”

“...well, shit,” Twilight deadpanned.

Level Eighteen: BOSS BATTLE

Level Eighteen: BOSS BATTLE

Merging consciousness across the planes is a nasty undertaking. Most people assume it’s a contest of wills, that simply being more stubborn and steadfast will give them all the control they need. These people quickly lose. For there is one major commonality across all the planes, one binding need that weaves a dangerous thread through every consciousness. That is hunger.

You see, it’s impossible to overpower the mind of a Beast through sheer force of will, because it, in essence, is nothing but basic instinct. Instinct that resonates with the human mind on such a dangerous level as to be contagious, infectious even. While the human is busy preparing for mental combat on the plane of mental awareness, their subconscious is completely unguarded, and losing fast. Most don’t even realize what’s going on, even after they’ve lost, because their own desires are corrupted underneath them. The surge of power they feel from the Beast assuming control of their base instincts is usually falsely attributed to them declaring a win, and so they stop fighting.

Which is when they lose the rest of their minds.

“EEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAT!” the monster bellowed, the force of sound crashing forward like a tidal wave, bearing down on their ears and minds as if someone had upped the cabin pressure to eleven.

“You guys KNOW this monster?!” Aria shrieked, getting back on her feet. “I thought it was like, something from out of time and space or whatever?! This thing’s a PRINCIPAL?!”

Sunset pulled back towards the stage. “Yes and no. The monster part is new. Well, mostly. It’s a long story.”

“Less talk more rock!” Rubble barked, unpinning a phosphorous grenade and chucking it at the overlarge target. Hitting it wasn’t the problem. Hitting it hard enough was. The grenade met, ignited and successfully burned a rather disappointingly small patch of flesh. Rubble blinked at it. “Ok, little more rocked than that.”

“I found the cupcakes!” Pinkie shouted, wheeling in a large catering cart full of well-decorated pink pastries.

Adagio rolled her eyes while Aria shouted over her shoulder, “I don’t think that’s what it’s hungry for, you moron!” Sonata looked back and forth between Pinkie and the Beast in confusion.

“TOO BAD!” Pinkie yelled back, and started tossing cakes like a semi-auto trebuchet.

Rubble had just enough brain power set aside, not being taken up by his standard fighting instincts, to recognize a dangerous combination when he saw one. He turned tail and ran from the monster, crashing into Spooks and Aria and dragging them to the ground. “FLOOR!” he yelled, as Dusty rolled a table in front of them. Treble had found his own overturned table, and dragged Adagio and Fluttershy behind it.

The Sirens all protested loudly at the manhandling, until the first explosion went off. Then the next. Each cake that landed lasted a split second before it detonated, taking large chunks out of the creature. Some severed arms, others left large holes where the eyes were. One even managed to punch a hole in the muscly trunk connecting Cinch to the rest of the monstrosity.

Which then launched its protest. As the holes filled in, almost as fast as Pinkie was making them, two massive trunks of muscle burst forth from the main mass, landing on the floor with loud cracks as the remaining planks gave way to the added weight and pressure. Soon enough, Pinkie had run out of munitions, giving the creature all the breathing room it needed to pull itself forward. The trunks clenched and flexed as they moved to support the weight of the creature, and soon it was standing upright on its newly-formed legs.

Although rightly disturbed by this development, Adagio was much more interested in Pinkie Pie. “Sine when the hell can you do that?!”

“Since I learned how to do THIS,” Applejack answered for her, grabbing the beast by its new leg and heaving it forward like a log toss. Still unused to balancing on two appendages, the Cinch-Beast lost its “footing” rather easily, landing with a reverberating thud on the floor. It roared in pain at the impact, and the multitude of splinters as loose floorboards shattered under the impact. “Whoo-ee!” AJ declared, smiling proudly.

For about two seconds. Her smile disappeared when the creature’s mass shifted and roiled, the legs inverting themselves and gathering itself upright again. What was left of Cinch focused its attention on Applejack, and stomped towards her. At least, it would have, had Applejack still been there. Rainbow had since collected her and the rest of her friends, gathering them all in a big circle.

Treble blinked as he noticed Fluttershy wasn’t next to him anymore. “Natch,” he grumbled, helping Adagio to her feet. He glared at the Beast as it acquired a new target, and his eyes widened in abject terror as he noticed something awful about it.

Adagio took a step back. “That’s not a good look for you. What is it?”

Wordlessly, he pointed to a particular spot on what would now be considered the creature’s belly. As the flesh rolled and shifted, Adagio noticed a strange shape on the surface, but she couldn’t recognize it. It was just out of sight, and there were more like it. It was- there! “Oh… my god. Is that a face?!”

Treble nodded, slowly closing his mouth and swallowing hard. “Rubble,” he called in a weak voice, strangled with fear. “RUBBLE!” he tried again.

That one worked. “WHAT?!”

“The… the people it eats! They’re still alive inside that thing!” Treble explained, recoiling back a few steps.

Rubble squinted impatiently at the creature, which was distracted with picking a target now that no one was currently throwing painful things at it. Twilight had since lost her telekinetic grip on the creature after Pinkie’s assault, which Rarity had dropped the shield for. Both were currently feeling the effects of long-term overuse, leaning on each other just to keep upright. “God damn,” Rubble groaned, finally seeing what DT and Adagio had. “That’s just wrong,” he groaned, his chest dry-heaving as he tried not to think about it too hard.

Then Spooks spoke up. “Um, not to be a total buzzkill, but I have an idea,” he said simply, peeking over the table he and Aria were still hiding behind. Dusty had since stood up and was rummaging around for spare weapons.

The entire room looked at him, and shouted at once, “AND?!”

Which seemed to be the distraction the Beast was waiting for. As the teens turned their attention away, it charged for the one person off on his own: Dusty. Who turned around just in time to duck under its feet as it crashed into the frame of the closet he was digging through. “If you have a plan fuckin say it already!” he shouted, running across the room. The beast inverted itself, it’s legs twisting on the spot. Cinch’s face emerged from the back of her “head”, and it roared after him.

The wispy boy continued. “You girls said that the Elements separated whoever you used them on from whatever magic they were using, right?”

The girls looked to each other, trying to find the logic in his question, when Rarity answered weakly, “Um, yes? But I’m not sure what that has to do with anything...”

“Well,” Bones continued, “Maybe it can separate the Beast from the people it ate. I mean, they’re still alive in there.”

Sonata gave him a weird look. “You seem awfully calm and collected for someone who’s about to die.”

Sunset threw up her hands. “THANK YOU!”

“Oh, that’s ok. I’m just in shock. I’ll probably get out one or two more sentences before I pass ohthereitgoes-*” he finished quickly, his eyes rolling back in their sockets as he crumpled in exhaustion and fear to the floor.

Treble nodded glumly. “Yup, that’s about right.” He looked over at the girls, then at the beast, and finally, took a deep breath. “As much as I hate to say it, he’s right. Your Magic Rainbow Skybeam thing might be ebough to break that connection. At least we can weaken it.”

Dusty groaned as he dodged under the beast again. “MAN. I was really hoping to avoid that this time!” He skated over to the pile of thermite bricks, his wheel the only thing giving him distance over the creature’s long strides. Gathering them in the bag as quickly as he could, he wheeled a circle around the creature, and joined up with Treble and Dagi.

“Why is it such a big deal, anyways? We save the world all the time with that thing!” Rainbow yelled back.

With all the shouting, and running around, the Beast had grown confused, searching for a target again. Even being as huge as it was, a good ten feet tall or more, it could still only be in one place at a time for the time being. So it again settled on the smallest group, Aria and an unconscious Spooks (Sonata had taken the opportunity to hide behind the Rainbooms). Rubble saw the creature surge forward, and leapt halfway across the room to grab Spooks by the collar and drag him out of the way, as a large meaty trunk of a leg met the floor where he once was. Aria had no problems diving out of the way now, her faculties mostly restored. She helped Rubble haul Spooks onto his shoulder, and they ran sideways away from the beast, who was now crashing through the table they had used as shelter.

Dusty sighed heavily. “Because the last time I was anywhere near that laser thing I didn’t poop for a week!”

The Rainbooms met this declaration with silence. Well, mostly. “Actually, yeah,” Sunset agreed. “That happened to me, too, after the Fall Formal. Really uncomfortable.”

The rest of the room murmured their agreement, some more loudly than others. “Yeah, what the hell, guys?!” Aria barked. “Put like, a warning label or something on it! I was colorblind for a month afterward!”

Rubble groaned. “Don’t remind me. Treble switched my hat and coat for a bright pink camo pattern that whole first week. I only noticed when I realized my jacket was missing some holes.”

Cinch-Beast roared over the conversation, and charged after Treble and his group, who scattered. Scampering around it’s huge legs like mice, the monster twisted itself around trying just to reach one of them. Soon, they’d gathered up Rubble and Aria (with Spooks in tow), and huddled all together with the rest of the group.

Applejack raised a concerned eyebrow. “Is it really all that bad?”

Twilight mumbled something, staring at the ground.

“What was that, dear?” Rarity asked, still holding her up.

“When you guys hit me with it my period was late by three weeks. It completely reset my cycle,” she explained, blushing deeply.

All the girls in the group flinched. “Not cool,” Rainbow murmured. “But I mean, how are we going to save all the people trapped in that… thing?”

Dusty rolled his eyes. “I didn’t say don’t do it. I just said it was going to SUCK.”

Sunset nodded her agreement. “He’s right. We don’t have a lot of options left. And besides, it’s our duty to save as many as we can.”

The girls all gathered together, joining hands, while the Sirens and the boys scooted out into the open lawn, trying to get as far away from the side effects as possible without totally abandoning their friends. The Beast saw the smaller group retreating, and took the opportunity to chase after them, into the open.

Which is exactly what the Rainbooms needed it to do, as it gave them time to put together enough power. They floated into the air, hands joined together, as multicolored light and magic radiated from them like heat. Higher and higher they rose, until they were all but a crown of radiance that would have fit nicely on the Beast’s shoulders. It turned a moment too late, sensing the mighty surge of power growing behind it, and lunged forward.

Only to be met with the crashing tide of Harmony magic that erupted from the Rainbooms, and washed over the creature as if it had caught fire. It screamed horribly, in many voices at once, falling to the floor. Soon, the room was too bright to make out anything but silhouettes, as the monstrous shape of the creature gave way to the human forms of the people it had eaten. They fell to the floor like heavy rain, groans of pain and confusion filling the air as the light receded back into its casters.

The girls floated back to the ground, gently, as if on wings of angels, and saw the large crowd of adults, teens, and cultists laying across the broken gym floor. Cheering loudly to themselves, they all traded hugs, soon joined by Sonata and Adagio.

“You guys are the coolest!” Sonata cheered, as Pinkie hugged her back.

Sunset groaned. “Adagio, you can stop hugging me now.”

“No.”

“But-”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Uh, guys?!” Treble yelled in panic. The group turned to him as he pointed a finger at the crowd. They followed his gaze and gesture, in time to see a single person stand up amidst the group of fallen people.

Except it wasn’t a person. Not in any real sense of the word. It stood on two feet, had two arms, and a head, but that’s where the similarities ended. Its sometimes bald head opened and closed in random intervals and in random spots as hungry mouths filled with rows of jagged teeth fought for space amongst each other. Eyes with no lids glided across its torso like marbles rolling around on the floor, shaking and staring wildly at all they could see, twitching in place and scurrying across the body in dizzying patterns. Even its arms and legs were horrible facsimiles, as the upper and lower parts of its arms were simply layers upon layers of hands gripping each other, fused in random and disgusting places, reaching and flexing in waves of movement, while its legs were twisted, broken things, bending in wrong angles at random intervals, as toes and ankles jutted out from the joints and blank spaces like sick growths.

“Holy shit,” Rubble said quietly.

Dusty was about to voice his rather sarcastic agreement, when he noticed Rubble wasn’t even looking at the creature. He was looking at the dizzy, terrified masses writhing around on the ground. Of all the cultists, the adults and teens, and even the principal, not one of them had eyes, mouths, hands or feet.

“Oh, fuck me,” Dusty said in a voice little more than a whisper.

Then the beast spoke, in a dozen disharmonious voices fighting to be heard over each other. “hELl0 (h|ldrEN.”

Level Nineteen: Not Even My Final Form

Level Nineteen: Not Even My Final Form

Mankind has become so obsessed with fear that they have built entire corporations on it; giant, living engines feeding on the emotions of the populace, depending on their fear of the great “What If?” to keep lining the monster’s pockets. News outlets, insurance companies, even government entities function only because of the fear they instill in us of what would happen if they didn’t.

Some companies celebrate fear, through the creation of horror movies, scary stories, and comics with disturbing imagery. Creating a falsified fight or flight response in people to give them an enjoyable, safe adrenaline rush that they can walk away from whenever they want. If that story’s too scary for you, you can always put it down. Millions are made because some people enjoy being scared, when there’s no real danger present.

But at its core, fear is something much more dangerous than we believe. Sure, in an unlit theater, watching some horrible monster drag someone down a hall, you feel your heart race in your chest, you breath heavy, even scream. When the monsters are real, though? The narrative changes completely. Yes, you can still hear your heartbeat in your ears. Your breathing becomes ragged. You might even scream. These things are near constants. It’s our natural response. Yet it becomes very hard to just put the book down and walk out of the room if the monster’s not on the page.

Some people, however, respond to fear very differently.

“And who the rocket manger Christ fuck are you?!” Rubble shouted, taking a defensive posture. He’d already pulled a knife out from somewhere, and was holding it in front of his face as if trying to hide behind it. Or hide the monster.

“Hey!” Sonata shouted. “That’s MY line!” she growled, from a safe distance. The girls were quickly backing away from the creature, Siren and Rainboom alike.

“||0w no\/\/ c|-|il|)r3n, lət”$ NȍϮ Ϝϊgӈ†,” the Beast growled condescendingly. It’s voice deepened and pitched at random intervals, sometimes in the same vowel, making it difficult to track its words. The general tone of superiority, however, was hard to miss.

“Nah, LET’S,” Rubble barked, and lunged forward. The creature swung a lazy arm, faster than should have been possible, to knock him aside, only to find there was nothing there, as Rubble ducked low and dug the knife into an orbiting eye on its waist. He leaped back and swung his leg around, aiming for it’s head, which was almost immediately proven to be a bad idea.

Rubble barked in pain as a great mouth opened, nearly the entire surface of the side of the monster’s head, and clamped down on his ankle. Another mouth opened only inches from it, and said, in an approximation of Cinch’s voice, “Ⓣhᾀ₮ ₩⅍ i‼ ạdvʪeD.” The eye he had stabbed reformed and twisted into another mouth, which simply spat out the blade.

“Yeah,” the boy flinched as his leg twisted uncomfortably in the massive jaw. “Starting to see that.”

“Ŏh, ԍᴑְod, ᴉᴛ ᶗan bè ȚȃǕʛɧt,” the extra mouth drolled arrogantly. Then the Beast whipped its entire body around, heaving Rubble across the room with all the finesse of a crash test dummy. His back hit a pile of sheet rock with an uncomfortable crack, and he stopped moving.

“RUBBLE!” Dusty and Treble shouted. Spooks just looked on, aghast.

“Ŋʘw ϺΔyᴕᴇ ᴡᴲ cᶏᵰ ḥằvέ a ₵ivⱡⱢῘzeḍ ᴄoὭѶеЯϨΑΤίȍΝ,” said the monster.

Spooks’ face grew dark, and he stepped forward. “How about you talk to us in your inside voice, and we’ll think about it.”

The creature, if it could raise an eyebrow, might have. Instead, all of its wandering eyes focused intently on the gangly young man standing in front of him. The many mouths chattered in clicks and shrieks, as if talking amongst themselves, then swiftly and fluidly merged into a single, wide maw that threatened to split the head in two. “VERY WELL,” it agreed, in a great, booming voice. Not to threaten, but as if it didn’t have any other settings. “LET US SPEAK. YOU PRESUME TO KNOW WHAT I AM AND WHAT I WANT.”

“False,” Spooks snapped, glaring daggers at the invader. “We have no idea. Everything is best guessing at this point. My grandfather might have, he might have even been right. But I’ll never know. Truth be told, the only thing I know about you is you scare the fuck out of us.”

It tilted its head, the top half dangling sickly onto its shoulder as the mouth opened. “INTERESTING. YOU APPEAR TO HAVE NONE OF YOUR PROGENITOR’S ARROGANCE. PERHAPS YOU WILL LIVE LONGER THAN HE.”

This took Bones back a step. “You knew him?”

The creature’s head tilted the other way, the top half flopping about as it spoke. “ONLY OF. I HAVE NEVER ENCOUNTERED HIM PERSONALLY, BUT THERE IS A… STINK ABOUT YOU THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE STORIES I HAVE BEEN TOLD. HE WAS A GROWTH. A MALIGNANT TUMOR IN FATHER’S SIDE.”

“HOLD up,” Dusty interjected, waiving his hands. “You have a DAD?!” he asked loudly, stepping forward to stand beside Spooks.

“WHY WOULD I NOT? ALL EXISTENCE SPAWNS FROM OTHER EXISTENCE. AND ALL EXISTENCE DIES TO FEED OTHER EXISTENCE. LIFE ITSELF PERPETUATES THROUGH LOSS AND SELFISHNESS. OF COURSE, SOME LAST LONGER THAN OTHERS,” he said with a wide, sick smile, looking around the room.

Dusty looked ready to say something, presumably stupid, when Treble climbed aboard the conversation. “You said something like ‘We presume to know what you are’. Does that mean you were going to correct us? Tell us what’s really going on?”

The sound the Beast made as it laughed could have driven a pure and righteous man to suicide, if gone on too long. The boys recoiled into themselves, as well as the girls, though they had since backed into the open yard. Even the distance they’d put between themselves and the monster wasn’t enough to curtail the horrible noise. It sounded like a loved one telling you to jump. “YOU WISH ME TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH? TO SHARE WITH YOU THE LAYERS UPON LAYERS OF REALITY ONE WOULD NEED TO PEEL BACK FOR THEIR FIRST GLIMPSE AT THE LIGHT IN THE CENTER OF THE WORLD? OH, HOW I WISH I COULD. IT WOULD BRING ME NAUGHT BUT ECSTASY TO WATCH YOU WITHER AWAY UNDER THE PRESSURE OF THE TRUE NATURE OF THE WORLD YOU SO DESPERATELY PROTECT. UNFORTUNATELY, I AM NOT HERE FOR SUCH MENIAL PLEASURES. IN FACT, I AM HERE FOR ONE REASON: ALL OF YOU.”

“Oh yeah,” Rubble groaned weakly from the pile of drywall he’d been buried under. “Well, we ain’t going down without a fight.” It would have sounded much more threatening if he handed sounded so weak and muffled.

The boys let out a collective sigh as they saw their friend still alive. The Beast, however, simply laughed again. Quieter, shorter, but still awful to the ears and mind. “SUCH SPIRIT. YOU WILL NEED IT. NO, I IN FACT AM NOT HERE TO… ‘TAKE YOU DOWN’. THIS, THIS CHARADE,” he gestured grandly about him, as if on stage. The many hands on and in his arms rolled sickly in sockets that shouldn’t work. “THIS WAS ALL TO GET ME WHERE I AM RIGHT NOW. IT TAKES A SURPRISINGLY GREAT QUANTITY OF ENERGY TO GET ME THIS FAR. OF COURSE, THESE MISGUIDED FOOLS,” he gestured at the cowering masses of cultists, crawling about on the ground, trying to scurry away from the terrible noise, “SHOULD BE THANKED. THEY DID MAKE MY JOB… EASIER. MY TRUE PURPOSE IS THIS: AS VANGUARD AND MESSENGER. I AM MERELY HERE TO… SCOUT OUT THE LOCAL TALENT. AS MUCH AS I HATE TO ADMIT IT, AM LOATHE TO, IN FACT, I MUST ADMIT THAT YOU ARE, INDEED, TALENTED. YOU WERE… PREPARED FOR ME, INSOMUCH AS YOU COULD HAVE BEEN. OF COURSE, AS YOU CAN SEE, IT DID NO GOOD, BUT I AM… INCONVENIENCED. AND BORED, NOW THAT I HAVE REACHED THE END OF MY TASK. WELL, ALMOST.”

Spooks raised a defiant eyebrow, trying to decide which part of the Beast’s body to glare at hardest. “What else do you want?”

“WANT? CHILD, I WANT TO EAT YOUR WORLD. I WANT TO DESTROY EVERYTHING I SEE BEFORE ME. BUT WHAT I WANT DOESN’T MATTER. WHAT I AM TASKED WITH, DOES. I HAVE ONE LAST THING TO DO, AND THEN I WILL LEAVE,” it explained.

“Leave?” Dusty asked, incredulously. “Just like that?”

It nodded. “YES. I HAVE ORDERS. FROM FATHER. MY LAST TASK IS THIS, A MESSAGE, TO YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS: WE HAVE SEEN YOU. WE HAVE FOUGHT YOU. AND WE HAVE FOUND YOU WANTING. MORE OF US COME. IN WAVES, IN DROVES. WE ARE BUT THE HERALDS. THE ADVANCE GUARD. FATHER IS COMING. FATHER IS WINNING. FATHER HAS ALREADY WON.”

With one last, terrible shriek, the great maw opened as far as it could, until it literally cut off the top of the head. Soon after, the Beast crumpled to the ground, falling into itself in a pile of mouths and eyes and hands and feet. The assorted appendages rolled, skittered, flopped and leaped across the floor in sick procession, finding their hosts and owners. Within minutes, the cultists and adults and teens were whole again.

Of course, Treble had found a corner to heave into first. “Oh god why is it always body parts with these fucks?!”

The cleanup was almost as bad as the night itself. Half of two walls were missing, the room was a war zone with half a floor, the decorations, tables, and equipment had gone to pieces, scattered across the gym like confetti, and nobody even wanted to think about what the halls looked like.

EMTs had arrived several minutes later, in droves. Many of those who had been eaten were still in shock, but with no physical damage. Some had been fortunate enough o pass out and block out the entire incident. Blankets and hot drinks were distributed, a disaster tent set up, and a rather sizable cleaning crew established. Also someone from the zoo had come by to get Fluttershy to find the tiger and bring it back.

Aria had a rather decent knock on her head, and a concussion she was adamant “Wasn’t a big deal.” Her sisters disagreed, as did the Ems she’d punched trying to get them to leave her alone, and so she begrudgingly waited in the back of an ambulance to go to the hospital, with Adagio and Sonata in tow. Rubble was already on a stretcher, and the boys watched morosely as they lifted the bed into the back of another ambulance. “I’ll ride with him,” Dusty volunteered. “Keep your phones on. You two will probably need to stay behind anyway to answer a bunch of really uncomfortable questions neither I nor blockhead here have the brain cells or patience for.”

Treble chatted with him briefly, as Bones stopped a passing Tech. “Any idea what’s up with him?” Spooks asked, nodding hid head at the ambulance.

The EMT sighed. “Well, there’s no damage to his spine, though he’s probably got a few broken ribs. Not to mention a concussion of his own. Just glad he’s not trying to punch his way home,” he said, nursing a bruise on his lower jaw. “His foot, though… whatever bit him, it took out a huge chunk. Someone said there was a bear in the school, is that what did it?” When Spooks hesitated an answer, the EMT raised his hands. “Nope, don’t wanna know. I’ve heard the stories about this place. Just… we haven’t confirmed it yet, but I’m pretty sure his entire Achilles tendon on that foot has been torn in half. Not to mention the bite marks IN his ankle bone. I could fit a pencil into a hole in his fibula.”

Spooks flinched, and looked glumly over his shoulder as they closed the door to the ambulance, Dusty waving at him through the window while he patted the knee of an unconscious Rubble. “He’s never going to use that foot again, is he?”

“Probably not,” the EMT sighed. “Sorry kid.”

Treble walked up to Spooks as the ambulance peeled off, and patted him on the shoulder. “Hey, he’s gonna be ok, right? There’s all kinds of medical shit for that. At least he’s got the whole damn leg.”

Bones sniffed loudly. “Yeah. Yeah, we’ll see.”

“Aw, dude, don’t cry. If you cry I cry and then we’re just a couple bitches on the front lawn,” Treble joked, half-heartedly.

Another loud sniff, and Spooks stood up straighter, looking around. “Where are the Rainbooms? We need to talk.” He grazed the crowd with his eyes, and found a colorful assortment of teenage girls standing around the medical tent, offering help to the Beast’s ‘victims’. Twilight and Applejack had already started cleaning up the mess, moving the debris and glass into large manageable piles. Some heavy machinery would probably show up in the morning, taking up all kinds of space. Spook’s heart twinged as he wondered if Rubble’s uncle would be working the site.

Treble gripped him by the shoulder and led him to the medical tent. “Come on, you look like you need a blanket and some free food.”

“Everyone needs a blanket and free food. It’s October,” Spooks noted, his own weak attempt at hmor. It didn’t go unnoticed, as Treble managed half a smile in response.

“Hey guys!” Pinkie shouted. She waived wildly at the approaching boys, as the rest of the girls turned or looked up and noticed their approach.

Sunset ran around the table to meet them. “What the hell happened in there?! Why is Rubble in a damn ambulance?!”

The boys looked to each other, and explained the events after the girls had backed off into the lawn. There was a bit of confusion as they started talking about the Beast’s ‘explanation’.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Rainbow interjected. “What are you talking about? We didn’t hear it say a word after Spooks started talking to it. There was that creepy like, multiple voice thing it was doing, then it just started flapping its head around and laughing like a demon!”

Treble and Spooks looked to each other, then at the girls. “You didn’t hear anything it said about it’s Father, or anything like that?” Treble asked.

The girls all traded worried looks amid a chorus of “Nos” and “Nuh-uhs”.

Spooks smacked his forehead. “I fucking hate telepathy.”

END PART ONE

Author's Note

This is the end of the Beast Arc. There's a LOT more to this story, so don't worry. Next is a brief interlude, then the next Arc kicks off!

Also, this is now officially the longest story I've ever written, and has broken 50k words! Yay!

Interlude 1-1: Consequences?

Interlude 1-1: Consequences?

It had been a week since the Fall Formal. The gym was still closed due to repairs, helped along handily by the Rainbooms and the boys themselves, when they had time. Well, most of them. Rubble Maker had only just been released from the hospital on Wednesday evening, and Friday was his first day back to class. Which meant he was much grumpier than normal.

The boys had gathered at their usual spot in their usual booth during their lunch hour, trading stories of the last week, brainstorming theories on what it all meant, and coming up with game plans that may or may not involve less explosives than the last one. Rubble had, at the very least, returned all of the unused thermite to his uncle’s construction company. Uncle Jack looked almost disappointed that they hadn’t used it, a feeling quickly subsided when he noticed the large brace on his nephew’s ankle. Even his mom had just been happy to see him home ok, even if he did have to walk with a cane now. From what the doctors told him, that wasn’t going to change any time soon. Or ever. In fact, he hadn’t even graduated to cane. He was on crutches for now.

Spooks had spent the entire last week buried up to his eyes in research, digging up old books from the city library, hitting all of his online contacts, and combing through his grandfather’s research like he was trying to cure cancer (or, you know, save the world). If not for Treble and Dusty’s insistence that he come to the hideout every day to do his research, they might not see him at all. Of course, it wasn’t difficult to make that argument, as Bones’ mother was less than pleased with the events that transpired during the dance.

Unlike Treble’s mother, who might have not even noticed something had happened if not for the majority of cuts and bruises on her son’s face, and the damage to his suit. His father, graciously, had made sure the boy was alright first, before yelling at his mother for worrying more about the suit than the boy in it. Then they started fighting again, and Treble just tuned it out. His neighbors, the Sirens, had proven a decent hideaway for when things got really loud, happy to have someone that wasn’t each other to hang out with.

Dusty had spent most of that Friday night convincing the officers that responded far too late that none of it was his fault. Even the explosions. Especially the explosions. Id didn’t stop his parole officer from stopping in on him twice as often this week.

They’d just finished the actual ‘lunch’ part of lunch when a familiar face pulled up a chair and sat in it backwards, giving them all a wry smile. “So like, how grounded are you guys?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Um, hello to you, too?” Spooks replied with an amused grin.

“Hey Dash,” Dusty added.

“Yo. But no, seriously, how much trouble are you in?” she repeated, grinning widely. “Cause I mean, my parents almost lost their shit when I explained what happened this time,” she told them, rocking back and forth in her chair.

Treble and Dusty exchanged confused glances, while Rubble just stared quietly at his phone. Spooks spoke first. “We’re, uh… we’re not.”

Rainbow’s chair stopped. “What.”

Treble raised an eyebrow at her. “Yeah. My parents are too busy fighting to pay attention. I just shelled out some pocket money to get the suit fixed and I was fine.”

Spooks nodded. “Yeah. My mom was a bit upset, but since we technically did save the world… I mean, I think, still working on that, but nobody died. So they just gave me the usual safety spiel and sent me on my merry way.”

Rubble just tapped his ankle lightly with his crutch. Rainbow flinched. “Ok, you I get. I wouldn’t ground you either. What about you, Dusty?”

DD shrugged. “Eh, my parole officer’s not entirely pleased with me, but there’s not much she can do about it. All the thermite was accounted for, unused, and came with a permit. And the phosphorous grenades were all used up before she got there. Really the only thing she had to prove I did anything even remotely illegal was the flamethrowers, until a whole bunch of teachers who got eaten, and both Principals, read her the riot act on Tuesday when she came to arrest me. Savin’ lives does that for you. Now she just gets really huffy and follows me everywhere, so I gotta be all goody two-shoe. Until one of her other parolees fucks up again.”

Dash gave him a concerned look. “What about your parents?”

The other three boys flinched away from Dusty as far as they could without leaving the table. He simply gave Rainbow Dash a stern look and said, “They’re not in the picture.” There was a very loud, obvious period at the end of that sentence.

She leaned away and turned her attention to Rubble. “Sooo, what did the doctors say? How’s the leg?”

The other three boys leaned as far away from Rubble as they could. “STOP THAT,” Rainbow barked.

Rubble just looked up from his phone with a dead stare. “Ankle’s shot. Achilles tendon had to be removed entirely. Foot’s never gonna work again. Once I’m off crutches I’ll be using a cane and brace the rest of my life.” There was a hollowness in his voice that echoed across the table. “What are you even doing here anyway? You have class right now.”

Rainbow smirked, raising a finger. “Correction. I have gym right now. Since that’s toast, and it’s pouring rain, I have a free period. So listen, the girls wanted me to ask you all if you wanted to come to a ‘We survived the horrible monster trying to eat all our everythings’ party. It’s after school today, at like six o’clock at Sunset’s house.”

Dusty tilted his head with half a grin. “Didn’t some golems totally crash through her windows?”

Rainbow shrugged. “Yeah, but compared to all the cleanup the gym needs, replacing a few windows was easy work. Especially since we all have part-time jobs.”

Spooks nodded. “I’d almost forgotten. Hey, do you know anyone that’s hiring? Rubble needs a new job now that he can’t do construction anymore.”

RM gave his friend a rude look that lasted all of a second before he sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. I mean, my mom has pretty good insurance, and I had enough in savings to cover copays and stuff, but now I’m almost flat broke and physical therapy isn’t cheap. Speaking of which, I should be available to party tonight, since my appointment’s at like, five.”

Rainbow rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Not sure. I know my work is, but you have to be, well, on your feet all day. And it’s just seasonal stuff. I’ll ask around, though. The mall has all kinds of seasonal jobs opening up right now. How about the rest of you?”

Dusty shrugged. “Got a parole meeting at four but I should be down to clown. Spooks?”

“I’m in. Not making much progress, anyways. I could use the distraction. How about you, Treble?” Spooky asked.

DT thought for a second. “Hmmm. Is is just you Rainbooms and us?”

Dash shook her head, her colorful hair flying wildly behind her. “Nah. Pinkie also invited the Sirens, since they were kinda a big help, but only Sonata is coming. I mean, I think. Wow, I was there and I still have no idea what happened.”

The boys all nodded their agreement. “Believe me, we get it,” Treble chuckled. “Alright, it sounds good.”

“Awesome! See you guys later!”

“Mister Rubble Maker, please report to the Principal’s office,” came the voice over the intercom. Rubble flinched. Ten minutes. He was ten minutes away from the end of his last period. This couldn’t be good. He shuffled, grunting painfully as he shifted his legs around the side of his chair, and growled with the pain and effort as he stood up from his seat.

A girl behind him offered his bag as he stood up with a lopsided smile. “Thanks Derpy,” he said, heaving it over his shoulder. He lurched his way out of the classroom, with only half a disappointed frown from Harshwhinny. Which, to be fair, was a new record.

The trek to the office wasn’t as bad as getting around all day had bee. His last class was only a few doors dow, although he was still getting used to the limited mobility. The pain he could deal with, but he hated being so restricted. So… disabled.

He smacked the office door a few times with his crutch, until someone on the other side opened it. Vice Principal Luna stood to the side, motioning for him to come in. “Rubble. Come with me.”

He maneuvered through the cramped office with all the grace of an eagle. Piloting a submarine. Letting out a few choice swears as he caught his foot on the door frame to Celestia’s office, he ignored the pointed stare from its occupant as he slumped into a chair across the desk from the Principal. Luna walked around the room, standing beside her sister, her arms behind her back.

“Rubble Maker. How are you?” Celestia asked.

A thousand responses ran through Rubble’s mind. Most of them involved screaming, obscenities, and one that included crying that he quickly filed away under ‘garbage’. “Fine,” he grunted.

“I doubt that,” Celestia said simply, but moved on. “Now, I understand the role you and your friends played in the events of this year’s fall formal. While I can’t approve, on all kinds of legal and administrative grounds, of you stashing incendiary devices all over my campus, I am loathe to actually discipline you for saving my students. And myself. And my sister.”

“Yes,” Luna coughed. “I appreciate not getting eaten. Thank you.”

Rubble simply grunted.

“Now, your Uncle Jack and your mother, as well as a student or two, have made it apparent to me that, in losing use of your foot, you have also lost your job,” Celestia continued. Another grunt. “Unfortunately, I cannot offer you a job personally, as it is also an administrative nightmare for a teacher or other staff member to employ a student. I do, however, have someone who is looking for some… assistance. In fact, this is a job offer for you and your friends. I had considered asking one of the other… members of your group here to explain the work to them, but you seemed like you could use some good news.”

Rubble was interested, now. “Why us? I mean, we’re not exactly the shining stars of your school.”

Celestia surprised him with a laugh. “Rubble, the ‘shining stars’ of my school are either from another dimension, or flying magical girls with superpowers. As much as I appreciate them, they’re not exactly the most realistically minded students I have. There’s a lot of… optimism there that, while not unhealthy, leads me to discuss work like this with some of my more level-headed students. Not to mention the skills your particular outfit possesses are in high demand here.”

“What do you mean, ‘high demand’? What kind of job is this?” Rubble asked, slightly worried. Celestia had never asked any of them for help personally before, and had barely tolerated their antics for the majority of the year.

Luna pulled out a large manila envelope. “We have a family friend named Raven Inkwell. She, in the last couple of months, has recently acquired an old family estate a few cities away. And she has reason to believe it’s haunted.”

Rubble looked at the envelope, flipping it open to reveal a series of papers, with a photo of a rather lavish four-story estate house. He flipped through the file, reading a bit about the history of the house, the current occupant, and a few reports from local paranormal investigative teams who had, for lack of a more polite term, totally ‘pussed out.’ The more he read, the bigger he smiled. Raven seemed to be offering a decent sum to anyone who could get the creatures or ghosts or whatever in her house to, in borrowing a quote in the wanted ad included in the file, ‘Get the noisy bastards to shut up and leave me the hell alone.’

“Oh, Spooks is going to LOVE this,” he mused.

Celestia smiled. “I take it you’re interested.”

Rubble almost laughed, instead opting for the first genuine smile he’d had all week. “Oh, yes. We are all OVER this bitch.”

“RUBBLE,” Luna baked.

“Sorry!”

“Oh my god I love this,” Spooks gushed, pouring over the folder like a map to Atlantis. “I’ve always wanted to dig into a genuine haunted house!”

He sat in the back seat of Rubble’s station wagon, as Treble drove them along. Dusty had gone off to his parole meeting, so they boys had opted to join Rubble for his PT appointment. Also, to drive him there, then to the party. “I thought you might,” Rubble said from the passenger seat. “Did you see how much she’s offering to the guy who clears it out?”

There was some shuffling of papers. “HOLY SHIT!”

Treble almost hit the sidewalk. “What, what?!”

“That is… that is a LOT for four dudes in high school!” Spooks exclaimed, his usual wispy voice reaching almost normal levels.

Rubble nodded, leaning back. “Yeah. All we gotta do is clear out some noisy-ass ghosts this weekend and the check clears on Monday. Best news I’ve had in weeks!”

Treble strained to keep his eyes on the road, dying to look at the file. “Just as long as none of the walls explode this time, right?”

“Well, yes, that would help,” Rubble mused, punching Treble in the shoulder.

“OW! Son of a bitch, Rubble!”

“Hey, it’s only my leg that’s fucked up. Arms still work fine,” RM mused.

Spooks laughed, shuffling through the paperwork. “You know you can’t punch ghosts, right?”

“Just watch me try.”

Another dry laugh. Then Spooks read a bit about the house itself. “Wow, this place is old. And kind of out of the way. What kind of family does this Inkwell have?”

Rubble shrugged. “Dunno. I mean, I assume they were either old money or something similar.”

Treble shook his head. “You guys are idiots. Don’t you know the Inkwells?”

Rubble and Spooks looked at each other. “Um, no?”

Treble sighed. “It’s like I’m the only one who does any cleaning at the hideout. Their brand name is all over the debris there. They were the company that bought out the apartment building after the fire. The ones that turned it into an office? Yeah, those guys,” he added, seeing the surprise on Rubble’s face. A quick glance in the rear-view gave him a good idea of Spook’s own level of interest. “That company’s been around for years. Started off as the first newspaper in the state, looooong time ago. Got big after that, moved on to publishing and media. They’re one of the companies behind the new locally-filmed Daring Do movie. It’s big money. Old money, too. I’d heard about one of the patriarchs from the main family kicking off not too long ago. Something about a bad heart. Living in a haunted-ass house might have had something to do with it.”

Spooks gave him a suspicious look. “Why do you know all of this?”

Treble didn’t answer right away, preoccupied with making a left turn into traffic. “Cause I wanted to make sure they guys who owned the building we’re setting up camp in didn’t come knocking to give us shit. Turns out they’d given up all rights to the place, too. Not sure who owns it now, but it’s not the city, or they’d have kicked us out a long time ago. Some construction company or something, maybe? The records got a bit fuzzy after awhile. I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody actually owned it at all, and just assumed someone else did. Not like that part of town’s buzzing with life, anyways.”

Rubble nodded. “No joke. Hey, thanks for the ride,” he added, as they parked in front of the medical center. He felt a twinge of annoyance as he noticed they were in a disabled spot, and begrudgingly pulled out a placard from his backpack.

“No problem,” Treble added. Just remember this when you’re at the cane and brace stage and I start making cripple jokes.”

Author's Note

I HAVE A PATREON

Interlude 1-2: PARTY

Author's Note

Sorry about the wait for this one. It's been a crazy week. Long story short, I kinda-sorta-mostly lost my job. So I've been a moody beeyatch.

That's also why I've set up a Patreon.

Interlude 1-2: PARTY

Interlude 1-2: PARTY

Surprisingly, Dusty was the first to the party. He wouldn’t have been as curious to see he got there before his friends if not for the fact that his PO kept him an extra hour just to spite him. Of course, he wouldn’t have to deal with quite as much grief from her if he hadn’t tagged her car. Before her first date. He might even have gotten off a little easier had he written something more discreet that “Free Rides in Trunk”.

Thus, he showed up at the party only ten minutes before six, strolling up the walkway and knocking politely on the door. It flew open with a flourish as a cheery blue-skinned girl leaped out. “TREB-oh it’s you,” said Sonata, shifting gears as she saw who was actually at the door.

Dusty raised an eyebrow. “Expecting someone else?”

She smiled politely. “Yeah. The not-boring one.”

“Ouch,” he replied with a chuckle. “So who else is here already?” he asked, stepping by Sonata and taking a quick look around the house.

Sunset’s house was, well, quaint. Even if it was a two-story affair, it looked much bigger on the outside. Most of the space was taken up by strangely placed walls and a rather cumbersome staircase leading up. He doubted there was a basement. The décor was relatively simple, mostly small, pretty decorations, a poster here or there. Mainly it looked like someone had walked into a teenager’s room and decided the whole house should look that way. It didn’t help that what little space there was left was taken up by the Rainbooms.

Most of them had already taken up the couch, with Sunset being the polite hostess and standing up when there was no more room. There were a couple of armchairs, one currently seating two Twilights, and the other being hogged by Rainbow ‘Take up as much space as I damn well please’ Dash.

“Them,” Sonata answered, gesturing to the packed house Dusty had walked into. There was a general chorus of welcomes from the girls, as Sonata took a seat on the arm of the couch.

“Don’t worry,” Sunset volunteered, walking up to the kitchen, where it appeared someone had let Pinkie Pie into the pantry again. “We’ll be moving this to the backyard after the rest of the boys get here. Actually, Pinkie, you want to help me set up some tables in the back? I need a place to put all this food where it won’t get stampeded.”

“Yupperooni!” Pinkie cheered. She hopped up from her seat and ran around to the side of the room, where she collected some fold-out tables. She followed Sunset out the back door, who was carrying a few trays of food. Dusty felt himself twitch involuntarily.

Both Twilights seemed to notice. “What was that?” they asked in stereo.

Dusty shook his head. “Sorry, just… words like… ‘yupperooni’,” he had to force himself to say it, “and ‘okie-dokie-loki’ really grate my cheeses.”

There was a beat of half a second before the girls broke out into laughter. “Gr-grate your cheeses?” Rainbow howled. “Seriously?!”

Dusty smirked to himself. “Blame Treble. I don’t know where he gets these weird-ass phrases but they stick with you. If you feel like busting his chops later be my guest.”

“Where are they, anyway?” Sonata asked, following up with a handful of pretzels in her face. Rarity smacked her hand.

“Do try to contain yourself, dear. At least wait until the others arrive,” she scolded.

“Ptbtbhtbhtbth,” Sonata blew a childish raspberry. “Whatever.”

Dusty raised an eyebrow at the exchange, then answered Nata’s earlier question. “Well, I don’t know if you all heard what the doc said about Rubble’s leg.” There was a general murmur as the girls got quiet. “Well, he’s started physical therapy to learn how to walk with the brace. They had to surgically remove the ends of the tendons to prevent toxicity, so his foot’s basically not attached to the rest of his leg, and his calf muscle’s gonna be toast in a few years, apparently. The brace is to make sure his foot doesn’t cave out underneath him when he’s walking.”

Not-Princess Twilight’s eyes went wide. “Wait, I thought you had to be in recovery for like, two to three months for Achilles surgery?”

Dusty rolled his eyes and laughed dryly. “Yeah, if you can afford it. Insurance only covers so much. You’re talking about a family who’s only kid has to work construction to help pay bills.”

Futtershy leaned forward in her chair, a worried look on her face. “Aren’t there support programs for that? Financial support for kids?”

“Not that he qualifies for,” Dusty replied, shaking his head. “He’s almost eighteen. He’s aged out of most of them, and besides, he’s way to proud to ask for help.”

“I thought he was a junior?” Rainbow Dash interjected, confused.

“He got held back a year cause his grades tanked after his dad died,” Dusty explained. “Look, he’s working on it. He doesn’t have a whole lot of options, and he’s in constant danger of tearing his stitches out, the stubborn bastard. Really he should be in a hospital bed for the next month at least while the wound heals up. But again, they can’t afford that, and he’s way to bullheaded to stay at home when there’s shit to do. He’s already looking for other work.”

Applejack sighed. “He sounds like my brother. Mac but his back out bout a year ago, and almost threw it out again tryin’ to go back to work ‘fore he was ready.”

Rainbow winced. “I remember that. He was in a LOT of pain. Like, wow. How’s Rubble’s pain levels?”

Dusty gave her a deadpan stare. “You’re talking about a guy who picks fights with monsters for fun. Literally, fun.”

“Wait a second!” Pinkie shouted, her and Sunset coming back into the living room. “Twilight! I mean, Princess Twilight, not Smart Twilight, I mean you’re both smart, but she’s THIS world smart, and you’re pony-magic-friendship smart, so-”

“WE GET IT,” said both Twilights in stereo.

“Right!” Pinkie continued, “Can’t you just like, take him to Equestria and cast some kind of healing spell on him? Then he’d be all kinds of fine!” Both Twilights, Applejack, and Fluttershy all flinched hard. “What?”

Sunset gave her an uneasy look. “Pinkie, a missing Achilles tendon on a human is bad enough. But on a pony? Even in Equestria that’s like a year’s layup. It’d take longer for him to recover there than it would here.”

“And healing magic in Equestria is iffy at best,” Princess Twilight added. “Rainbow Dash -not you the pony- broke her wing a few years ago and it took her almost a month and a half before she was in the sky again. She was even in the hospital for a few days, and we have unicorn doctors. We are miles away from being able to heal broken bones with magic, let alone regenerate muscle tissue.”

“Not to mention what could happen to him if he went through the portal with an injury like that,” Fluttershy mused solemnly.

“So he’s screwed,” Sonata deadpanned.

Dusty shook his head. “Nah, just slightly used. Trust me, he’ll be fine. Even if he has to punch his way back to health.”

Rarity gave a disapproving cough. “Well, if anyone could do it, it’s certainly that boy,” she scoffed, though she was smiling slightly.

Rainbow gave the fashionista a sly look. “I saw that smile. Don’t tell me you like him like him.”

“Of course not!” Rarity protested loudly. “Although I will admit he has a bit of an… action hero air to him. Unfortunately he’s completely crazy.”

“Yes, yes he is,” Dusty groaned with a sardonic grin. “He’s also here.”

The girls all looked up as they, too, heard the sputter of Rubble’s poor engine pull into the driveway. A few minutes later, the front door swung open, and the rest of the boys strolled inside. Well, Treble strolled, soon to be tackled by Sonata. "TREBBY!"

"NATA!"

Rubble kind of hobbled along, and Spooks came in last, carrying a few bags of food and drink, closing the door behind him. “Oh, no, do come in, please, make yourselves at home,” Sunset said dryly.

There was a wave of giggling at that, and Pinkie shouted, “Alright, everybody, party in the back!” She waved her arm for the group to follow her, and led everyone into the back yard.

Applejack raised an eyebrow. “Does someone wanna explain to her-”

“SHH!” Rainbow and Rubble hushed her in unison. “Don’t ruin it,” Rainbow added, with a sage nod from Rubble.

There was much more room in the backyard that in the cramped living room, as several tables had been set up, with snacks, lots of lawn chairs, drinks, and more than one deck of cards. Pinkie had set up music, of course, via a large boombox no one was sure where she had brought it out from. The Twilights and Spooks had taken up a whole table to themselves, talking amicably at such speed, length, and depth as to ward off anyone who might otherwise want to join their intellectual discourse.

Treble had conned Dash, AJ, Sunset and Dusty into into a game of poker, which Rubble had adamantly refused to join, saying something about “Still being in debt from the last time I was that stupid”. He had instead opted to sit down with Fluttershy, who was talking to him about cheap therapy and medical options. She had been elected by the others as the one Rubble was least likely to stubbornly ignore, if only because she could be as stubborn as him when it came to good health.

Pinkie and Sonata, to no-one’s surprise, had taken up half the yard, dancing to their… interesting selection of music.

“HA! Ladies and gent, that’s a full house!” Treble cheered, reaching for the pile of snack food they were using instead of chips.

Sunset smacked his hand. “Bah-ah! Nice try, asshole. Try a four-of-a-kind instead,” she said with a wide smirk.

Treble fumed as the rest of the table cheered Sunset on. Really, it had just become a battle between the two, with the rest hunkering down and trying not to lose too terribly. Even the normally-competitive Rainbow Dash was losing her grip, as her pile grew smaller and smaller. “I don’t get it! How am I so bad at this game?!”

Dusty and AJ traded exasperated looks. “Uh, because you have no poker face?” Dusty replied.

“What? I have a GREAT poker face!” Dash argued.

Treble and Sunset snickered loudly while AJ said soothingly, “Sugar, I love ya, but you couldn’t hide your emotions if you were alone on the moon.”

A few feet away, the gambling-related outbursts were studiously ignored as the Twilights and Spooks talked amicably. “So I’m thinking that magic is like radio waves, right?” Spooks posited. “If we can figure out what wavelengths the magic here works on, and what Equestrian magic works on-”

“Then maybe we can find a way to safely combine the two?” Science-Twilight asked excitedly.

“But wait, don’t we already have a way to make the two resonate?” Princess Twilight interjected. “I mean, we’d need to to make the portal work, right?”

“Not necessarily,” Spooks replied. “I had a theory about that. I think that the mirrors, or the far ends of the tunnel between our worlds, are just like giant batteries to a bridge. It doesn’t matte what kind of magic is used to power them, there just needs to be ENOUGH energy. You said you used a magic journal as the link? I think those books are more like nav coordinates than cornerstones. Besides, the portal itself is just a link through the void between worlds. It’s kind of a blank out there, from what I’ve gathered. I don’t think wavelengths matter that much in the In-Between.”

“So what your saying is it’s more like quantum tunneling than teleportation? That might explain why we change from humans to ponies and back,” Not-Princess mused.

Pony Twilight raised her eyebrows in fascination. “Really?! How?!”

“Well, if Spooky is right, then the portal is actually two different energy sources on either side of a quantum bridge,” Human Twilight explained. “It’s not so much resonating magic as it is creating both an anchor point and a gateway on either side, which would require a huge amount of magic. So when you go from one side of the portal to the other-”

“You would be diving from one magical wavelength straight into the next, and your body would change to adapt?” Bones finished.

“Possibly. I mean, it would take years of experimentation and an understanding of magic far beyond what we have now, but it’s a start,” Human Twilight agreed.

One table away, Rubble and Fluttershy were talking a bit more seriously. “I really think you should be in bed right now,” Fluttershy scolded, her voice full of concern.

Rubble rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you and a handful of ‘medical professionals’ who don’t have to pay my bills. Look, mom and I are trying really hard to hold onto the house right now. Yeah, she got bereavement pay,” the tone of voice and look on his face was all the warning Fluttershy needed not to touch that subject, “But that only goes so far. I mean, being a military widow, we got a housing allowance for the first year, but that’s run out. We may not be broke, but my… ‘side job’ doesn’t exactly come with a health plan. And my mom and I have had the argument before, about me joining the military. She still doesn’t like the fact that I go out and hunt ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties in the night, but at least she has an idea where I am. In her eyes it’s much better than being shipped overseas and only hearing from me with the occasional letter. So long story short I need all the extra cash I can get, especially since I can’t exactly explain how and why I lost my Achilles tendon in the first place. You wouldn’t believe the kind of bullshit we’d get from Child Protective Services if we tried applying for any of those financial assistance programs to pay for this stuff. It’ sjust easier to do out of pocket, which requires having, you know, money in your pocket. And that ain’t happening lying down.”

She sat and listened patiently while he ranted, sensing the need for him to get the steam out. “Well, I can’t tell you what to do, not effectively, anyway,” she scoffed, in a ‘disapproving mom’ tone, “But even so, I can’t condone you galivanting into some haunted house just a week after your surgery!”

“Oh please,” Rubble asked, with a bark of a laugh. “We’re just gonna poke around for a while, probably find like some rats in a grate or something, and chase them out. Even if there ARE ghosts in the house, it’s not like we havent’ done this before. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”

Interlude 1-3: Things You Shouldn't Say in Polite Company

Author's Note

Sorry this chapter took so long. The last couple of weeks have sucked righteous ass. Been functionally unemployed, and thus unfunctionally depressed. But that got fixed, so I should be back on track. Good thing, too, because I'm going to try for NaNoWriMo this year.

Of course, I'm still broke af, so I've started a Patreon. I'm taking writing commisions of all kinds for all kinds of dollars, so take a look!

Interlude 1-3: Things You Shouldn't Say in Polite Company

Interlude 1-3: Things You Shouldn’t Say in Polite Company

Imagine the stereotype of a group of unsupervised teens at a party on the weekend. Most of what comes to mind isn’t really appropriate to say out loud. Plenty of teens with little to no social agenda imagine plenty of physical intimacy, racy party games, and gratuitous nudity.

Many of these people haven’t been to an actual high school party. The majority of the Rainbooms and the guys had kind of diverged into smaller conversations, taking the party as an excuse to socialize in a more relaxed environment than they were used to. Not to say that the guys weren’t ridiculously relaxed in almost any setting they found themselves in, but even they had certain topics they wouldn’t cover in say, the middle of the classroom. Anymore.

“So, like, have you actually had sex with Adagio, or what?” Rainbow asked, more out of boredom than curiosity. She had long since been outplayed, and was simply watching the pot trade ownership between Treble, Sunset, and surprisingly, AJ, with a big bowl of chips in her lap. Despite being the element of Honest, or perhaps because of that, she had a great grasp on whether someone else was lying or not. She didn’t bother to hide her own emotions, instead opting to weed out the lies and call when she saw a bluff.

Treble poured over his hand as if they were the answers to a test he was about to fail. Which, given the small stack of pretzels in front of him, wasn’t far off the mark. “No. Now hush, adults are thinking.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow at him, barely visible above her own hand of cards. “Really? I thought someone had just burned the hot dogs.”

“FUCK YOU I’M TRYING!” Rubble growled from the grill they had set up.

“NOT YOU,” Sunset shouted back. “I have to say, I’m surprised. I’d figured you and Adagio would have bumped uglies a long time ago.”

Treble didn’t look up from his hand, moving the cards around and putting two on the table. “Just because we flirt all the time doesn’t mean we’re screwing. There’s a difference between being a relentless flirt and a manwhore.”

“Really?” Rainbow asked, shoving a handful of chips in her mouth.

“Yeah, a manwhore actually gets some,” ribbed Dusty.

“Take two,” Treble grunted, with an added glare to his ‘friend’.

Sunset traded out one card in her hand. “Well, it’s not like anyone else here besides Sonata has gotten any. And no, you don’t want to as her about it. My god I’ve never wanted a drink more.”

Sonata leaned against her chair until she was so far back she was practically in Sunset’s hair. “Oh, you know you liked it.” Shimmer just shivered.

Treble raised his eyebrow at the siren. “I don’t know, it was kind of weird. And I’ve seen weird. All flavors.”

“What are you, the Baskin Robbins of freaky shit?” Dash drawled, picking through the bowl of chips, chasing an elusive big chip with her fingers lazily.

“I guess that makes me the Heinz 57, then?” Spooks asked over his shoulder, in that kind of monotone that blurred the line between serious and sarcasm.

A few people laughed, but were quickly drowned out by the music suddenly spiking in volume. Those who hadn’t protected their poor ears simply glared at Pinkie, who stood next to the sound system with an innocent look on her face. “Whaaaat? I can’t be the only one who wants to dance!”

There was a multitude of exchange glances before the crowd answered in unison, “YES.”

Rubble gestured obtusely at the others, then tapped his brace with the barbeque tongs. “Look, Pinkie, even if I could dance, I still couldn’t dance. I believe the words Double D used last time I tried was-”

“Waltz of drunken elephants?” Dusty finished helpfully. “It’s not pretty. I mean, the only one of us with any talent on the dance floor is Bones, and that’s all ballroom dancing, for some awful reason.”

“It’s called parenting,” Spooks drawled.

“Like I said, ‘awful’.”

Pinkie pouted largely. “Awww, come ON! What about you, Trey? Surely you got some moves!”

The boys exchanged knowing looks, with varying degrees of success in hiding their smiles. After a few moments, they all broke down laughing. “HA. Hahahaha. HA!” Treble barked, half sarcastically. “Pinkie, the closest thing I come to dancing is running away with style. Even Adagio had a few choice words about the condition of her feet after she insisted I join her in a slow song last week.”

Sunset coughed out a laugh. “I thought you were all ‘rock and roll’? Don’t tell me none of that equates to knowing how to dance?”

Treble opened his mouth to respond, only to be cut off by Dusty. “Please. He’s still having trouble with the ‘rock’ part. I’ll admit he’s getting better with a guitar, in that he doesn’t attract feral cats anymore, but his voice still needs work. Like, construction-that-redirects-traffic kind of work. Flaggers and all.”

“Oh gee thanks you’re so nice I’m so glad we’re friends go fuck yourself,” DT groaned. “I’m getting better at singing, thank you very much. I better, with what they’re charging me for these lessons.”

Science Twilight adjusted her glasses as she gave Treble an appraising look. “How do you even pay for those lessons? I know Rubble was doing construction up until recently, but what do the rest of you do for money?”

Dusty snickered. “What don’t we do? I mean yeah, Treble has a part-time job, what is it, receptionist or something?”

“I wish. At least I’d have a reason to talk to all the artists that walk through the door. No, I get all the fame and glory that comes with being an assistant sound tech at a recording studio. Which basically means I carry shit around and get blamed when the sound guy fucks up,” DT helped himself to a handful of chips from Dash’s bowl and punctuated his sentence with a frustrated crunch.

“Right, sound bitch,” Dusty summarized playfully, with a glare from Treble. “I just kind of do odd jobs and stuff. Most guys don’t want a teenage parolee working with their stuff, so I just get work under the table when I can. You’d be surprised how many people have no qualms hiring somebody who’s quick on their feet who doesn’t ask questions. Most of my work is ‘I know a guy who knows a guy who needs a thing done’.”

Princess Twilight scrunched her nose. “That sounds a little… illegal.”

Rubble raised an eyebrow at her over the open grill top. Putting a few hot dogs on a nearby plate, with one or two making their way into the trash can, he grunted, “What part of ‘parolee’ escaped your attention?”

Dusty talked over the protest forming on Twilight’s lips, looking to avoid another argument. Rubble had been grumpier than usual all week, with good reason, even if he had a greater tendency for being an ass than normal. “Spooks does… well, mostly we don’t ask. I know he sold some paintings recently,” a statement that elicited more than a few cringes and a flinch or two, “But mostly he just… I don’t even know. What DO you do?”

“Writing, mostly,” Spooks offered. “I do short story entries for a small online horror magazine. And I’ve actually been selling more artwork lately. My mom thinks I should pursue it professionally after I graduate, since I’m already making money off of it.”

Applejack, with all the brutal honesty of a cancer diagnosis, asked, “Who’n the hell would buy those two-dimensional nightmares?”

“There’s a pop-up haunted house in Appleoosa that bought a couple, and the editor of the horror magazine bought one Monday,” Bones explained. “I shipped it off yesterday, actually. You’d be surprised how expensive shipping canvases are. Between that, the cost of painting materials, the reference books for our adventures, and the fines we pile up for destruction of public property-”

“Which is absolute bullshit we didn’t even do most of that shit,” RM grumbled.

“Yes, well, they can’t exactly fine the monsters, can they?” Treble quipped, with a brief smirk in Sunset and Sonata’s direction.

“Hey, we didn’t even break anything!” Sonata protested. “...this time,” she added sheepishly.

Sunset considered Treble with an all-too-familiar glare. “Excuse me, but I’m not the one who blew up the lawn at school. That one was all Friendship Magic.”

“Ehehe yeah… Principal Celestia was rather… insistent that I reimburse the school for that one,” Princess Twilight volunteered.

Spooks carefully considered an unopened can of soda in front of him, deciding to crack it open and take a sip. “Yes, but who had to help fill it in?”

Dusty stood up to help Rubble move the hot dogs, which had since been joined by hamburger patties, over to the table of food. As Rubble sat down, DD plated up both of them a meal, and balanced them on one arm as the other hand fished out a couple drinks from the cooler. “Well, to be fair, that was right after the summer I’d decided to tag the gym. That was mostly community service on my part,” he said as he sat down.

Rubble rolled his shoulders. “And I may or may not have shoved Hoops in a trash can and rolled him down the hill to the soccer fields a couple of weeks before. That one we kind of… earned. Although you never did tell us why you had to help, Treble,” he added, before taking an almost inhuman bite of burger.

DT, who had just reached the table and was piling food onto his own plate, froze. The crowd stared at him interestedly as he shrugged nonchalantly, with his back to the crowd. “Not much to tell. Got in trouble, they needed more than a couple meatheads to undig the hole.”

Most of the girls traded knowing glances, as the guys just grinned at each other. Science Twilight, however, noticed Fluttershy had blushed rather deeply, and was hiding herself in her chair. Which was a skill that seemed almost unique to her. “Fluttershy, are you ok?”

“Um… I’m fine. Really,” she insisted, with as much confidence as she could muster. Which wasn’t much, especially as her blush didn’t diminish in the least.

The girls looked as though they were trying to decide who should talk to her first, when Rarity stepped out of Sunset’s back door onto the lawn. Treble turned to address her with a look of barely concealed relief on his face (which the rest of the party couldn’t see, as he still had his back to them. “Rarity, oh thank good- I mean where have you been?” Then he raised his eyebrows as he saw that she had changed her outfit entirely, into a sundress with a light coat and a parasol.

“Yeah, you like, totally disappeared when we all came outside!” Pinkie exclaimed.

Rarity strolled across the lawn to take a soda from the cooler. “Well, to be honest, I’m not a fan of garden parties. As much as I enjoy a good social gathering, I prefer to enjoy them indoors. I hadn’t realized we were even going to be outside until a little after I’d gotten here myself, and I was hardly dressed for the occasion. So I simply opted to change into more proper attire.”

Rainbow heaved a sigh. “Don’t tell me you actually brought a spare outfit with you, did you?”

Rarity took a seat at the Twilight’s table and scoffed lightly. “Of course I did, darling. A lady must always be prepared. Now, I do believe Treble here has an answer as to our dear Fluttershy’s current sporting shade of vermillion.”

There was a loud clatter as Treble dropped a serving fork onto the table with all the grace of a wall-eyed pigeon. A gesture that did not go unnoticed by the rest of the group. “Alright,” Sunset growled. “What did you do?”

Flutershy waved her hands defensively. “No, really, it’s ok. I mean...” she trailed off, having run into the problem of explaining why nothing needed to be explained without actually explaining things.

Dash glared at Treble as the teen gathered his food and sat down next to Rubble, across the table from Fluttershy. Which was, in fact, a rather poorly calculated decision, as the two couldn’t look at each other properly. “No seriously, Deep, if you did something to Fluttershy-”

“She walked in while I was copping a feel in the Principal’s office, ok?!” DT barked, followed quickly by hiding his face in his hands. “Her AND Principal Luna.”

What followed was a silence so stunned as to be catatonic. Even Treble’s friends, who normally would have laughed uproariously at such an embarrassing revelation, were quiet. Though one or two of them made a mental note to laugh later. Eventually, Rarity spoke up. “Oh… my. I must admit, that’s not where I thought this was going.”

Rainbow stammered out a response, “Bu-wuh-how?! How did you not tell me about this?!” she asked Fluttershy, in a voice much louder than she had intended.

The yellow-skinned girl shrunk further into her chair. “I… um… I promised that I wouldn’t say anything. It was a… it was complicated.”

“How ‘complicated’ could it be?” Sunset groaned. “You and Luna walked into the office just as he was trying to get it on with some random girl. Sounds like something out of a teen drama.”

“Who was the girl?” Sonata asked, leaning on Treble’s table with all kinds of curiosity. “Daisy? Tavi? Blossomforth?” She gasped audibly as an idea struck her. “Was it ADAGIO?!”

Applejack gave the siren a curious look. “Sonata, you girls weren’t even AT the school back then.”

“Oh yeah...” Sonata said dreamily, then hopped up and down as she pestered her neighbor. “Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me!”

“Oh my god,” Treble groaned, leaning back in his chair and looking to the sky as if trying to find the best angle from which to get taken out by a meteorite. “You don’t even know the girl. Probably. I dunno.”

Dusty’s eyes rolled in his sockets back and forth as he did some mental math. “Wait… wait. Oh. Oh my god. THAT’S why Photo Finish refuses to take your picture! It was totally Pixel Pizzazz, wasn’t it?!”

Rubble choked on a piece of hot dog. “HRK. HACK. GRRK. Ex-cuse me?! You said you just flipped her off in a photo one time!”

Not finding that fateful piece of space debris with which to end himself, and thus the conversation, Treble groaned. “Yeah. Flutters and Principal Luna opened the door and turned on the light just as she was taking her shirt off. Although I did flip Photo off. God she annoys the shit outta me.”

Rainbow grinned widely at Treble, then at Fluttershy. “So, see anything good, ‘Shy?”

“Um… not really. I mean, Treble still had most of his clothes on, and he was standing in front of Pixel, who was sittong on the desk, and-”

“Ok, OK!” AJ interrupted. “Don’t need the details, girl!”

“Wow, you really are a manwhore,” Dusty said admirably, taking a bite of burger.

Treble just rested his head on the table with a loud groan.

Interlude 1-4: Candles

Interlude 1-4: Candles

The sun was setting, as was wont for early evening this time of year. As the ember glows of the diminishing skyline danced luminescent echoes across the leaves of deciduous trees, the lawn was awash in a glow of radiant, slowly dimming oranges, yellows, and reds. Nocturnal creatures welcomed this premature twilight, as it granted them more and more time to hunt and gather. Field mice ran from emboldened owls in parks and wide lawns across town, their hoots and squeaks perforating the dying sounds of the suburbs at night in chorus with a dozen other night-friendly sounds.

Of course, the lawn full of teenagers behind Sunset’s house didn’t give a flying rat’s ass about any of this. “Never Have I Ever!” Rainbow Dash shouted, only to be countered by a chorus of groans that drowned out the noises of nighttime approaching.

“Not a chance, girl,” Applejack said sternly, pointing an indignant finger at her friend. The whole group was now sitting at one table, or, one table setting. All of the smaller tables had been brought together to form one rather awkward geometric seating arrangement. Technically everyone was facing everyone else, so there were no complaints. Although both Rarity’s and SciTwi’s eyes had twitched at the arrangement. The farmgirl pressed on in her protest. “The last time you conned us all into that little game none of us could look at each other for a week.”

“But that’s why it’s FUN!” Dash protested, crossing her arms dramatically and leaning back in her seat. Her pronounced pout and glare at the table indicated she had forfeited the idea, however.

Pinkie raised her hand just as Sonata threw hers in the air. “Oh, you go ahead!” Pinkie insisted.

Sonata shook her head. “Nah, you go!”

“No you!”

“No, you!”

“No-”

“JUST PICK ALREADY,” Dusty, Rubble, and Treble barked.

The girls looked at each other, and said at the same time, “Truth or Dare!”

The reaction was much similar to that of Dash’s suggestion, save for one exception: Treble simply stood up and walked away, chanting “Nope, nope, nope, nuh-uh, nope, no, no, no.”

He made it as far as the almost-empty snack table before Dusty yelled at him, “Oh sit down you pencil-peckered cockholster!”

The looks on the girls’ faces was nothing less than indignant, though nobody chose to say anything. They were long used to the boy’s foul mouths, and ‘creative’ insults. After a silent pause, Rarity coughed, and re-railed the conversation. “Yes, well, I think the general consensus is no, dears,” she said consolingly, to a rather put-out Pinkie and Sonata.

“Awww, but why not?” Sonata whined.

“Besides avoiding the horribly over-abused teenage party tropes?” Sunset deadpanned. “It’s even worse than ‘Never Have I Ever,’ especially since Dash is here.” The aforementioned athlete beamed with a disturbing sense of pride. “It’s honestly easier to just punch yourself in the face, post a naked selfie on Facebook, and call it a night. You’ll feel better about yourself in the morning.”

“I dunno,” Sonata said slowly. “That sounds like a fun night.”

Those sitting next to her scooted away slowly. “Well,” Princess Twilight said, mainly to fill the silence, “What should we play? I mean, it’s only seven or so, if that. I’m not exactly keen on going home after so little party, especially since we just… I dunno, talked and ate food? Isn’t there supposed to be more… partying going on?”

Spooks gave her a thoughtful look. “I think you’ve been getting your information on how teenagers act from the wrong sources. Mind you, we aren’t exactly the best examples of ‘ordinary’, but most of the rambunctious parties you see in movies or TV are greatly exaggerated, especially from a school like ours. I mean, Pinkie Pie is the biggest ‘party animal’ here, and most of her parties are pretty tame compared to the booze-and-sex tropes you see in teen dramas.”

“Yeah, I’m waiting for college to do all that stupid stuff,” Pinkie volunteered.

Rainbow gave her a wide smile. “We SO need to go to the same college.”

The Princess looked actively disappointed. “Well, I guess that makes sense. I mean, you’re all underage anyways. I’d feel pretty awful drinking around all of you.”

Rubble’s eyes widened behind his can of soda. “What are you talking about? You’re a teenager here, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes,” Twilight conceded. “But in Equestria I’m almost th… thi… thirty-y-y….” she stammered, with a visible shudder. Well, barely visible. It had gotten dark out rather quickly, and they had opted to light some standing torches to provide some outdoor lighting.

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Oh boo-hoo. I’m well past that back home. I’m just glad I was like, 14 when I got here. Woulda been super-awkward trying to corrupt a bunch of teenagers as a twenty-something with no teaching credentials.”

Dusty rolled his eyes. “Not as hard as you think, honestly. Just like, get a job as a janitor and hand out pot.”

“Isn’t that how the last guy got fired?” Treble wondered aloud. “What was his name?”

“Discord,” Fluttershy offered. “And he wasn’t as bad as everyone says. I mean yes, he did hand out… marijuana, but he was a nice guy.”

“I think Aria would have liked him,” Sonata mused. “But yeah, if we’re talking drinking age, I’m like, thirteen hundred something.”

Dusty looked from Sunset, to Twilight, to Sonata. “So what you’re saying is you’re all a bunch of ephebophiles.”

The three girls protested loudly as a few others burst out laughing. After some heated discussion about semantics regarding dating across dimensions, The group settled down as Applejack motioned for everyone to be quiet. “Alright, y’all, it’s just a good ol’ fashioned ribbin’. Nothin to get all twisted up about.”

“And it sure as hell doesn’t answer the question of what to do with the rest of the night,” said Dusty. “I’m with Twilight on this one, I mean, Princess Twilight, you are the Princess, right? Right. I’m not about to call it a night at like, seven p.m. on a Friday night. Even my P.O. would laugh at me.”

“Well,” Spooks spoke up after a moment’s quiet. “We could always play Candles.”

A mixed bag of reactions met this statement. The girls all seemed confused to varying degrees, looking to each other to see if anyone had any idea what this game was about. The boys, however, regarded Spooks with much the same level of apprehension one would approach a headless body that’s still twitching. “Dude, we said ‘party’, not ‘trauma center’,” Treble said quietly.

Rainbow and Pinkie were immediately intrigued. “Ok, out with it, Bones, how do you play?” Dash pressed, leaning as far into the table as she could.

“You really don’t want to know,” Rubble insisted, regarding the athlete with a serious expression.

“Oh come on,” Sunset groaned. “I’ve seen this schtick before. This is that whole bait and switch where you all act like you’re scared of this game so that we’ll want to play it more.”

Dusty threw up his hands and leaned away from the table. “You guys wanna spend the next three days awake in the dark, you go ahead. I am out.”

Fluttershy leaned towards her prismatic friend. “Um, maybe we should take them seriously. I mean, they do know a bit more about scary stuff than we do...”

“Pffft,” Dash scoffed, waving a hand dismissively in Fluttershy’s direction. “How bad can it be? Come on, skinny boy, gimme what you got.”

There was a general air of defeat amongst the other boys as Spooks explained, “Well, it’s getting dark, so that’s good. You’re supposed to play it in a dark room, or outside when the sun’s set. Everybody lights a candle, plus an extra one at the center of the table that isn’t lit. Then we all take turns telling scary stories. When you’ve told your story, you put your candle out. And you can’t talk if your candle’s out. The last person uses their candle to light the center candle, putting out their own. The winner is the last person to leave the table, touch the last candle, or talk.”

“That. Sounds. AWESOME,” Dash exclaimed. “We HAVE to PLAY THIS.”

Fluttershy seemed to share the exact opposite sentiment, regarding her friend with the kind of wide-eyed terror she reserved for crowded spaces. Or loud noises. Or pop quizzes. “Um… no?” she said hopefully.

“I’m with ‘Shy,” Treble groaned. “No way I’m playing that game with you again, man,” he explained to Spooks. “You all want to play, have at. I say the rest of us go like, watch a movie inside or something.”

“Yeah, yeah, go sprint off to your sappy romance movie, or whatever. I’m with Rainbow, it doesn’t sound that bad,” Sunset said, regarding Spooks with all the air of a poker player calling a bluff.

Dusty and Rubble regarded each other carefully. “Man, we can’t puss out now,” Rubble whispered.

“I know. I was hoping to get some sleep before we go ghost hunting tomorrow,” Dusty hushed back.

“Alright,” Rubble said in his normal voice. “We’re in. Anyone else?”

Rarity gave an uneasy grin. “I… I think not. I believe a nice relaxing movie is just the thing on a night like this. Shall we?” she added to Fluttershy and Treble, who were just standing up to leave.

Pinkie and Sonata exchanged excited looks, remaining firmly planted in their chairs. The Twilights however, were not so in sync with their opinions. “Oh, that does sound exciting!” Princess Twilight exclaimed. “I’ve heard and read all kinds of urban legends and myths from Equestria, but never from here! I’d love to play!”

SciTwi was less than enthusiastic. “I’m, um, I’m out. Wait up!” she called to the retreating trio, reaching them just as they got to the back door. She didn’t even stick around long enough to hear the Princess’s protests.

“Right, ‘I’ll go get the candles,” Sunset offered, following the group to the door. “Wait up you guys, I’ll show you how to set up the TV.”

Some time later, the remaining teens had gathered around a smaller table, helping put the rest of them away, along with the dirty dishes and now-unused grill. Soon all that was left in the backyard was a single table with a cloth on it, and an oblong of lit candles around a single, unlit one. The house served to cast a great shadow over the darkened yard, blocking street lights and, by chance, the moon. Truly the only light there was the tiny flames barely illuminating the faces of those attending. It looked less " like a party game and more like a séance. Which, given those in attendance, was almost as likely.

“Ok, so there’s not really a way to choose who goes first,” Spooks mused, approaching the game with the same deadpan, ghastly demeanor he regarded most everything else with. His light, wispy voice echoed across the quiet yard as the candle danced across the light patches on his face, the rest blending in with the pitch of night behind him. At times he seemed only partially there, more like a ghost than ever. “But when we do, we keep it going in a circle, counter-clockwise. That means to my right,” he added, to no one in particular.

A few people gave sarcastic groans. “Ok, I’ll go first!” Dash volunteered, to the surprise of no-one.

“Now hold on,” said AJ. “What if someone else wants ta’ go?”

“I’m all for it,” Dusty jumped in. He gave Rainbow an approving look; Spooky was just to her left, which meant he’d be going last.

“Same,” said Rubble.

Applejack rolled her eyes. “Fine. Jus’ sayin’.”

Rainbow motioned for her to be quiet. “Alright, here goes: the Tale of the Headless Horseman!”

Sunset gave half a smile. “Really? That’s what you got?”

“Hey, it’s scary when I tell it!” Dash insisted.

“Ooooookay,” Sunset conceded, leaning back in her chair.

“Right,” RD grunted, leaning over her candle. “So like, a long time ago, Canterlot was just a really small town, you know? Maybe one or two streets, no cars, a few rows of buildings. Everybody had farms and stuff, so your closest neighbor was like, a day away. There was this one guy named Ichor Bodycane-”

“Ichabod Crane,” Sunset corrected.

“-shush. Anyway, he was this really decent guy, you know? Bit of an egghead, but he was like, good looking? And popular in the town. But there was this guy that worked for city hall that was super jealous of him, cause there was this girl the guy liked that liked Crane, so he spread this big lie that Ichor-”

“Ichabod.”

“-I said SHH. Anyway, Ichabod this guy said, was like, a witch or whatever? So he rounded up a bunch of paranoid guys that accused him of witchcraft, and decided to hang him! Except it didn’t work! Ichabod was like, super smart, so he knew how to keep himself alive on the noose. So when that didn’tkill him, they were for sure he was a witch, so they up and cut his head off! So now he rides around town chasing down people that were descended from the guys that killed him, looking for someone to replace his missing heaaaaad. Oooooo!” Dash finished, in a dramatic voice with lots of arm waving.

There was a moment of silence, followed quickly by laughter. “That isn’t even REMOTELY how that story goes, Dashie!” Pinkie howled.

“Where… where did you even hear that version?” Dusty gasped.

Dash just leaned back into her chair, meeting Sunset’s smug glare with an angry pout. She grunted something about ‘the internet’, then barked, “Fine! Let’s see what YOU guys have!” She blew hard on her candle, and it went out quickly.

AJ wiped a tear out of her eye, and chuckled a few moe times. Finally settling down, she said, “Alright, alright. I guess it’s my turn?” Looking to Dash on her right, she nodded at the disgruntled teen, who just “Hmph”ed loudly. “Well, I got one my Granny told me. It’s actually about our farm. I don’t know if it has a name or somethin’, but here goes:

“Dash was right about one thing: this used to be a farmin’ town. Small little settlement that turned into a big city cause of how close to water and forests and stuff it was. A lotta people settled here way back when, and it got really big. But this here story takes place before all that, when there was only a handful of folk roamin’ around. Wasn’t even really a street proper, jus’ a town square. There wasn’t really enough people to call it a town, even, only like a dozen or so families an’ their livestock roamin’ around. But you put enough people together in a town, and somebody gotta be in charge, ‘know? So everybody got together an’ elected this fella named Gold Star t’take care of folk. Real high’n’tight fella, liked everything all neat ‘n orderly.

“Everything went smooth sailin’ for a while, till the winter rolled around. Oh, they’d done all their winter prep, you bet. Cuttin’ firewood and savin’ up supplies an’ the like. But back then cold weather made cold hearts. People could keep warm enough, but if’n ya had to go out in the cold ‘n snow too long, you got grumpy. Doubly so for Gold Star. He hated the cold. Hated winter, an’ the holidays. Wasn’t too fond of people ‘bout that time of year, neither. Then this kid up and stumbles out into the woods, chasin’ his dog. Some folk suspect the dog just caught wind of a rabbit who hadn’t gone hibernatin’ yet, tohers think the dog knew what was really goin’ on. Cause what the boy found in those woods…

“Ol’ Gold Star had his cabin out in the woods. Not too far from town, or he’d never be able to show up in time to help nobody when they needed it. But them woods is thick, an’ it’s easy to stay outta sight if yer’ doin’ somethin’ ya aught not to be doin’. Turns out, with everybody stayin’ in doors, and lotsa folk holed up by the snow, Star figured nobody would miss one or two of the more annoyin’ settlers. Like I said, they didn’t really have a town so much as a bunch ‘a people that lived near each other an’ talked once in a while. So what the boy found was ol’ Gold Star choppin’ up some poor soul that’d wandered out to his house for some advice. Some people think he was askin’ for help cause his cattle had gone missin’. They’d found some dead cows that weren’t his out behind his cabin later on, see.

“The boy tried to do the smart thing, and turned and ran. Mighta got all the way, too, if that dog hadn’t set to barkin’. Gold Star looked up in time to see the kid leap over some bushes and disappear towards the town, an’ he chased off after him. They ran through the woods right quick, like a fox ‘n hound. The kid even got all the way to the middle of the town square, but never made it to his door. Cause outta the blue came Gold’s ax, flyin’ through the air to land right between the poor boy’s shoulders. Fell over like a sack a’ potatoes. But he’d made enough noise screamin’ and hollerin’ for help that when the folk nearby poked their heads out to see all the ruckus, they saw ol’ Gold Star diggin’ the ax right out of the poor kid’s body.

“A death like that, you don’ just move on into that wild blue yonder. You stick around. Some folk think the kid don’t even know he’s dead. Cause when it gets real cold, real dark, and real quiet, just like the night he died, they say the shadow of the kid runs around town lookin’ for his house. Course, it ain’t there no more, so they say he’s just gonna keep runnin’ forever,” she finished. After a moment of silence, she blew out her candle.

It was quiet still for a few seconds after that. “Wow, AJ. That’s...” Rubble started, not finding any words.

“That wasn’t scary,” Pinkie whined, her eyes full of tears. “That was just saaa-a-a-ad!” She and Sonata cried into each other’s arms for a moment.

Dusty let them cry it out for a moment, then coughed politely, looking to Sunset. “You, uh, you’re up next, Shimmer.”

Sunset looked dumbfounded for a moment, then snapped to attention. “Yeah! Right, ok. I got one. This one’s from Equestria, actually, so I don’t know if you’ve heard this one. It’s called The Pony of Shadows.”

Rubble stifled a laugh. “I’m… I’m sorry. I still have a hard time taking anything with the word ‘Pony’ in it seriously, especially since you’ve told us you basically look like adorable talking rainbow marshmallows.”

There was a round of laughter after that, and the solemn air cleared into one of subtle joviality. “Yeah, ok, that’s fair,” Sunset agreed, “But this one really got to me as a filly. So it goes like this:

“Over a thousand years ago, Equestria was ruled by two sisters: Celestia, the eldest, who rose and set the sun; and Luna, the youngest, who rose and set the moon. Most everypony knows the story of Nightmare Moon back home, but it boils down to this: Luna had grown jealous of her sister, who got all the attention, and who’s brilliant sun ponies walked in all day, while they slept through her beautiful night. She was convinced that nopony cared about her or her contributions to the country. They all only had eyes for her older sister, because she was the only one they saw. Her jealousy consumed her, and turned her into a monster, who called herself Nightmare Moon.

“Nightmare was banished to the moon for a thousand years by her own sister, after a fierce battle. But here’s where it get’s weird. Some ponies think that Luna was possessed. Possessed by a creature called the nightmare, which was banished to the moon with her. Except, part of it stayed behind. A shadow of it’s former self. The Pony of Shadows. Legend has it that it roams the site of it’s own defeat, the Castle of the Two Pony Sisters, waiting for some fool to explore the ruins, so that it can possess them and set out to do what it tried to with Luna: bring about the slow and inevitable dath of all of Equestria.”

She wrapped up her story with an intense stare as she slowly put out her own candle, which was met with… little enthusiasm.

“Really?” Sonata groaned. “I wasn’t even IN Equestria when that all happened, and I can tell you that sounds just… stupid. Like some kids’ story parents tell their foals to keep them from wandering into a broke-down dangerous old castle.”

“Actually, that’s pretty much what it was,” explained Twilight. “My friends and I actually explored the Castle of the Two Pony Sisters, and even hung out there for a while. Let me tell you, no Pony of Shadows there. Although Luna did seem to be particularly fond of trap doors and secret passages.”

Had there been any light to shine on Sunset’s face, they would have seen how disappointed she was. “Man, that was one of my favorite stories as a foal.”

“Exactly,” Rubble pointed out. “As a KID. Right, Dusty, you’re up, man.”

The skater grunted, rolling his shoulders. “Right, you lot. This one’s got some kick to it, so hold on to your hats. It’s called ‘The Burning Orphan’.”

“Ooh,” Spooks crooned excitedly. “I like this one.”

“Hush you, don’t give it away,” Dusty chided playfully. “Here goes:

“In Old Trottingham, there was a small, derelict street on the edge of town called Trotter’s End. There wasn’t much on this street, save for a grocer, a post office, and an orphanage. More of a halfway house than anything, it was a simple three-story building with just enough room for the dozen or so young souls who gathered there. Only two adults worked the orphanage, called Planter House, a Mrs. Weaver and the young Ms. Bluebelle. Mrs. Weaver was a stern old broad, with a heart just big enough to be considered normal. She didn’t beat or abuse the kids, no, but some days she wanted to. Sorely outnumbered and poorly armed, the kids had a tendency to run rampant, in as much as they could. They listened to her, of course, but there were only so many places she could be at once.

“Ms. Bluebelle was the spitting image of a young maiden. Beautiful, kind-hearted, well-groomed, and from good stock. Her family was well enough to do, but she insisted despite their protests that her place was with these kids. In fact, it was almost purely through her that the building stay standing at all, as she used almost all of the money at her disposal to keep the place together. That and force of will. She was a fiery one, that Bluebelle. And the kids loved her. She was like the mother, and Mrs. Weaver the grandmother. It wasn’t perfect, and far from a well-oiled machine, but it held together.

“That is, until the new kid came. Number thirteen. Bad enough luck at that, but nobody really knew where he came from. One day the constable had shown up, with a plea to Mrs. Weaver to take the boy in He’d been found in an abandoned house, no parents, no nothing. Stealing food from neighbors and burning the furniture and decorations for warmth in the winter. Some of the officers even swore that he slept on the piles of ashes cause it was the warmest place in the house. That’s where he got his name: Ash. Kid never spoke, you see. Not a word. No idea what his name was, where he came from. So of course Mrs. Weaver took him in. It helped that the city had offered to chip in with a stipend to keep the kid in house and home. Kept the locals from raising a fuss about the poor boy going ignored in that empty house for so long.

“First few weeks, all was just fine. Ash ate, slept, played like the other kids. Even got along well enough with one or two of them. Even though he couldn’t speak, they found out he could write. So they gave him a small blackboard and some chalk, and he wrote down what he wanted to say. It was like a game to the rest of the kids: seeing if they could guess what he was writing before he finished. It was something new, you see. Something different. They all had their own sad stories, so they ween’t about to turn coat on some poor kid from nowhere.

“Then the first fire started. Nothing big. In fact, they wouldn’t have even known abut it if Mrs. Weaver hadn’t made a habit of doing rounds late at night to keep the kids from digging through the pantry in the dark. They didn’t have that kind of food, you know? She walked right past Ash’s room, and saw the glow under his door. At first she thought it was just a light, something to read by, until she smelled the smoke. She ran through the door, and found that Ash had broken down a chair and started a fire in the middle of his room. He was just sitting next to it, warming his hands. He’d even put some bricks around it to keep from spreading. When Mrs. Weaver asked him what the hell he was doing, he just wrote down one word: cold.

“The adults realized nobody had taught him that he didn’t need to burn furniture to stay warm. Inf act, it made sense, because that’s all he’d been doing all winter. So they let it slide, and showed him where the spare blankets were. He didn’t start another fire for a few weeks after that. Of course, when he did start the next one, it was even more confusing. It was the middle of the day, and he was just standing on the blacktop behind the building where the kids gathered to play, burning an old clock. When they asked him why, he wrote one word: broken. So they showed him that broken things could be fixed.

“But the fires got more common after that. Once he burned a painting from the hallway, hiding the fire in the basement. They asked him why, and he wrote: ugly. He got punished for that one, and they tried to explain that he couldn’t just destroy things he didn’t like. The next one he burned a stray cat. Before they even got to ask him why, he held up his board, with the word ‘bite’ written on it. And sure enough, one of the kids told Ms. Bluebelle all about how this big, mean, feral cat had run at her and bit her on the arm, even showed them the mark. They took her to the doctor, of course. And they punished Ash. Not as severely, because they thought his heart was in the right place. The cat had been dangerous, and really, how else was a kid like Ash going to know how to deal with a feral animal in his own back yard?

“After the bite, the fires stopped for a while. Then a man came to visit. A guy named Iron Stove. Decent enough looking, he was the latest in a long line of suitors for Bluebelle. The kids didn’t like him, though they never really liked anyone that tried to take Ms. Bluebelle away.

“But Ash really didn’t like him. Hated him. Glared daggers at him whenever he walked past. And all he would say about Iron was ‘bad man’. But that wasn’t gonna stop Iron Stove. He was a metalworker by trade, but he practiced painting. That’s how he intended to win Bluebelle’s heart, by painting her. He thought, however, that maybe the kids would warm up to him if he painted all of them, first. Something to make them feel special. So he did. He sat them all down, and painted a small portrait of all the kids in Planter House. Even Ash sat for the painting, on the insistence of his friends and Ms. Bluebelle, who everyone liked.

“The painting was nice enough. It was a small canvas, so there wasn’t much detail in the kids’ faces. You could tell who was who, of course, but any outsider would just see a generic group of kids gathered around a couch. Except Ash. Stove went out of his way to get Ash right, because Ash hated him the most out of everyone there. He got his little vest, his buttons, even his hair just right. Right down to the very very politely blank expression on his face. They hung it up in the main hallway.

“Of course, Ash didn’t like the painting, but they’d hung it up where he couldn’t get to it. Even after he’d shown that he didn’t feel the need to burn anything that bothered him, Mrs. Weaver was still wary of the way Ash looked at that painting. Some days he would just glare at it for hours, just leaning on the wall and giving it the Evil Eye like he was holding it at bay.

“A month or so later, Iron Stove came by with a big announcement: he’d finished the painting of Ms. Bluebelle. He was so convinced that she’d love it that he bragged on and on about how she’d swoon for him and they’d run off together to a happier life. Of course, this didn’t sit well with any of the kids, least of all little Ash. So when Ms. Bluebelle brought the painting home the next day, Ash was furious. He holed himself up in his room, not talking to anyone. The adults just chalked it up to kids being kids, and let him be.

“Then the next evening, the Constable that had dropped Ash off in the first place came by, asking for Ms. Bluebelle. As it turns out, Iron Stove was dead. Dies of massive burns on his chest. They wouldn’t go into detail around the kids, but people later found out that the words ‘Bad Man’ were burned into his torso. Nothing else in the house had burned, as a matter of fact. Ms. Bluebelle was of course, distraught. She hadn’t been so taken by him that she was ready to run off, of course, but she still considered him a friend. Then the constable explained that Iron Stove was, in fact, dirt poor. The only thing he had going for him was his art, which no one would buy. He lived by himself in a tiny hollow on the far side of town, and it seemed, according to a journal they’d found, that his only interest in Bluebelle was her wealthy family. He had intended to convince her to stop putting money into the orphanage, and instead use it all on him.

“Mrs. Weaver was instantly suspicious of Ash, although nothing could be proven. Bluebelle thought the idea was outrageous. ‘How could he have started a fire across town all by himself when he was here all day?’ she asked. ‘How,’ Mrs. Weaver countered, ‘Had he started all the other fires. We hid all the tinder, matches, and candles long ago.’ Bluebelle didn’t have an answer for that, but was adamant that Ash couldn’t have done it. And she was outright indignant at the suggestion that the kid possessed some kind of… supernatural ability.

“But then the fires got more common. Worse, even. One kid had taken one of Ash’s toys, and the word ‘thief’ had been burned into their bedding. Almost took the room down. Ash want’ anywhere near it, but that only made Mrs. Weaver more suspicious. And still, Ms. Bluebelle defended him. ‘It’s impossible for some poor boy to start a fire with his mind! I was with him the entire time! There must be someone trying to blame this on him,’ she reasoned.

“Mrs. Weaver wasn’t convinced, but without evidence, there was nothing she could do. Until the worst fire of them all happened. It had started in the portrait Stove had done of the orphans, that much was for sure. In the middle of the night, the thing just burst into flames. Mrs. Weaver saw it happen. In fact, she was the only reason no one got hurt. She was able to get the entire group out, and they all stood in the street in the middle of the night in their pajamas as their home burned down. Lots of the kids cried: Ms. Bluebelle was horrified. But in the middle of the group, one person wasn’t even looking at the fire. Mrs. Weaver only had eyes for Ash, who stared at the house like he’d stared at the portrait; hate on his face, and flames in his eyes.

“They moved into a new, bigger building after that, paid by the city. The official word was that the people responsible for building it hadn’t brought it up to code, and so they’d received a nice payout to keep the whole thing out of court. They’d bought a new place with the money, but when they’d all moved in, they noticed some people missing. Ms. Bluebelle never showed up to the new orphanage, and in all the confusion, Ash had simply disappeared. The cops went and searched the wreckage of the old orphanage for clues, as well as Bluebelle’s home. What they found convinced Mrs. Weaver, and the Constable, that Ash was never just an ordinary child. On the back of the portrait of the kids, which otherwise didn’t have a scratch on it, and on all the walls inside of Bluebelle’s home, was a single word, written in scorch marks: MINE,” Dusty barked the last word loudly, as several of the girls jumped.

Laughing, he blew out his candle.

“You ASS!” Sunset shrieked, though she was laughing, too. “That was… ooh, that was really good. I liked that one.”

“I like the part with ‘Bad Man’,” Spooks mused, with a small smile.

“You would,” Rubble groaned. “Alright, alright. Settle down, you lot. Twilight, I think it’s your turn?”

The Princess nodded, then thought for a second. “Well, I’ve got a bunch of stories I could tell, but I think your definition of ‘scary’ is a bit different than Equestria’s. There’s a bunch of campfire stories that the other Rainbow Dash likes to tell, but I don’t really know any of them. Applejack shared the Headless Pony story with me, but you already told… well, a version of it, at least, Dash,” she said apologetically. They couldn’t quite see her, but they hear RD grunt. “Ok, I think I have one. It’s called The Crying Game.”

Pinkie and Sonata looked at each other, then at Twilight. “Is this gonna be another sad story? Those suck,” Sonata groaned.

“No, I don’t think so,” Twilight replied thoughtfully. “It’s kind of a short one. More of an old pony’s tale than anything.

“The story goes that there’s a game you can play when you’re alone in your house at night. You have to turn all the light off, and go into the room in your house that’s used the least. Like your basement, your attic, or a closet. Someplace nobody actually goes into regularly. You sit outside the door, which has to be closed, and locked, if possible. You knock once, count to five, knock twice, count to five again, and knock three times. Then you count to ten. At ten, you ask, ‘Are you ok?’ Then one of three things is supposed to happen. If there’s no response, and nothing else happens, then the game is over. You can turn the lights back on. If, after a few seconds, you hear someone crying, then it means someone died in your house. And it’s said that, if the person who plays the game caused the death of someone else, they’ll start crying. But it won’t be tears. It’ll be blood. And it’ll stay on our face forever, so everyone knows what you did.”

She waited a moment to gauge everyone’s reactions, then blew out her candle. Rubble and Dusty traded looks over Rubble’s candle. “We HAVE to play that at the house tomorrow,” they said in unison.

Twilight looked back and forth to the boys on either side of her, confused. “What? What house?”

Rubble shrugged. “A friend of Principal Celestia’s hired the four of us to investigate a haunted house she owns. What was her name? Inkwell?”

Pinkie gasped, really loudly. “NO WAY. You’re going to go to the Inkwell House? That place is TOTES SUPER HAUNTED!”

Again, the boys traded glances. “Sweeeeet,” they said in unison.

“Oh good,” Spooks piped up. “I was hoping it’d be something worthwhile. The last place just had lots of rats in the pipes.”

Sonata leaned as far away from Spooks as she could. “Eeeewwww….”

“Yeah, yeah, Rats in the Walls, blah blah blah. My turn,” Rubble said excitedly. “This one’s my favorite. It’s called No, Mr. Walker. Here goes:

“There’s this house in the middle of a big valley far outside the city. There’s road that go by it, of course, and some shops and other houses nearby, but this house is pretty special. It’s the biggest house in the valley, and the people who live there own most of the land in it. They’re not really rich, per se, but the family’s owned the land longer than there’s been a house on it to live in. It’s not a big family, either. Just a mother, father, and their son. The parents love their kid, but he’s a little peculiar. He’s got all these toys, all this land to roam around in, but all he does is play with this one toy. It’s a weird-looking doll with arms that are too long and legs longer than that, in a pinstripe suit with a bowler hat. He’s got a weird face, too: the eyes are too small, the nose is crooked, and his mouth is painted in a frown. The boy calls the doll ‘Mr. Walker’, and takes it with him everywhere he goes. His parents don’t mind, cause the kid is so young, so they figure he’ll grow out of it eventually. At least, that’s what tey tell everyone. Cause you see, they’ve met the real Mr. Walker.

“It all started when the parents decided to surprise the boy for his birthday, and take him to the zoo. The only thing the kid liked as much as his doll was giraffes. They figured it was because of the long legs or whatever. But he was just as excited as any kid should be, so when the day came, and the parents told him to leave Mr. Walker at home, he didn’t put up much of a fuss. Oh sure, he protested, but they explained that the zoo is a very busy place, with lots and lots of animals and people, and they wee afraid he would lose Mr. Walker. So the boy said “OK,” and off they went.

“Well, the visit to the zoo was just like they imagined. The boy looked at all kinds of animals, and laughed at the monkeys and ‘ooh’ed and ‘ahh’ed at the tigers and bears. Then they got to the giraffes. The little boy was ecstatic. He saw them from a mile away, and pulled on his mom’s arm. They picked him up, and put him on his father’s shoulders, and marched up to the giant animals in their big, wide enclosure as proud as could be. They were just the picture of a happy family, as the little boy pointed and giggled at the tall giraffes, clapping his hands.

“Then the father saw something strange. One of the giraffes seemed to be… different. He couldn’t really tell. Like it’s leg was bending weird or something. He watched the animal for a moment, worried that it might be injured, and he didn’t want his son’s day to be ruined if his favorite animal got hurt. But all looked normal, and the father chalked it up to the shadow of the tree behind him. He’d never seen giraffes himself, of course, so they were a new and alien creature to him as much as his son.

“They were about to leave, seeing the boy grow tired and sleepy, when the father saw it again. One of the giraffe’s legs was bent at a weird angle. Except, with a closer look, he saw it wasn’t the leg. It was the shadow behind it. A long, spindly shadow that walked behind the giraffe, hiding in plain sight. Then another, behind the other leg. The father was very confused, until he looked up at the giraffe’s neck. He saw another shadow there, too. Although it wasn’t a long, spindly thing. It was a face. An angry, crooked face with a bowler hat. A face with beady eyes, and a crooked nose. And a big frown full of big, wide teeth.

“Then the father heard the boy say something in his sleep. ‘No, Mr. Walker, not them. Not mommy and daddy.’ The father looked with wide eyes at his son, then back at the shadowy face. He caught just the barest glimpse as it disappeared behind the animal, a flash of row after row of teeth where the mouth should be.

“From that point on, they let there son take Mr. Walker wherever he wanted,” Rubble ended, with a wide, toothy grin, his face hanging just over his candle. He blew it out quickly, with a puff of air.

The back yard was quiet, much like after all of the other stories. “That… that was jus’ creepy as hell,” AJ said quietly.

“No JOKE,” agreed Pinkie. “I mean, I like dolls and stuff, but… nuh-uh.”

Sunset shivered. “Speak for yourself. I hate haunted doll stories. Next, PLEASE.”

“Ok!” Sonata said cheerfully. “I got one! This one’s called The Vietnam War. Ahem,” she cleared her throat, only to be stopped by Spooks holding up his hand.

“Um, Sonata? These are supposed to he fictional stories. Like, ghost stories and stuff,” he explained gently.

“Oh, really?” she said, disappointed. “That sucks. I don’t know anything about ghosts and stuff! All my scary stories are things that, y’know, actually happened.”

“And I’m sure we’d like to hear exactly none of them,” said Rubble with a sense of false cheer. Before Sonata could protest, he blew out her candle, and said quickly, “Pinkie, you’re up!”

Sonata just sat back in her seat, a little grumpy, oblivious to the wave of relief that had quietly swept over the table. Most of Sonata’s ‘stories’ could widely be considered ‘People’s Exhibit A’.

Pinkie jumped at her turn. “Okie-doki-loki! I’ve got one! So, there was this one baker, this guy, let’s call him Doughy! Well, Doughy was a great baker, and everypony just looooved his cakes and stuff! Then, one day, the Princesses came to him and were like, ‘Hey, Doughy, could you make us a big ol’ birthday cake?’ And he was like ‘Of course!’ So he goes to make their big ol’ cake, the morning of their birthday, cause he wants it to be all warm and fresh! Then he realizes, he’s ALL OUT OF FLOUR!” She gasped loudly at the end of her story, and blew her candle out so hard Spooks had to protect his.

Unlike the other stories, there was little to no pause after Pinkie’s. Most everyone just laughed at her exuberance, or raised curious eyebrows at the story. “Umm...” Dash started. “That’s not scary, Pinks. That’s just… no.”

“But… but… he’s OUT of FLOUR! And he has to make the Princesses a HUUUUGE cake! How is that not scary?!” Pinkie demanded.

“Um, the part where it’s not?” Rubble asked politely. That got even more laughs out of the group.

After it had settled down, the group turned to the last lit candle at the table: the one in front of Spooky Bones. Rubble and Dusty shifted uncomfortably in their seats, as the girls looked on anxiously. Even Pinkie and Sonata had forgotten the injustices done to them, at the prospect of Canterlot High’s resident horror expert weaving his own scary tale. Everyone was in the mood, now.

“Ok,” he began. “The name of this story is The Sound of Drums:

“Once, in a city much like ours, there lived a girl named Petal Dancer in an apartment downtown. She was nothing special, in big city terms. Just a quiet girl who worked a flower shop on the waterfront. A tourist trap if ever there was one. As it happened, this story started on Halloween night. Or rather, a few hours before nightfall. It was mid-afternoon, and the shop was as busy as could be expected. Many custom orders had come in, for all kinds of flowers. Some for people to put on graves, some for decorations. One particular order stood out in Petal Dancer’s mind, however. A particular arrangement that had been requested weeks before, to be prepared on the day of Halloween.

“The shop hadn’t carried all of the flowers that the customer had ordered, and in fact some of them had been brought in by the customer themselves. This wasn’t completely unheard of, as certain flowers were rare and hard to come by, or the customer had a particular attachment to a plant, or simply wanted to include flowers they had grown themselves. Well, she had taken great care with the order, putting everything together just as she had been asked. She was elated with the result, and as the customer came in to pick up their order, she carefully brought it out to the front. The person who had placed the order, an old woman in her mid-eighties, if Petal had to guess, stood by the counter with a gentle smile, which only grew wider as the girl brought out the bouquet.

“Setting the arrangement gently on the table, Petal said, ‘Here you go, miss. I hope it’s to your liking!’ ‘Oh, very much so,’ said the old lady. ‘You’ve done wonderful work.’ And so the lady paid, and the customer printed her receipt. However, as she handed the bouquet to the old woman, she pricked her finger on a rose thorn. She flinched, then drew her hand back as the woman took the flowers, nursing the fingertip with her lips. The taste of copper filled her mouth, and when she looked at the old lady, where once was a smile now was a saddened, dark expression. ‘My child, I am so sorry. But there is nothing I can do for you now,’ she said simply. Before Dancer got a chance to ask what she meant, the old lady had disappeared out the door and down the street, moving faster than expected.

“Of course, nothing else of import happened, and petal dancer went about her day. She made more bouquets, helped close up shop, and made her way home. As she walked down the streets, watching the sun set, a peculiar noise caught her attention. It was a steady drum beat. ‘Boom. Boom. Boom.’ It was consistent, and noisy, distracting. She peeked around, looking for the source, and her gaze traveled down the alley, where she saw a few people in Halloween costumes banging on a drum. She smiled to herself, and went on her way.

“She reached her apartment, and curiously, heard the sound again. ‘Boom. Boom. Boom.’ She looked around again, and, poking her head around a corner, saw the building’s handyman hammering in a nail into a baseboard. She thought nothing of it, and went into her apartment. Now, Petal Dancer had no special plans for Halloween. It was an enjoyable holiday, of course, but she was in her mid-twenties, with only a handful of acquaintances in the city, and thus an evening at home watching campy horror films and eating discount candy sounded like just the ticket.

“As she took off her uniform, getting ready to change into some comfortable pajamas and turn in for the night, she heard the sound again. ‘Boom. Boom. Boom.’ Again, she looked around. And again, she found a cause: a decoration from the apartment above hers, on the fire escape, had come loose, and was banging loudly on her window. She opened the window, put the decoration back as best she could, and closed it again. Once again, she paid it no mind. She sat down, put in her horror movie, and settled in with a big bowl of candy. And a sandwich, to say she ate something of substance.

“Halfway through the second movie, she found herself growing tired. She yawned as the monster crept up on its next victim, its heavy feet echoing down the hall in the movie and throughout Petal’s apartment. ‘Boom. Boom. Boom.’ She didn’t even notice, until she’d turned the movie off to go to bed. And still she heard it. ‘Boom. Boom. Boom.’ She looked around again for a cause. She checked the window. No decorations had come loose. ‘Boom.’ She peeked into the hallway. The handyman was gone, as were all of his tools. ‘Boom.’ She put her ear up to the neighbor’s door. Nothing. Nothing except the sound. ‘Boom. Boom. Boom.’

“Now she was scared. Where was the sound coming from? It sounded like the heavy footsteps of the monster. Had it really come to life? No, that’s silly, she thought. But what if someone had broken into the building? Some big guy with heavy feet who was stomping around, up to no good? Maybe they were drunk. Maybe they were violent. The more she worried, the more she scared herself, until she ran back into her apartment and closed the door. And still, she heard the sound just as loudly as before. ‘Boom. Boom. Boom.’

“What if they had already snuck into her apartment while she was watching the movie? With how tired she was, it would have been easy. She hadn’t gotten into the habit of locking her door yet. Maybe she was being robbed! She ran to the kitchen, turning all the lights on as she went. As she ran, still the sound persisted. ‘Boom. Boom. Boom.’ She grabbed a knife from the counter, and stalked around the apartment. ‘Boom.’ She went into the hall, and turned on that light. No one. ‘Boom.’ The sound was getting louder now. As she turned on the light in the bathroom, she heard it. ‘Boom.’ But there was nothing there. Finally, she came to the door to the last room in the apartment: her bedroom. If there was someone stomping around in here, they were certainly in there. ‘Boom.’ The closer she got to the bedroom, the more scared she became. ‘Boom. Boom. Boom.’ She slowly opened the door. ‘Boom.’ She flicked on the light. ‘Boom.’ There was no one there. Except…

“Her closet. ‘Boom.’ The sound was getting louder. BOOM. With each step she took, she heard it. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. And then, she threw open the closet door. BOOM BOOM BOOM. The sound was deafening. Yet there was nothing there!

“And the old woman’s words came back to her, too late: ‘My child, I am so sorry. But there is nothing I can do for you now.’ And Petal Dancer realized, also too late, what that sound was. BOOM. And as her heart pounded in her chest, echoing in her ears, the poison of the rare flower caused her poor heart to finally give out. Her fear, and the poison, made the poor girl’s heart explode,” and with that, Spooks leaned the candle in his hand to the middle of the table, where it’s light illuminated the untouched candle in the center. He lit it carefully, and blew out his own.

The group sat in silence for a while, not wanting to be the first to talk, or get up. Spooks’ story had obviously gotten to them, as the sound of shifting in chairs could be heard at regular intervals.

Slowly, though, another sound made itself heard. Boom. Boom. Boom.

With only the light of the candle in the center, the faces of the girls and boys could barely be made out by the rest. And still, the sound persisted. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Sunset looked around nervously, as Pinkie and Sonata scooted their chairs close to each other. Twilight was gripping the table with her hands, leaning forward intently, staring at the candle. Dusty and Rubble simply traded worried looks, ones that didn’t go unnoticed by the others. Even Spooks looked around, wide-eyed and curious.

Applejack and RD were trying to remain as stoic as possible, although anyone who knew them well could see the stress forming on their faces. Still, the sound persisted. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Everyone was looking around now, trying to find the source of the sound. Even as it grew louder, they frantically searched. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Finally, it looked like Twilight was going to be the first one to crack. She opened her mouth to speak…

“BOOM!” yelled Treble, jumping out of the dark and slamming his hands on the table. Everyone who was once in a chair was now out of it, save for Dusty, Rubble, and Spooks. The former two had jumped, of course, but their reactions were quickly replaced with raucous laughter as the girls screamed and ran away from the table. Several of them had even made it as far as the door before Sunset screamed at them all, “You absolute FUCKS. I KNEW IT!!”

Throughout the yelling, cursing, screaming, and bellowing laughter, Spooks simply sat in his chair, his proud smile barely illuminated by the last candle.

Author's Note

Sweet jeebus this monster of a chapter. I was literally up till midnight writing this cause I was having so much fun. Also, as kind of an apology for not having anything out for Halloween.

Act One: Curtain Call

Author's Note

Ok, let's try this regular schedule thing again. God, the holidays are confusing as fuck.

Also, I'm in the market for a better cover picture, if anyone wants to tackle that monster.

Act One: Curtain Call

Act One: Curtain Call

The party had closed off with little incident. Of course most everyone who had played the ‘game’ had been more than a little incensed at being pranked the way they had, but there were, the boys were assured, no hard feelings. Of course there had been poorly veiled threats at revenge, of some kind or another, but it was nothing they hadn’t expected.

The morning of their new ‘job’ was, for all intents and purposes, just like any other weekend. The boys had been asked to meet at the front gate of the rather lavish Inkwell estate a little before noon, so they filled the hours the same way any other teenage boys in high school would. On the phone.

“What do you mean ‘Wee need to take Twilight with us?!’ Are you kidding?” Rubble barked into his cell. A cheap, near-indestructible model favored by construction companies for it’s ability to fall several stories onto hardened steel with just a dent. In the steel. It also had a built-in walkie-talkie, so he’d gone out of his way to get the other boys the same model. Of course, they would have come in handy had the school allowed cell phones at the dance, but that was an argument for a different story. “Why in god’s name do we need to take YET ANOTHER newbie into hostile territory?”

Spooks, on the other end of the line, sounded nonplussed, and probably was. “For several reasons. One, you can’t drive, and we need someone to haul all of us to the house. Two, she has scientific instrumentation I’ve never even heard of, mainly because she invented most of it. To study magic. And ghosts. You know, the whole thing we’re doing here? Also, none of us thought to keep this on the down low when we were at the party last night, so almost as soon as we left she practically ambushed me to let her come.”

Fingertips massaging the bridge of his nose, Rubble did his best to suppress a headache. “I thought she didn’t have a driver’s license? Let alone a van.”

“Yes, well, she knows someone who does,” Spooks explained.

“Wha-HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE COMING TO THIS THING?! They better not be expecting to get paid for any of this!” It was a good thing there wasn’t anyone else home right now. He was actually getting close to getting another noise report filed against him.

Spooks, to his credit, had learned a long time ago to hold the phone away from his ear when he had bad news to deliver. Or what Rubble might perceive as bad. This time, he’d simply put his friend on speaker phone and left the phone on the bed. On the other end of the room. The acoustics in his attic bedroom were quite spectacular, after all. “I was very specific about that. And it’s just Twilight. The person driving her isn’t sticking around. I’m just giving them twenty bucks for gas and sending them on their way. Besides, Twilight doesn’t want the money. She’s one of those ‘scientific inquiry’ types. She just wants the research. Honestly, it’s a large part of why I’m going, myself. You know that. Well, that and I’d like some inspiration for some new paintings. They’re selling okay now, so I want to keep going. It’d be nice to have a decent client base after I graduate, to pay for college.”

There was some ragged static on the line, as Rubble took a few deep breaths. “OK. Ok, I can deal with that. It’s just some heavy metal and a nerdy kid, right? We don’t even know the place is haunted, for sure. I mean, knowing this town, chances are it’s haunted as FUCK, but still.”

Spooks nodded, forgetting for a second Rubble couldn’t see him. “Yes. That. Look, Twilight and her friend are coming to pick me up in an hour or so, and I haven’t showered or changed. Starting to smell like Dusty over here. Then we’re gonna go get you, then Treble and Double D. They’re at the hideout. Honestly I think they just wanted an excuse to smoke a pack apiece before they have to spend a whole weekend without them. Raven kind of sort of absolutely hates smoking. She was rather creative with her… incentive to not do so on her property.”

Rubble paused for a second, stuffing some clothes into his trusty duffel bag. It was slow going, as he had a tendency to move counter-intuitive to his brace. “What kind of creative?” he asked curiously.

“The kind of creative that gives you bad ideas so I’m not going to go into detail. You packing yet?”

Rubble shook his bag near the phone. “Yeah, almost done. I don’t want to take anything I might miss later. Last time we went ghost-hunting I lost my favorite pair of cargo pants. And I’m STILL finding the buttons from it in random places.”

Spooks raised an eyebrow at that. “You know, some people have jobs with side-effects like back injuries, asbestos toxicity, and malpractice. We get severed tendons, night terrors, and ghost buttons.”

Rubble heard a very light bristling sound over the line. “Are you… painting right now?”

“Just touching up a piece. There were a few defining lines I figured I had time to work on. Don’t think I’m going to sell this one, though. Might hang it in my room when I’m done. Depends on how it finishes,” Spooks explained, calling over his shoulder at the phone. He lightly touched the canvas with a fine brush, his eyes narrowed in concentration. “I had to rearrange my room to put together a sort of art studio off to the side.”

“Aww, man, does that mean the big-ass TV isn’t up their anymore?” Rubble groaned, trying to force some extra clothes into the bag, lest some go missing.

“Nah, it’s still up here. Got it mounted to the wall now, across from my bed. But the big cushy couch is gone. Had Dusty take it down to the hideout this morning,” Bones added, figuring that’s what his friend would ask next.

“Awesome. Wonder what those two chucklefucks are even DOING right now?”

“No, you asshole, MY right!” Treble growled, doing his best to hold onto the big red cushy couch Bones had donated to their secret lair.

Dusty grunted, and shook his end. Ignoring the irritable protests from his friend, he moved to his left, pivoting the couch. Treble followed, grunting with both effort and frustration, until they lined the piece of furniture up against the remains of the living room wall. The big armchair had been moved underneath the window, as had the beanbags. The old couch now served as a kind of divider between the ‘kitchen’ and the main sitting room. And to make sure they didn’t set the damn thing on fire, all of the tables with cooking instruments on them had been put against the far kitchen wall, which was actually an alcove underneath a broken staircase.

Dusty wiped the sweat from his brow, giving their handiwork an approving look. “Alright, that’s better. Looks slightly less shitty in here. Hey, wasn’t there a big-ass pile of drywall right there?” he asked, gesturing to the empty space in the wall where a door used to be, that led to the bedroom.

“Yeah,” Treble huffed, much more out of breath than the other boy. “I’ve been clearing it out piece by piece and throwing it into the empty lot out back. Already filled up that broken-ass dumpster, so now I just kinda stack it alongside. Not like anyone’s gonna clear that shit out anyway. I wanted to make room for like, a curtain or something. Maybe a folding wall or makeshift door or something.”

“Why?” Dusty asked, shrugging. “Not like anyone who uses this place regularly is gonna give a shit.”

“Yes, but it’s really hard to get a girl in the mood with screaming parents trampling all over your apartment,” DT explained, dropping himself into the new addition, relishing in the feeling of a couch with more cushion than hardwood for once.

“What, you think taking some chick to this broken-ass part of town is a GOOD idea? Do you even WATCH Law and Order?” Dusty rummaged through some storage in the kitchen, pulling out a bag of chips.

“Not if I can help it,” Treble said. “But I see your point. Maybe if this didn’t look like, well, the absolute shitty part of town, I might have better luck. Not sure I’d want to hook up with a girl that was OK with coming back here anyway.”

The boys paused, then shuddered. “Yeah, nuh-uh,” Double D said after a second. “Course, I can’t think of anyone who would. Look, either way, if you want to pay for a curtain, put it up, girlify the place all you want. But it’s your dime and your time.”

“Yeah, I know. What time is Twilight’s… friend or whatever coming to pick us up?”

Dusty struggled with the bag for a second before it popped open. “Like an hour or so. Do you know what kind of equipment she’s gonna be hauling? Are we talking Ghostbusters or Rose Red?”

“You’re talking about a girl who invented a pendant that accidentally stole magic and turned her into a she-demon. And she insisted on a van. I’m thinking Rose Red,” Treble groaned, not looking forward to the extra heavy lifting. “So hey.”

“Hey.”

“We need to talk about Rubble,” Treble said, leaning forward in his seat, bearing a stern expression.

There was a pregnant pause as Dusty walked over to the couch and dropped in it. “Yeah. I know. I mean, what are we gonna do?”

Treble shook his head. “No idea. I offered to fork over some cash to help out, but you imagine how well that went.”

There was a wry chuckle from the other end of the couch. “Yeah, I know. I mean, it’s a good thing we even got this job. I was gonna push like half of my check on him whether he likes it or not. Unless, you know, I get something bitten off.”

Treble stretched out, taking up a rather obnoxious amount of room on the couch. “That sounds like a plan, actually. I mean, he can’t drive right now. Therapist says he might be able to after a bit. He’s making decent progress, at least. Not astronomical, but they said at least he hasn’t broken anything. Of course, this isn’t even the worst of it.”

The only thing keeping the silence at bay was Dusty crunching on potato chips. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I chatted up one of the therapists while he was at PT yesterday. Apparently one of the more horrible things that happens with an Achilles Tendon injury like this, besides the obvious pain and missing flesh, is the muscle. See, the entire muscle in your calf is only attached by that tendon. Without it, it shrivels up and dies, and apparently it’s a slow and painful process. The way I see it, this is going to go one of three ways: One, he’s going to stop being a stubborn cuck and check back into the hospital, where they might be able to help, if he doesn’t wait too long; Two, the pain becomes so bad that he has to take painkillers, maybe gets addicted; Three, he’s in so much pain he doesn’t even leave the house. I mean, this is just my best guess, of course. I’m making guesses based on a therapist’s best guess. But either way it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Dusty flinched. “Man. Do you think it’s gonna be like Spooks was? I don’t think I could take the screaming.”

“Dude, there’s kind of a big difference between night terrors and atrophied muscle. But I see what you mean. I doubt it, though. Dusty’s not likely to crash here on the nights it gets bad. And if he gets laid up permanently, he’s got a few options. His mom might finally take up their uncle’s offer to live with them. But I doubt it. If she thinks they’d be a burden now, imagine adding a single mom with a bedridden kid to that mess,” DT groaned. He flopped onto his stomach. “Man, this is depressing.”

“Well, what else are we gonna talk about?” Dusty snipped. “The nightmare monstrosity that party crashed an entire school campus last week? How he was going on about ‘Father’ or whatever? Cause I don’t know abut you, but anything that can tell that ungodly creature what to do can just fuck off.”

“No doubt.”

“Why on Earth do you even NEED this much equipment, anyway?” Indigo barked. “It’s a haunted house, not the CDC.”

Twilight considered the other girl seriously, as she lugged a large case to the back of the van. “Do you have any idea how statistically insignificant the amount of data I have is? I need all the help I can get!”

“And another thing,” Zap pressed on, in her usual loud tones, “Why do you even need to investigate ghosts anyway? I thought you were all ‘Magical Girl Sparkle’ now?” She picked up a slightly bigger case with much less effort than Twilight, and it dropped into the back of the vehicle with a loud thunk.

Twilight glared at her. “Please, PLEASE be careful with this stuff! It’s on loan from the school and it’s very expensive! And they’re only letting me take it in the first place because I made most of it!”

Indigo took a step back, not used to sass from her typically doormattish bookworm friend. “OK, OK. Jeez. How expensive we talking here, anyway?” Twilight said a number, and Indigo swooned for a second. “Wha-how-how much?! That’s more than it’s gonna take to get me into college! Without scholarships!”

“Yes, well, most of it is experimental,” Twilight explained matter-of-factly, rearranging the equipment in back to make room for all of the passengers. “I’ve got at least seven patents pending in the back of this vehicle alone. Just be glad I couldn’t get permission to take the psycho-spectral chromograph. Last time I transported that anywhere I had to borrow my brother’s longbed pickup. And several straps.”

Indigo regarded her less-than-spectacular van, with it’s not-so-great shocks and okay-ish breaks. “Um… is any of it insured?”

“What part of ‘experimental’ do I need to explain again?” Twilight groaned, lifting the last case into the back.

Indigo whimpered slightly.

Act Two: What's My Line?

Act Two: What’s My Line?

The Inkwell Estate may very well be as old, if not older, than some of the stories the boys and girls had shared at Sunset’s party on Friday night. Or, at least, as old as they said they were. The road leading to the main gate had to be designed by someone who watched far too many horror movies in the late 80’s. It wound and rose through what could be easily underestimated as a forest, seemingly straightening out only when the woods were too dense to allow sunlight in. As if the soul who had it put in wanted to discourage as many lost souls as possible from finishing the drive and disturbing their rest.

The woods actually set themselves apart from the typical air of a horror movie in that they were full of broad, sturdy trees seemingly spaced rather evenly along the road, which may very well have been intentional. There were no withered, broken memories of tree trunks scattered about in thin lines with little foliage. In fact, many of the trees were evergreens, pines and the like, such that even in the middle of fall as they were there was still plenty of green to go around. The road itself was the only colorless thing to be seen, a well-managed stream of still gray pebbles carefully laid out and kept to itself, its only real presence in the sound the van made as it shuffled the rocks underneath its wheels with that all-too-familiar crumbling sound.

The only passenger of said van with any interest in the scenery, however, was Spooky, who took in the dense woods and isolationist surroundings with a slightly more interested variation of his typical dry gaze. After the first few hundred trees, however, even this interest began to wane, and he turned his attention to the assortment of conversations taking place in front of him. By virtue of him being in the back seat, of course. He shared it only with a wide assortment of heavy trunks he had been told a few times not to open. Bones wasn’t, after all, without his curiosity.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Dusty asked again, leaning against the back of the driver’s seat, much to Indigo’s chagrin.

The blue-haired girl glared in the rear-view mirror in a valiant effort to light Dusty’s head on fire with her mind. “I swear to god, if you don’t shut the fuck up I’m going to shove an Evenrude up your ass and pull the ripcord out your ears!”

Rubble leaned against the group daredevil, pushing him into the door. “I think she liiiikes you.”

Treble groaned, rolling his eyes from the far side of the row. “Oh good, we’re doing this now.”

There was a heavy sigh as the secondary gate mere meters from the house rose into view. “Oh thank god. I thought I was going to drive this van into a tree and kill us all.”

Twilight’s wide-eyed panic was not entirely misplaced, given Indigo’s penchant for sounding as dead serious as she wanted to, even with heaping loads of sarcasm underneath. “Don’t you dare!” the scientist yelped from the passenger seat. “Don’t forget how expensive all of this equipment is!”

“What part of kill us all do I need to explain again?” Zap growled, parking in front of the gate and putting the van in park with more force than may have been necessary. She looked more than ready to just shove everyone and everything out of the van, insured or no, and take off to leave them fend for themselves. Which is what she fully intended to do as they were all set up. Less so for the fact that they annoyed the absolute hell out of her, and more so that she didn’t do well with ghost stories, let alone haunted houses. Though she’d never tell another soul about that.

Twilight regarded her carefully as she stepped out of the van, not so oblivious as to miss the obvious tension in her friend. The boys looked ready to jump out, but she held up a hand to keep them still, a command that Indigo was surprised they’d followed. Sparkle made her way up to the gate, where she was met by a rather jittery-looking young woman whom they hadn’t noticed before. Mainly because she had been standing, or hiding, behind one of the large stone pillars that flanked the wrought iron gate. “Miss Inkwell?” Twilight asked, leaning shyly to get a better look at their welcoming party.

She was pretty in the classical sense, with long black hair and fair off-white skin. She wore small lenses and dressed reservedly without being “frumpy”. She seemed filled with a sense of confidence that was undercut by the presence of the house that had given her so much trouble; this was apparent in how she attempted to keep herself straight, yet had a hard time keeping her gaze from wandering over her shoulder at the rather innocuous, if lavish, home. “Yes, that’s me. Um, I was told that the group coming to… investigate were all boys. May I ask who you are?”

Nodding fervently, Twilight reached a hand out between the iron bars, which Raven accepted. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. I’m… well, I’m a volunteer. I’ve brought a good deal of equipment, if you don’t mind. I didn’t get a chance to call ahead and ask if that would be okay with you.”

Raven smiled lightly. “Honestly, whatever makes this work, you do it. Just try not to do too much damage. Some is, I’ve been assured, inevitable. At least, that’s what previous investigators have told me. Not that I entirely believe it, but I’d rather be prepared for the worst. I’m glad to have you, especially as a volunteer. I don’t think I could afford to put any more money into this, even with the rest of the inheritance. Not without putting myself at risk tax-wise.”

“I understand completely. Could you open the gate so we could drive in and park? I’d hate to have to haul all of this stuff up the entire drive,” Sparkle explained.

Their hostess smiled more genuinely, with a hint of relief on her face. “Of course, please, come in,” she said, moving to undo the padlock on the chains holding the whole thing together.

Twilight smiled in return, making her way back into the van. She sat eagerly as Indigo marched the van forward like a good little soldier, making a few generous K-Turns to point the aft-end at the front doors. As she shut the vehicle down, the rest piled out of the vehicle, spreading out like children at an amusement park. Which, for some of them, was true. Dusty helped Rubble out, as Treble raised a curious eyebrow at Spooky and Twilight, who were already beside themselves admiring the old structure.

It was rather grandiose, meeting all of the expectations one would have of a family like the Inkwells. Easily four stories tall, five in some places where a roof simply wasn’t enough and a tower had been deemed necessary, it rose over the drive like the last guard before the gates of heaven. Or hell, if you believe the stories. Stretching possibly a dozen windows in each direction from the front door, there was no telling where they were now how far back the enormous building stretched. The woodwork and trimmings were done in darker tones, almost black save for a drab hint of color hear and there, though Treble couldn’t tell much more than that. Architecture was not his strong suit. The front entrance, a massive double-door affair with lions-head knockers, stood at the end of a massive stone step approach guarded loyally by generous stone birds. An interesting choice, but not unexpected, given the family’s history. There was a rumor that the progenitor of the family was none other than the famous Gothic poet himself, Poe. Of course, rumors where rumors until they shook your hand.

Treble admired the building as long as he felt customary, then approached Raven Inkwell with the kind of smooth confidence you get from being told “Yes” more often than not, or hustling pool. “Pleasure to meet you!” he said cheerfully, putting on his ‘face of the operation’ suit and striding largely and eagerly to stand a few feet away from their hostess, who had strode up the drive with the kind of hesitation that betrayed her distaste of the house. His confidence and demeanor were accentuated by the simple three-piece navy blue suit he’s chosen to wear, which was admittedly a step down from his attire at the Fall Formal, but wouldn’t look out of place had he held a job at a bank or law firm. “My name is Deep Treble,” he continued, as soon as she was within conversation range. “For the most part I’ll be your point of contact in this mater, as Principal Celestia has informed me that you intend to advance quickly and tactically in the other direction as soon as possible.”

Twilight heard all of this, and raised a suspicious eyebrow at DT. “Um, what the hell is he doing?”

Rubble looked over his shoulder, having been waiting for a chance to make himself useful, as Twilight was directing the other three in where to put the boxes, and with what level of caution. “Oh, that. Yeah, that’s his ‘Leader’ face. There’s a reason he’s our PR guy, he has this neat and rather annoying tendency to make absolute disasters sound like mild inconveniences. You don’t get a reputation as a relentless flirt unless the flirting works. Then you're just a pervert. We usually let him talk to the public, when there’s a public to talk to, because he’s the best option we have. Spooks scares the shit out of everyone, and Dusty and I basically hate people that aren’t us. And even that’s pushing it. You might actually enjoy watching DT go to work, it’s rather fascinating. And be sure to play along when he starts dragging us into the conversation. Keeps the normies from getting too edgy. Edgy is bad. Edgy makes them impatient, which makes our job difficult. Ask Aria about her warg bite when you get a chance; she’ll tell you the importance of good public relations.”

Twilight looked ready to say something, but the conversation in front of her dragged her attention forward.

“Of course,” Raven said with a nod, in response to something Treble had said that she’d missed. “As long as you think it will help. So, tell me, who are the… rest of these people?” she asked curiously, looking past Deep and eying the parade of heavy equipment being loaded onto the front porch.

Treble followed her gaze, and gestured to each of the teenagers in turn. “That’s Twilight Sparkle, whom you’ve met. She’s our technician and resident scientist,” Sparkle gave a light wave at the mention of her name, which Raven returned. “Next to her is Rubble Maker, our combat and construction specialist. Don’t mind the injury, he’s bullheading his way to better health as we speak.” Rubble gave a small nod. “Behind those two, currently strong-arming a rather alarmingly large crate into submission, is Dust Devil. Think of him like a generalist. He does a little of everything, and is easily the fastest on his feet out of the group. It helps that they have wheels attached. The other girl is Indigo Zap, our transportation, although I’m assured she won’t be staying if she can help it. Unless the house locks her in with us, she’s most likely going to leave as soon, if not sooner, than you. Maybe you should talk to her, she might give you a ride back to town.” The two ignored him, either because they didn’t hear him or because they didn’t care.

Treble gestured to the last member of the group, who seemed rather fascinated with the stone reliefs of large blackbirds adorning the front steps. “The last of our crew, and by far not the least, is Spooky Bones. He’s our paranaturalist, scholar, and generally the first person you want to send down a dark haunted hallway, if for no other reason than he might very well out-scare anything with more sense than ectoplasm. Believe me when I tell you that there’s maybe only one other person in the city who knows more about ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties than he does, and he’s currently doing cartwheels in his grave as of late.” Spooks raised a hand in acknowledgment, not tearing his attention away from the base of one of the birds.

“Now, as I imagine you have many other places you’d rather be than here, and you were very, very clear that we wouldn’t see a dime without tangible results, I imagine I’ve run out of ways to razzle and/or dazzle you without actually bringing you back into the house with ringside seats to the general nasty-not-niceness we intend to visit on whatever seems to think it has more right to live here than the people who are actually alive. So is there anything you’d like to ask us before you smartly skedaddle of into the wild blue yonder?” Treble finished, with a fluidity and presence of ego that would impress even the smoothest of swindlers and conniving of con men.

Raven regarded him with the kind of curious suspicion of someone who had dealt with both in her time. Which, given the nature of supernatural investigation, was more likely than not. “That was quite a lot of words to say rather little, don’t you think?”

Treble’s eyebrow raised, and a smile, or rather, smirk of appreciation crossed his face slowly and predominantly. “Oh good, I was hoping you were smarter than the average bear. You’d be surprised how many people can be snowed and shoveled out with the right dance of long words and fancy sentence structure. Despite that, I assure you we have more than enough experience in dealing with things that no sane person has any right doing so, let alone setting time out of their weekends for."

Raven gave him an appraising look. "If you think snowing the ghosts with long-winded speeches about how afraid they should be and how afraid you’re assuredly not, then by all means keep talking. Just don’t expect me to hang around for it, let alone fall for it. If nothing else, please try to keep as much blood OFF the walls as you can. I’m not exactly popular with interior designers as of late.”

“HEY LADY!” Dusty groaned, as he leaned against the front door. “YOU GOT A KEY?!”

Raven looked up to the front porch, where the rest of the group was either staring impatiently, or off in their own little world. Then she looked back at Treble, who was regarding her with the same smug smile she was quickly associating with someone who either had no idea what they were doing, or knew exactly as much. “I can see why they sent you to talk to me, at least.”

Author's Note

Treble smooth as fuck.

Made some edits to the last couple of paragraphs. Apparently some words went missing in the process of pasting this chapter.

Act Three: You're Needed on Set

Act Three: You’re Needed on Set

Raven Inkwell was not naturally a curious person. She, in fact, had very little to do with her family’s many business ventures, having gone her own way in life, and perfectly happily so, as one of the many bees buzzing in the hive of City Hall. She found being in the presence of someone who knew what they were doing very comforting. Which helped her develop the ability to determine whether someone was actually the right person for the job, or just faking it.

This only served to confuse her more as her particular talent seemed to go haywire around this motley crew of teenagers. Of course, the Treble boy had said all the right things, Twilight had all the right equipment, and the rest seemed to have the right attitude, but still, they were only kids. How much experience could they possibly have, she asked herself. Yet she saw in them something most of the other investigators, charlatans, and midnight crazies had all lacked: a genuine appreciation for the threat they may or may not face.

Many of the others she’d hired, ranging from local paranormal clubs to self-proclaimed psychics, and even an honest-to-god onmyoji, had all come in with the confidence that there was merely a loose pipe somewhere in the walls, or a simple spirit that needed cleansing. If the Inkwell Estate had been haunted, they’d all assured her, they’d know by now. Everyone seemed to be ‘in the know’, and yet know absolutely nothing. Many had run out of the house, one or two while screaming One gentleman, a spiritualist well past his fifties, whom Raven had thought of as her best bet at the time, had simply set foot in the lobby, looked about himself, and smiled sadly at her, saying there was nothing he could do.

It was, in fact, that same gentleman who had recommended she talk to Celestia, in regards to a team of ‘specialists’ the Principal had lying around. Of course, she had no intention of telling the boys that some old stranger she’d never heard of had told her to talk to a high school principal to get her house un-haunted, as simply saying the sentence in her head made her sound crazier than the bullet train of frightful events that had brought her to this moment in the first place. She kept herself mostly quiet, in fact, as she watched the group set up the considerable and very confusing array of technology in the sitting room to the side of the main foyer. Of course, she’d helped where she could, not wanting to be rude, and certainly not wanting to be the only adult in the room and not doing anything.

When they were as set up as they were going to be, Raven sat them all down in the assorted lounge chairs and couches in the sitting room (those that weren’t occupied by smaller sensors and cases), and gave them a more specific and in-depth description of the job. “I don’t know how much any of you know about this estate, so here goes: Dry Inkwell, the founder of The First Times, Canterlot’s first majorly-circulated newspaper, was originally a real-estate mogul. Not exactly a genius, but he had a penchant for acquiring land where it was cheapest: the several dozen acres this house sits on was a purchase he’d made on the cheap as part of a deal to keep a family in their homes on the outskirts of town. As far as I know he kept himself away from the shadier deals, intent on building his family name on honor and cleverness. Rumor has it he was also paranoid of gathering too many enemies in case he spread his resources too thin and they came in to take it all. But as soon as he had the land, he started building, fully intent on turning this land into the focus of the Inkwell name.

“Well, it worked. Anyone who knows anyone who knows an Inkwell knows about this house, and there was a time where this was the most socially popular place in the city: lavish parties and rubbing elbows with anyone who could ‘do something’ for you. I don’t want to imagine the kind of sordid affairs that took place here, let alone what my family has been up to since Dry himself had himself buried in the backyard, but I couldn’t tell you if any of that ‘bad blood’ has anything to do with… this,” she gestured to the room at large, and in fact, the entire house. “I’d like to tell you not to go rooting around through all of the rooms, but given the fact that I couldn’t even tell you how many rooms there ARE, I imagine those words have about as much power behind them as a light bulb in a cornfield. So I’d really just ask that you not break anything that I’d need to spend money repairing, lest I take it out of your paychecks. And who knows, if you find something that helps you do… whatever it is you intend to do, by all means, root around. I don’t have any of my personal possessions in this house, that I’m aware of, so it’s not my dirty laundry you’re sorting through.

“As far as the actual job goes. It occurs to me that perhaps nobody has told you exactly what kind of… phenomena have occurred here, or you wouldn’t be as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as you seem,” she said dryly, looking about her. Indeed, all but Indigo, who was waiting for her cue to leave, and take Raven with her, looked as though the candy store had closed for the night with them inside.

“You’d be surprised,” Rubble replied, with a noted sideways glance to Spooks. The skinny kid was staring at some of the paintings around him, period pieces mostly, with great interest. In fact, with his tweed vest, button down shirt, and black slacks, he looked like he could have stepped right out of any of them.

Raven gave Bones an appraising look, and pressed on, nonplussed. “Like I ways saying. I can’t say I’m any more of an expert in this field than I was two months ago, when I started this horrid venture, so I don’t know what qualifies as ‘standard’ or ‘common’ occurrences.” She had a manner of speaking that leaned on certain words as if she had heard of air quotes and decided her energy was better spent doing anything else. “What I do know is that those who have come and gone since my father’s passing, including the other members of my family, have reported seeing all manner of ghosts, phantom lights, thick fogs, and moving furniture. To be honest, when my cousins first started talking about it, I thought they were merely trying to drive me out of the house. Then my mother, who wouldn’t know a ghost from a grapefruit, started complaining about the same things, and refused to stay in the house.”

“Pardon me,” Twilight interrupted, politely raising her hand.

“Yes?” Inkwell said.

“I was curious, if you have so many living relatives, how did this estate end up in your possession? Didn’t you say you were trying to keep out of your family’s affairs?” Sparkle asked. Spooks and Treble nodded approvingly at this line of questioning. The rest just looked like any kid in class: bored and waiting for the fun part to start.

“I did,” Raven replied with a smile. “Which I think is why my father willed it to me. My parents are no longer married. I won’t go into the details, as it’s none of your business, but my father got the house and the land in the separation, much to the chagrin of the rest of the family. At least, until they came ‘round trying to weasel their way in. Now I’m the only one who wants anything to do with the land, and that’s just so I have a nice quiet house miles away from everyone where people can rightly fuck off,” she finished a little more sternly than she’d liked. Feeling herself getting flustered, and seeing some mixed reactions from her outburst, she took a moment to compose herself. “As you can imagine, having a house full of ghost and monsters and god knows what else makes isolationism very difficult. I’ve tried staying in different rooms of the house. I’ve tried staying on different parts of the land. I’ve had priests, psychics, magicians, paranormal researchers, and a few people with titles I can’t even pronounce traipsing through these halls only to have them turn around and leave at speed at the first opportunity.”

Indigo didn’t bother with the formality of an ‘excuse me’ or a raised hand. “So why the hell did you put all your eggs in this wacko basket?” she sniped, jabbing a thumb at the boys. “I can’t imagine they have any professional experience in ghost-busting or monster hunting.” Before Raven could respond, the boys looked about themselves, and burst out laughing. Even Twilight started to chuckle. “What’s so funny?” Indigo demanded.

Treble was the first to compose himself, and he started ticking off a list on his fingers: “Wargs. zombies, flesh golems, Beasts from the Outer Rings, wraiths, ghouls-”

Rubble cut in, “-Interdimensional teenage magical demon chicks, cultists, poltergeists-”

Then Spooks, “-wights, ladies in white, kappas, redcaps, tommyknockers, cursed items-”

And finally, Dusty, “-at least one vampire, a werewolf, star spawn, byahkee, culling songs, mnemetic demons, real demons, dark young, and if I remember correctly, there was an Alala in Manehatten over the summer when you went off to your cousin’s right, Spooks?”

The wispy kid nodded. “Yeah, but I really just kind of ran away from that one. Last I heard it doesn’t really cause trouble as long as you stay out of that tunnel.”

Raven tilted her head in confusion and concern. “I don’t… I don’t know what most of those even are.”

“Yeah,” Rubble groaned, leaning back in his chair. He rubbed his leg with a free hand. “And up until a year and a half ago, neither did we. Believe me, there’s a lot worse things going on in this city than whatever’s in this house. But it’s not like they put up wanted ads or billboards, so we look for it whenever we can. As far as things that go bump in the night, an actual ghost is about as vanilla as it gets, which is a nice change of pace for us. Go talk to basically anyone that went to this year’s Fall Formal, then trust us when we tell you we’ve seen worse.”

Again, Raven took a moment to compose herself. She got the distinct impression that they weren’t lying, but she prided herself on her professionalism, and wasn’t about to let a long list of very strange words keep her off-kilter. The house had done enough of that thank you very much. Although she did share a pang of sympathy with Indigo, who was staring at the group of boys like they’d all grown extra heads and had started talking through their eyes. “Well, if any of that is true, then I can see why Celestia thought you might be able to help. But let me be clear on one thing: yes, that is a lot of money I’m offering. Yes, I’m desperate. And NO, you don’t get paid unless this house is so free of ghost and goblins that there’s not even a science-fiction book left on the shelves, am I clear?”

“Crystal, Miss Inkwell,” Treble said politely. She still wasn’t sure about that one.

“Fantastic. Now, let me give you the fifty-cent tour, so we can get to the part where I see if you all just wasted my time and gas money.”

The fifty-cent tour involved showing them where the kitchen was, which they were assured was decently stocked, and it wasn’t any of her concern how much they ate, and no she wouldn’t tell you where the wine cellar is thank you and good night. Next was a rather lavish parlor, pool tables and all, and a brief glance at the courtyard in the center of the house. Apparently, the entire structure was a giant square, as Dry Inkwell, even with his penchant for grandiose gestures and lavish displays, had wanted a house even an idiot couldn’t get lost in. Apparently all you had to do to find your way around was walk until you hit a wall, at which point there would assuredly be a staircase, should you be bored or stupid enough to go to the higher floors, after which you simply needed to repeat the process until you found the hallway with the great big fuck-off double doors.

Most of the rest of the house was an assortment of bedrooms, amenities, and show-offy lounges and sitting rooms where one could expect to not be found for many hours, as nobody had any intention of coming to look for you past the first floor. “And now that we’re back at the foyer,” Raven noted, as they walked in front of the aforementioned double doors, “I have some unfortunate news for you.”

The boys looked at each other curiously. “What, the big-ass huanted house isn’t enough?” Dusty quipped.

“Believe me, I wish it was,” Raven drawled. “No. As Treble said earlier, it seems Celestia had told you that I was going to leave as soon as you were well established. For a variety of reasons, not the LEAST my insurance premiums, that is exactly what is NOT going to happen. As much as I’d like to run home and eat ice cream until I physically can’t anymore, I’ve seen at least one horror movie in my lifetime, and as such letting you self-admitted hooligans run rampant through a multi-million dollar estate without at least one chaperone is financial suicide. Not to mention the absolute hell I’d likely catch from your parents.”

Rubble nodded. “Yeah, my mom would probably kill you if I died alone in here.” The rest of the boys nodded.

Indigo looked at Raven as though she were as crazy as the crew she’d brought here. “Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but if you’re staying, lady, I’m out of here!” she stormed off through the open front doors, slamming one behind her as she left. There was a pause, after which she slammed the other one.

“Well, that’s nice,” Spooks said simply. The other boys and Twilight burst out laughing, and even Raven let herself smile a little.

The group moved into the sitting room, chatting as amicably as the situation allowed. They had barely let their rears touch the cushions, however, when they heard Indigo scream from outside. “Oh, goddammit!” Rubble grunted, as his natural reaction to run towards the yelling left him twisted sideways, his brace happily impeding his forward progress and sending him spinning in place until he fell on his side onto the couch.

Dusty looked back, as the other boys had jumped up and run to Indigo’s aid. “Just go,” Rubble grunted, shifting his weight to a seated position. DD gave him as close to a sympathetic look as he could, then joined the rest.

What they found was Indigo on her knees, kneeling next to her van. She wasn’t moving, save for a few gentle shakes of her shoulders. “Um… Indigo?” Twilight asked quietly.

Spooks held up a hand to stall her. “I wouldn’t,” he said quietly, but Twilight ignored him.

She crept up to her friend, and gently laid a hand on her shoulder. “Indigo, are you ok?”

All of a sudden, Indigo wheeled around, throwing her arms around Twilight’s waist. “MY VAN HAS A FLAT TIRE!!!”

Act Four: Lights?

Act Four: Lights?

Indigo stayed on her knees, lamenting the loss of her only mode of transportation. She even went so far as to lean against the bumper of her beloved van, caressing it lovingly. “It’s ok, Brutus. Mama will get you home,” she whined.

Dusty had to hold back a torrent of laughter. “Bru-um… you named it Brutus?” he asked slowly, in very measured tones.

The glare Zap shot over her shoulder answered many a question as to where her last name came from. “It’s a HIM. HIS name is Brutus Maximus!” she barked. Returning her attention to the fading chrome on the back of her now DOA vehicle, she cooed, “Don’t listen to the bad man, baby. Indigo’s got you.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and put a hand on Dusty’s shoulder before he could pursue what could only be a most demeaning line of questioning. “I’d let it go,” Twilight said quietly. “I remember when she hit some loose sheet metal on the highway and gouged her oil pan. It was like a soap opera with only one actor.” She turned her focus to her distraught friend, saying encouragingly, “It’s ok, Indigo. We’ll call a tow truck or something. Maybe there’s some stuff in the garage here that’ll work.”

Raven rolled her eyes. “Good luck with that. I mean, you might be on to something with the garage. Lord knows what the old man stashed in there. But if you want to call somebody, have fun with that. The old man never bothered to establish a landline in the house, so that people had to come to him directly if they wanted something. And good luck with getting a cell signal out here. Why do you think I didn’t tell you have off what we just covered over the phone? I’d have gladly saved you the gas if I thought any of what I just shared was enough to scare you off.”

Treble gave her a reproachful glance. “Why didn’t you just call us from your apartment?”

She shrugged. “Stopped paying rent on it when the will finalized. Why do you think I want this place cleaned so badly? I literally have nowhere else to go. My family’s just as happy to leave me in this hell hole as they are leaving it to rot. I mean, I guess I could have called you on the office phone, but would that really have changed anything? I mean right now, of course.”

Spooks shrugged. “Probably not. Let’s get Rubble out here, see if he can be of any help.” With a curious look from his new employer, he elaborated, “Rubble’s the kind of kid who spends his summer working on his car. Up until recently ago he worked construction for his uncle, who taught him pretty much anything you can teach a teenager about anything with wheels on it. If there’s something in the garage that’ll fit this… van,” he added cautiously, with a warning glare from Indigo, “He’ll find it. Plus I think he’d love the opportunity to be doing something.”

After a moment’s consideration, Inkwell nodded. “If you say so. Somebody go get him. Garage’s out around the right side over here,” she gestured in the general direction, and Dusty nodded, making his way back into the house. “Come on, Miss Zap, I’ll show you where it is.”

_______________

A few minutes later, Indigo had gathered some tools, and with the help of a somewhat reluctant Twilight and a slow-going Spooks and Treble, rolled some spare tires of different sizes out to the front lot. They’d found Rubble waiting for them, standing over the van with a grimace on his face. Indigo, seeing him and his expression, shoved the toolbox into Treble’s arms (who received them with a loud ‘oof’ and a few choice words), and ran up to the corner of the van that was decidedly a few inches lower than the others. “What, what is it?!” she demanded.

Rubble took a step back on his good leg. “Good GOD you’re loud. Sorry to brake it to you, Indy, but a new wheel’s not gonna do you jack-all right now.” With some careful maneuvering he brought himself to a seating position, his crutches on the ground next to him. Twilight gave him a reproachful look, which he pointedly ignored. He pointed to something under the wheel well, which had been made visible by the removal of the flat. With much complaining on Dusty’s part, of course. “See this big metal bar that looks like a bendy straw?”

“Yeeeaaahhh?” Zap said slowly, following his finger to the heavy metal piece with a bend in it.

“Yeah, that’s your axle. It’s supposed to be straight. My guess? When it went flat, which might have happened at any point on the way up here, you kept driving on it, which stressed the bar. Normally it wouldn’t be anywhere near this bad, but given how much weight you were hauling, it probably stressed so much that the metal weakened in one spot, where this bend is,” he explained.

Indigo took all of this about as well as a fatal diagnosis. “But… why didn’t it POP?” she barked the last word, making Rubble flinch. She didn’t notice. “I mean, why didn’t I notice anything on the way down here?”

Rubble gestured for Dusty to help him up, and Indigo assisted. He hopped up to the front right tire, and smacked it with his crutch. “Hear that? Air’s going out of all of them. Should have checked their PSI before you hauled a load like this. Van probably wasn’t made for it, anyway. Just cause it fits don’t mean it sits,” he quipped. Before she could retort, he trodded back to the flat on the ground. “Also, check this here. See this spot right here, a little bit balder than the rest? Press on the tire just a bit. Yeah, like that,” he said, as Indigo followed his instruction. “See that crack? That’s a slow leak. You get the loud pop and flying leather if it hits something big and sharp and explodes all at once. You probably didn’t notice because they’re all slowly losing air. I mean, half of these tired are balder than the bumper. Do you even rotate your tires?”

Indigo looked at him sheepishly. “I mean, I’ve heard people say that, but I don’t know what it means. Don’t they rotate on their own?”

Rubble almost fell of his crutches, so great was the urge to hit her with them. “NO. NO THAT’S NOT WHAT THAT MEANS.” He took a deep breath. “Rotating your tires means moving them one spot to the left, including swapping in your spare. It evens out the stress on all your tires, and gives them a longer shelf life. I bet you don’t even use snow chains or winter tires, do you?”

“Um… I GOT the van in the Winter, does THAT count?” Zap asked hesitantly.

Rubble looked to the sky for guidance. “Somebody better get this little scrublet away from me,” he said firmly, and frog-marched himself back into the house.

Treble raised a hand, having already dropped the tools unceremoniously onto the driveway. “Scuse me?! How are we getting out of here?” he asked loudly.

Raven had been watching the exchange with all the interest of Jane Austin among the apes. “I have transportation arranged for myself tomorrow night. Miss Zap, if you like, you are welcome to stay the night here. I mean, if ghosts and old dusty bedrooms are your thing.”

Indigo shivered. “They’re really, really not.”

Raven sighed. “Then I have no idea what to tell you.”

Twilight also raised a hand, albeit more politely. “Um, I can call someone to come pick her up?”

The group rounded on her with a sense of mob indignation usually reserved for Saturday morning cartoons. “Excuse me?!” Dusty barked. “You have a phone that works out here?!”

Sparkle flinched, with an embarrassed smile. “Um, yes? I mean I’d been hoping not to use it, but I have a sat phone.”

Spooks blinked at her. “Why the hell do you have a satellite phone?”

“Why did I have a necklace that absorbed magic and turned me into a dimension-shattering succubus?” she deadpanned.

“...I don’t have a good response to that. So instead I’ll ask, why, exactly, were you hoping to not use it?” Bones tilted his head to punctuate the question.

Twilight sighed, and threw her hands up. “Because I never got a plan for it, ok?! DO you have any idea how expensive per-minute sat phone calls are?! It’s like five to ten dollars a minute!”

Indigo stomped up to her friend, although she was considering her choice in vernacular about now, and put her face inches from the scientist’s. “Twilight, I like you, but if I hadn’t hauled all your fancy-ass megaton science-y CRAP out here I’d be halfway home by now! So march that bony little ass in the house, get your sat phone, and call for some HELP, or I will spend five to ten dollars a minute rearranging your facial structure,” she growled.

Twilight ‘eeped’ loudly and ran back inside with an urgent, “Yes ma’am!”

Raven took a deep breath, rubbing her temples, and ushered everyone back into the house. “Alright, boys and girls, we might as well get this show on the road. One phone call isn’t exactly going to put us behind schedule any more than we already are.”

“I’m pretty sure ghosts don’t have timetables,” Spooks mused.

“Shut up, Bones,” Treble and Dusty barked.

Indigo tapped her foot against the fine wood flooring impatiently. “And exactly how is any of this getting me closer to a tow truck?!” she demanded, gesturing broadly at the wide array of instruments Twilight had set up.

The nerdy girl poked her head up over one of the larger computer screens. “Well, the sat phone only works if I have it plugged into the main computer, which involves establishing a connection to the house’s electrical wiring. Which also means setting up this adapter here,” she gestured to a rather complex device that looked much like generators cut in half and stuck together by the aft end, “Then running the current through this-”

“OK, OK, forget I asked!” Zap barked, throwing herself into a couch. “Sweet rocket manger baby CHRIST.”

Rubble massaged his temples. “Why don’t you just plug it into the wall?” he asked quietly.

Twilight shook her head. “Wouldn’t work. Plug’s not compatible. This thingy here works as an adapter, and because this draws a lot of power, I have to use a few different outlets, which is why I have all these extension cords, and-”

“NOPE. Nope I’m done asking you questions now. Please let’s move onto something I understand, like all the dead people walking around?” he asked pleadingly, looking to Ms. Inkwell.

Raven had pointedly ignored the admittedly impressive display of technology currently driving her power bills through the roof. On one hand, she was glad to have tuned the power on quite some time ago, on the other, she was lamenting the slight added expense of a landline, which was easily being surpassed by the current amount of gigawatt-hours building up in the background. She thought for a second she could even hear it, then realized that was one of the many machines humming to life. If money had a sound, though, that was surely it. “Yes, please, let’s. Now, I don’t know what kind of… methodology you all have, but I’d at least like to see you at work before mid-afternoon.”

Dusty clapped his hands as Treble leaned over the back of one of the couches. Even Rubble sat forward, eager to do something. Spooks was… Spooks. The only real emotional response he showed was the peaked interest in the rather large heavy-duty trunk Treble dragged around the side of the couch, having lost the fight of dragging it over the back. With much to-do, he unlatched it, and threw it open.

Of all of the things Miss Inkwell had expected, including yet more equipment, magical charms, talismans, ritual items, even a dead animal or two (you only get surprised by that once, honestly), the trunk full of old, ratty books and notes was not near the top of the list. “What… IS all that?”

Spooks accepted a rather large, familiar tome from Dusty, and turned his attention to their employer as he opened it. “It’s all of my grandfather’s works, plus the individual texts we’ve gathered. Our methodology is a strange-yet-effective balance of homework and brute force. You’d be surprised how many ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties respond rather unfavorably to a good punch in the face. Of course, it helps if you know exactly what to punch them WITH, which is where all of this comes from. My grandfather was a rather… intense paranormal investigator, with a tendency to write down everything he saw, fought, or thought about. Unfortunately, his notes are about as well-sorted as they look, which is where all of the reading comes from. THIS book,” he thumped the large tome in his lap, “Is basically the condensed version. If he’s heard of it, it’s in here. Think of it like the index to all of this crap he left behind. We find it in the book, then again in the journals, where there’s a lot more detail. It’s a bit time-consuming, but once we have a few good leads it’s usually faster going from there.

“Ok, Rubble, as much as you absolutely hate this part, I’m keeping you here with me to slog through all of this crap. Look for anything that mentions the Inkwells, or the geographic region we’re in. Here,” he took a small piece of paper out of his vest pocket, and handed it to RM. “I wrote up the GPS coordinates, plus the surrounding landmarks for the region, dating as far back as the local records had them. There’s not much difference from one decade to the next, honestly. This land’s been much the same for quite a while. Although I did find a couple of sites that this land used to be, before Dry bought up the place and turned it into this isolationist paradise.”

Rubble nodded, reluctantly taking a handful of journals and folders and spreading them out on the couch next to them. Dusty and Treble traded glances. “So what are we doing?” Dusty asked.

Spooks considered them carefully, then looked at Raven. “Miss Inkwell, if you don’t mind a teenager telling you what to do, or spending time with… these two-”

“Hey?” Treble sniped. With a look from pretty much everyone else in the room, he conceded. “Ok, yeah.”

“Like I said. If that doesn’t bother you too much, I’d like to ask you to please show them the way to any offices your family may have used, any libraries you have on the premises, pretty much anywhere this family may have had an idea of stashing anything on paper they thought even mildly important. Like you said, it’s not your dirty laundry, anyways,” Bones concluded.

“Now hold on,” Inkwell protested, raising a hand. “I can understand the need for research, even as in-depth as… this,” she indicated the array of paperwork and open books with a hand, “But why would you need to know so much about my family? Yes, I did say you could dig through what you wanted, but I’d at least like to know why you’re so eager to do just that.”

The boys all looked to Spooks as he answered, well-versed in taking a step back when he had something to say. “There aren’t any hard facts when it comes to ghosts. Hell, the fact that there even are ghosts is literally as much solid information as anyone in the field has. Some people like to throw facts and figures around, talk about cold spots and EMF, and sometimes it works. But not always. The few things we do know, the things we can rely on, are history. Ghosts don’t happen without a reason. If there’s something here that takes exception to how things are handled in the here and now, I’d bet whatever I have of value that they didn’t get their happily ever after. The majority of the time it has something to do with the house, the people who owned it, walked in it, breathed and bled in its walls. Houses aren’t just hardwood and decoupage, they’re porous, emotionally saturated things that soak up every good or bad or horrible thing that ever happened here. If one person, just one, died bloody on these floors, you can be as sure as anyone can in this field that it’s enough to turn a hallway into a hellhole. Spirits don’t hang around because they like the trimming, ma’am.”

“Ha-HA!” Twilight exclaimed, much to the surprise of everyone. She looked about at the wide-eyed stares she was getting. “Oh… sorry. I just… I mean the sat phone is working-”

“Oh my GOD give me that if I have to spend another minute in this house with the fuckin’ Addams family I swear to GOD-” Indigo ranted as she charged across the room and yanked the phone out of Twilight’s hand. After a second she gave her friend an apologetic look. “Um… how do I dial out?”

With a roll of her eyes and an amused grin, Twilight hit a few buttons on the console and put the phone back in its cradle. “Here, put it on speaker, the handheld doesn’t work so great. Turns out not everything in my house runs on coffee.”

Indigo gave he a knowing smirk as she dialed home, hoping her parents could send someone to help her on her way. After a few rings, the familiar click of another person on the line resonated through the room. “Hey, dad? Mom? It’s me. Listen, the van-”

A voice like singing through a dying man’s throat echoed over the line. “Seven. Good. Seven’s a good number..”

They all stood up in alarm and backed away from the phone. Even Rubble had managed to hop some distance before Dusty had to prop him up. “No fuckin’ way,” Treble breathed.

The line went dead, then all was silent for a moment. A silence quickly executed by the slamming of doors, the shutting of windows, and every alarm on Twilight’s console going off at once. The lights in the house blared with energy, and any socket without a bulb simply crackled and arced wild currents of strange power. Had they been spread out, they would have seen and heard the same much throughout the house. Indigo shook the shutters on the window nearest her, and they gave not an inch. She ran off to the foyer to try the front door.

Then it all went quiet. “What… what the HELL was that?!” Inkwell demanded.

“FUCK ME!” yelled Indigo, apparently unable to open the double doors.

Dusty shook his head. “That was a grand entrance. Whoever’s crashing your party wants us to know he’s watching. It’s weird though, that sounded...”

“Amused,” Spooks said solemnly. “Like he was laughing while he talked, yeah. And that’s not the worst part.”

“Not the worst part?!” Indigo demanded, storming back into the room. “We just got locked in a haunted-ass house with some supernatural entity that gave everything electrical in this building a fucking aneurysm. HOW IS THAT NOT THE WORST PART?!”

Rubble gave a sideways smile at Twilight’s machinery. The scientist was going mad trying to determine the damage, and if possible, the source of the phenomena. He shook his head, and said in excited tones, “It’s happy to see us.”

Act Six: Scripture

Act Six: Scripture

The legacy of Buried Bones is both erratic and terrifying. Born to the owner of a coffin-maker in the early twentieth century, he lived most of his childhood and teenage years much like anyone else would at the time. He went to school, he helped his father with his work, and he even made time for friends. Not an unattractive boy, he had an active social life, popular with some, not with others. Until the day in his senior year when, sent to the mortuary by his father to gather some measurements for a local whose family had shown little interest in the funeral proceedings, walked into a room full of dead people.

Then one of them sat up and talked to him. The conversation lasted exactly one hundred and twenty-nine seconds, during which Buried informed the deceased that he actually was, in fact, dead, and the harvest had been good this year. With that, the man’s corpse said, “Oh good. I was hoping to get a nice pumpkin,” immediately lay down and rest for eternity. Buried knew the time because, in his inability to look away from the talking corpse, also had a decent view of the clock on the wall. After some simple math, then a brief self-examination to ensure he had not hit his head on the way in and hallucinated the entire thing, immediately ran screaming out of the room.

He made it two blocks before he remembered nothing was chasing him. After explaining to a passerby that he thought he’d seen a coyote in the nearby graveyard, and apologizing for his composure, he took several deep breaths, returned to the morgue to take the measurements, then ran back to his father at speed. Bone Rattle’s exact words, upon hearing his son’s fantastical tale of necromantic jaw-flapping, were “It’s about time he realized something was wrong. If he asked me about Grape Vine’s harvest one more time I was going to kill him again.”

At that point Buried Bones realized his family had indeed had a long and colorful history of dealing with the strange and unnatural in very weird ways. His father took up coffin-making because he was the only person in town who knew how to make coffins that kept their corpses in one place without requiring special orders of military-grade steel.

They did make one like that, anyway, but only because the man’s will included having his coffin thrown over the side of the Grand Canyon in the thing, and he didn’t want to scare some poor burro-riding schmuck by popping out of the box too early. He was a very considerate, if flamboyant, client. Especially after he died.

Buried Bones found that he, in particular, had a special disposition that only a few others in the Bones family had inherited: he was an absolute super magnet for the freaky and monstrous. Of course the zombie was his first, but once that particular cork was popped, his cup runneth over. The last few weeks of his senior year were rather stressful, although the timing was better than it could have been. He graduated salutatorian (the last month of zombie-talking had affected his finals), and received a generous scholarship to a college that he made sure was built rather far away from any and all graveyards in the county.

This college, unfortunately, seemed to be a front for an ancient pagan cult who were training their students to spread the word of their false god throughout the business world so they could siphon the country’s finances into an expedition to raise his sunken cairn from underneath a mountain. Buried Bones had successfully transferred to a slightly less prestigious university. As it happened, the cult had been unearthed and their college rendered defunct within the month. Bones did have his pride, after all.

After graduating with a six-year degree in World Religions with Special Focus in Demonology, Buried decided to travel the country, both in learning more about the world he’d had revealed to him over the last several years, and in an attempt to find the one place in the country where the only things that could talk were the humans and nothing teleported into his kitchen sink at dinnertime. He’d made a note to never, ever adopt a blink dog again.

Unfortunately, the Bones family had a particular talent for attracting trouble where there was previously none. Which is why, for a time, Canterlot became somewhat of a hotspot for the strange and unnerving. This didn’t stop Bones from finding a beautiful girl, falling in love, and starting a family. Of course, his bride-to-be had been a vampire hunter from Trottingham who had mistaken his genetically-inherited diminishing appearance for the gaunt expression of the undead.

They were married in a church, for obvious reasons.

The rest of his life was spent in Canterlot, where he made a valiant attempt at being a teacher at he local university, teaching history to anyone who could stay awake through his talking, which was just enough that the board of directors paid little attention to him right up to the day he died. In fact, upon hearing about his death from his wife and child, the Headmaster had little more to say than “I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up tomorrow anyway. Looking exactly the same.”

As part of his last will and testament, and a favor to his son, he had asked for all of his notes, writings, and research to be consolidated into one location for his family to use for the rest of its generations. Which is one of the only reasons Spooky’s mother didn’t burn and toss the lot. That and she’d never seen her son cry before or since. Of course, given the wild and unpredictable nature of Buried’s lifestyle, despite his decision to spend his whole life in one city, and the slow degeneration of his brain cells due to a long life of horrid visions and disturbing occurrences, plus the occasional scotch to forget the worst of it, had left the latest and most informed of his work scattered to the proverbial wind. Even after picking up every last scrap of paper he’d ever written on into one room, it was still an ocean of madness and bad handwriting.

Until now. Until Dust Devil stomped into the sitting room of Inkwell Manor, carrying the largest, densest book they’d ever seen, and dropped it into Spooky Bones’ lap with much to do.

At first, Bones had little to no reaction, as the book had been dropped upside down. With an inquisitive glance at his friend, who simply stared angrily at him, unmoving, he turned it over. It was a testament to the gravity of the situation that, even for him, he noticeably paled. Then grew a very uncharacteristic shade of red.

Indigo and Inkwell followed Treble, carrying the bag, into the room just as Spooks started talking. Immediately followed by Treble leaving the bag on the floor and walking out of the room.

“That crazy-ass cunt-punching cocksocket! I swear to fucking CHRIST I will dig his ass out of the GROUND and USE HIS RIBS TO CARVE HIS GHOST A NEW ASSHOLE! MotherFUCKER!” Bones spat. There was much more after that, but it fell into the background as Spooks stormed out of the sitting room and into the foyer, wherein Treble immediately returned to the sitting room, and sat in a rather comfortable chair far from the entrance.

Dusty’s angered expression had been wiped clean, replaced by one of shock and awe. One that he shared with the majority of people in the room. Rubble’s eyebrows had disappeared so thoroughly into his hairline that they looked burned off. Twilight had hidden behind her largest machine and was closing her ears tightly, and Miss Inkwell, still within earshot of the rampaging teenager, had turned a stunning shade of vermilion that would have made an artist beam with inspiration. Indigo had merely quirked an eyebrow and watched him storm off, then returned her attention to the room, where the various stages of shock caught her attention. “I… take it he doesn’t usually talk that way?”

She didn’t get a response right away. There were a few beats of silence before Dusty Devil said, in a tone much like awe, “I didn’t know he knew how to USE most of those words. I mean, he’s dropped the f-bomb before, but that was...”

“So… does someone want to explain why this book is such a big deal?” Indigo asked, picking up the enormous tome from the ground, where it had since fallen to the wayside of Bones’ tirade.

Rubble gestured to her, and Indigo handed over the book. He took one look at it, and glared darkly. “You’re fucking kidding me.” Turning his attention to Dusty, he asked, “Is this piece of shit for real?”

Dusty nodded. “Raven gave it a once-over, and it looks legit. There’s a few notes in it that match the old man’s writing. I mean, we’ve all poured over it enough. I haven’t had a chance to give it a thorough read, obviously, but given the prodigy’s reaction, I imagine he believes as much as I do that it’s genuine.”

“That WHAT’S genuine?!” Indigo barked.

Treble strolled back over to the group, and looked over Rubble and Indigo’s shoulders. “That book, the Encyclopedia Unnatura, is by all appearances a complete and organized collection of all of Spooky Bones’ grandfather’s work. His notes, his writings, his research.”

“And?” Indigo pressed.

Treble gestured to the trunk full of texts, the scattered journals, and the second to largest tome in the room. “Seventy-five percent of what you see there? That’s all in this one book. We have been using this… cesspool of scattered knowledge and flying by the seat of our pants for months, MONTHS, and less than ten miles away there was a single freaking text with every answer we had to find of our own volition and sweat and blood.” His temper was starting to rise, now. “I don’t know what ties this family has to the Bones, but it’s enough to keep one of the most important and comprehensive sources of supernatural knowledge we’ve ever heard of gathering dust on a shelf while people bleed in the streets because we couldn’t find an answer fast enough.”

Raven took a few wide strides across the room, and laid a comforting hand on Treble’s shoulder. “Look, as much as I wish I knew what was going on here, both with your friends and in this house, I DO know that there are answers. And none of us are going to find any of them by throwing bitch-fits and staring at unopened books. If this… Encyclopedia has the information you say it does, then it’s our best starting point for digging out whatever skeletons my family left in the closets to rot. So, as your elder, I offer my condolences, but as your employer, GET TO WORK.”

The group nodded in somewhat unison, as Indigo got up to coax Twilight out of her hiding spot, and Dusty fetched a slowly quieting Spooky out of the foyer. A few soothing words and stern employer-to-employee lectures alter, everyone had a book in front of them. Spooks, of course, was pouring over his grandfather’s work with an almost unnatural scowl, growling audibly at anyone who disturbed him. Treble had taken over reading the old master text, trying to find some reference to the family. Twilight had recruited Miss Inkwell and Indigo to manage the computers, explaining the functions of some of the more common devices, and the simpler ones she had invented herself, tasking them with divvying up the portable pieces among those present, so they could gather readings when they went back out to investigate.

Dusty and Rubble had retreated to a corner of the room with a stack of texts Buried Bones hadn’t had a hand in writing, mostly as an excuse to stay away from the angry little wraith in the high-back chair in the middle of the room. Someone had offered to move the chair to a more comfortable, ergonomic location, and he had tried to swing the book at them.

“Well,” Twilight said, after some uncomfortable silence. A few faces turned to look at her. “If it helps, I have some readings from the rest of the house, and from the… contact earlier.” A few more faces. The only one not looking at her, even side-eyed, was Spooks. “It seems that, while the doors and windows aren’t going anywhere, they are giving off interesting energy. Now, there’s a common belief that drastic temperature drops in supposedly haunted locations, also known as cold spots, are actually the local spirit or force drawing energy from the environment to manifest.”

A couple of the guys nodded, while Raven looked on with genuine interest. Indigo had checked out halfway through. “Yeah,” Treble replied. “That’s… ok, not common knowledge, but we’ve heard that theory a few times. What about it?”

“The doors and windows, like I said, are giving off an energy signature,” Sparkle continued. “Must be whatever the… entity is using to hold them closed. Now, that energy has to come from somewhere, so I decided to check the temperatures as far as my instruments can reach. And it seems that there are a few cold spots in the house, places where the building is drawing power, it seems.”

“Ok, now you have my attention,” Rubble said. “Are you saying we have like, actual targets?”

“Kind of. It’s not like they’re tiny little spots that you can just pick up and move around. One of them is the middle third of the courtyard. One of them is a large portion of the library, close to the door on the left side,” Twilight explained.

“And the third?” Treble asked.

Twilight pointed a finger at the center of the room. “Right there.”

Of course, the center of the room was where Spooks was sitting, seething in literary rage. After a few moment’s silence, he bothered to look up, seeing the majority of the others staring right at him. “Ok, what?”

Dusty walked into his line of sight. “You, out of the chair. Put the book down, walk around.”

“Why?” Spooks growled.

“Because apparently the ghost thinks you’re in his spot,” DD answered.

Rolling his eyes, Bones slammed the book closed, picked it up with a grunt of effort, and stomped over to another couch, near the window. Not waiting for an OK, he sat down and went right back to reading.

“...and?” Dusty asked Twilight, turning to look at her.

“Still cold. It’s not him. And it’s… kind of in the floor. I think there’s another room underneath this one. And whatever it is seems to be important to whatever wants to keep us around,” Sparkle added, punctuating her sentence with a flourish of keystrokes. “Yeah, there’s a hollow space underneath the floor. Although the blueprints don’t show anything.”

Raven quirked an eyebrow. “You have the house’s blueprints?”

Twilight smiled. “I have a lot more than that. Miss Spring Break ‘05.”

Raven Inkwell seemed to be a master of that particular shade of vermilion.

Author's Note

I have a Patreon. Wink wink nudge nudge.

Act Seven: Enter Stage Left

Act Seven: Enter Stage Left

The avid horror movie viewer will tell you that there are certain tropes that they would never play into should they find themselves in the same scenario as the victims in their favorite movies. Everyone who watches such films likes to think that they are smarter than the average bear, and certainly smarter than the average teenager with an ax growing out of the back of their head. Of course, given that specific scenario, it’s rather difficult not to be, yet somehow people find a way.

The most common, the one people constantly yell at the screen for, is splitting up, even into groups. Unfortunately, this is a double-edged sword. There are, of course, many flaws in this plan, but staying together all at once creates its own unique set of problems. When one doesn’t truly understand the nature of the threat, it might make the victims little more than a conveniently packaged meal to stay in the same room. Splitting up requires the malevolent force to split its attentions, divide its energy, and as far as screen time goes, gives the others more time to survive as the writers have to explain in some fashion how the killer traveled from one end of the map to the other, granting the next victim precious few seconds of screen time.

Of course, one could argue that a ghost could easily be in multiple places at once, with a wide reserve of energy to draw from, whose attention is not a limited resource which can be easily manipulated. On the other hand, one could also argue that putting a bunch of people in a box with a ghost about actually makes things easier for the entity to disperse of its problems, with, say, a well-timed and unfortunate explosion. Truly, finding a balance between safety and efficiency is a dangerous rope upon which to walk, and so it’s rather difficult to say for certain what one would do in such a scenario, having never done so before.

Fortunately for those present, there happened to be a well-experienced group of almost professional survivors who had made that decision quite a few times before. “Alright, you guys,” Treble said finally, after a rather awkward moment in which Raven demanded that Twilight never share the details of her Spring Break to another soul, “As much as I like the idea of sitting in this comfy chair until the sun comes up, hoping the ghost forgets that we’re here, the sad truth is the longer it goes without doing anything the more energy it has for the next big ‘event.’ Now, I imagine nobody here is going to pry Spooks out of his chair with anything less than the gravestone of his own grandfather as a lever,” a statement that earned a rather scowl-y eyebrow from the skinny boy, who didn’t actually have a rebuttal, “And Twilight, I doubt anyone here but you knows what half of that stuff even does. So, you two are staying here. Good so far?”

A noncommittal grunt from Bones and a nod from Twilight encouraged him to keep talking. “Right, Miss Inkwell, I believe, if you don’t mind, that you’re still our best bet for finding our way around this rather well-furnished death trap. Would you mind?” he asked.

Raven gave a small nod, still a little flustered from her… conversation with Twilight a moment ago. “That’s fine. I could use the… walk.”

Twilight smiled sheepishly, busying herself with something on a screen pointed away from the homeowner. Treble pressed on, “Right. Dusty, if you please, could you stay here and keep an eye on these two? They might need some decent muscle,” Dusty opened his mouth to protest, to which Treble already had an answer “-and I’d like you to put down some wards in this room, as I get the distinct impression we’re to be using this as our base of operations for the time being.”

DD tapped his foot impatiently, but conceded the point. “Gives me something to do, at least. Sure, fine,” he grumbled, though not too gruffly."

Rubble gave DT a stern glare. “And what am I going to be doing, pray tell?”

“Whatever you want,” Treble shrugged. “As much as neither of us like it, you’re not exactly our heavy hitter anymore, unless your opponent stands still. You could come with us, but there’s a distinct possibility you could slow us down if we run into something that requires a tactical advance in the other direction.”

Rubble swore under his breath. “Well, what use am I going to be here? We haven’t found much of anything about this house in any of Old Man Bones’ notes, at least not the… unabridged version.” He took the lack of response from the younger Bones to mean he hadn’t found anything, either. “I’d basically just be sitting on my haunches for however long you’re gone.”

This time Twilight had something to offer. “Actually, I could use your help. Most of this stuff can actually run on its own, now that I’ve got the settings right, but I only have one set of eyes. If you don’t mind playing security guard for a while, you could help me keep an eye out.”

Treble smiled encouragingly at RM, who rolled his eyes dramatically. “Oh goody, more sitting. Sure, let’s do that.” Seeing the crestfallen look on Twilight’s face, he added, “...thanks.”

“Um, ‘scuse me?” Indigo asked. “What the hell am I supposed to do? I’m not exactly trained in Ghostbusting, you know.”

Raven rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Well, you’re welcome to come with us. If I understand correctly, you’re the athletic type, right?” Indigo nodded. “Well, as much as I’d like to think of myself in the shippest of shapes, I’m loathe to admit I won’t be much use in any physical endeavors.”

“Yeah, and the only thing athletic about Treble is his Olympic Speed Dating record,” Dusty cracked.

There was a healthy, much-needed dose of laughter at that, as Treble simply stood around patiently waiting for his turn to talk. Once there was little enough noise to be heard over, he addressed Indigo. “Right. With Dusty doing wards and Rubble glaring computer screens into submission, you’re the closest thing we have to muscle, and I’d really rather not take an evening stroll through the Spirit Realm without someone to through in front of me.”

“Oh gee, thanks,” Zap deadpanned. She stood up anyway, only to be stopped by Dusty.

“You’re going to need some… gear,” he said with an amused grin. Rifling through the almost-empty trunk, he pulled out a couple of smaller bags. With one last look in the big metal crate, he took a mental inventory of the medical supplies they’d stored in it, the emergency food and water, and a couple of books with metal locks on them. He suppressed a shudder at the thought of their contents. He lifted a bag in each hand, and shook them both. One rattled loudly, making a metallic racket, which he tossed on the seat he’d just vacated. “That one’s mine. Here,” he said, handing Indigo the other.

She buckled slightly at the weight. “What’s IN this thing?”

“That the weapons bag?” Rubble asked, fumbling about as he tried to get a grip on his seat behind the computers.

“Yeah-huh,” Dusty confirmed.

“Then to answer your question,” Rubble continued, “There’s two sets of silver knuckles, a couple of fir stakes, some holy water, an overpacked phosphorous grenade -yes I had a spare-, the Good Book, a silver knife, a vial of mercury, a metal mirror, a hatchet, two stun guns, and a flashlight that makes a good heavy weapon in a pinch.”

Indigo’s eyes grew wide as she held the bag at distance from herself. Treble scoffed and took the bag, slinging it over his shoulder. “Thanks. Want me to leave any of it with you?”

“The mercury,” Spooks piped up.

The boys all looked at him curiously. “You know something we don’t?” Dusty asked. Bones looked up from his book with a smarmy expression. “Right, stupid question. Treble?”

The long-haired kid nodded and fished around for a small metal tube, with a smaller vial in it. Tossing the container to Bones, who caught it with a practiced arm, he asked, “Anything else?”

“I could use some coffee,” Bones quipped.

“One or two fingers?” Treble asked.

“Two’s good.”

Treble nodded and flipped him off with both hands.

Raven led the way down a separate hallway, which she assured her companions was the best way to get to the courtyard. Twilight had asked them to stop there first, as it seemed to be the coldest spot in the house. She pointedly ignored the argument from Rubble that it was possible the extra drop in temperature was due to it being outside in fall. Thus, she’d sent them on their way with a few handheld devices.

Her definition of handheld, however, left something to be desired, especially by Indigo Zap, who had ended up saddled with an even heavier bag than the one Treble had taken from her. “Through here,” Raven ordered, directing the teenagers through a side hallway bathed in moonlight. The walls on one side were, in fact, broad windows that looked out into the courtyard itself.

The inner courtyard of Inkwell Manor was just as much for show as the rest of the building. Impressively wide, it came with winding stone paths that weaved in and out of what were once well-maintained shrubberies and beautiful flower gardens, which had started to overgrow their pots and planters, and lose their well-manicured shape to the last couple month’s untended growth. Large marble statues adorned the more open spaces, and had started to show signs of frost and wildlife. Mainly the droppings of passing birds who had about as much respect for modern art as they did life on Mars.

All in all you could easily fit someone else’s house in the space, and it appeared that soeone had, to some degree. There was, in fact, a gardener’s shed. The previous occupants of the mansion might have considered it small, others would call it a one-bedroom house. From the windows in the hall they group could see respectably large windows that, were there more light to see by, would possibly have given them a full view of a living room or kitchen. As it was, the window panes were almost black, at least the ones facing them. They were in the direct path of the moonlight, and so that entire face of the small gardener’s ‘shed’ was all but obscured in the shadows.

They walked only a few more feet before coming to a large glass door, which opened to a wide stone path that led directly to the shed. “That’s the groundskeeper’s house. Or was. Hasn’t been a keeper here for a couple of years. My grandfather decided that it was cheaper to hire a service for the major work and do the small gardening himself. Of course, it helped that nobody bothered him while he was out here by himself, and even in an isolated house like this there was always someone knocking. You’re welcome to look inside, although I doubt you’ll find more than a few leftover tools and a poorly cleaned out fridge.”

Treble, determined to look as unimpressed with the surroundings as possible, marched down the stone walkway with long, confident strides, coming to the small front door of the house within a house. Setting his bag on the ground (after pocketing a choice item or two), he knocked evenly on the door. “Hello? Anyone home? I’d hate to think I’m interrupting someone’s busy Saturday evening!” he called.

Indigo roller her eyes at his back. “What’s with this kid?” she asked Raven, who merely shrugged. “Look, dude, just go in!” she called.

“Spoilsport,” Treble mumbled, testing the doorknob and finding it unlocked. He threw the door open recklessly, keeping his position on the front porch. When nothing jumped out o he dark to eat his neck, he pulled the flashlight out of the bag and peeked into the house. His flashlight found little more than the bare floors and walls, however, of an empty room gathering dust and other unpleasant things. Judging by the scurrying forms running from the cone of light, he guessed rats. “Blech. Nasty little things,” he murdered to himself. Finding little in the way of resistance or malicious ne’er-do-wells, he walked into the house like he owned it.

Until his flashlight flund upwards. At first, it was just for a second, but something caught his attention. He stopped in his tracks, something Indigo and Raven only noticed when they saw his beam of light stop moving. “What’s up?” Indigo asked, taking her time coming into the room behind him.

He shook his flashlight uncertainly. “That,” he breathed, not taking his gaze away from the ceiling.

Indigo looked up, quickly covering her mouth, her eyes noticeably wide even in the pitch of the room. Raven’s expression was much the same as she joined them a second after. “What the… HELL is that?!” Inkwell demanded.

Treble’s eyes darted back and forth, taking in the ceiling, across which lay a great, dark sigil, intricate in design and massive in scope, such that the very edges reached the barest edges of the ceiling. Carefully measured, and almost impossible to decipher on the spot, Treble didn’t have a straight answer, beyond, “Very bad news.”

“What’s bad news?” Dusty grunted, as his knees protested his poor posture in crouching to the ground so he could mark the baseboards.

Spooks flipped a page back and forth, double checking his new source. “Well, if my grandfather’s… book is anything to go by,” he said, biting back a slightly more scathing description, “There’s a reason we haven’t found jack-all in his other notes about the Inkwell family.”

“What’s that?” Twilight asked, the subject of history and conspiracies piquing her interest.

Spooks cleared his throat. “It says here, and I quote, ‘As a family well-versed in unearthing the secrets of others, the Inkwells have learned far and wide the best places to hide their own. Some in plain sight. Others under years of mixed truths and lies. Still more lay compressed under the foundations of their own labors and hard work. Yet the greatest, darkest secrets, to which I wish I had never been privy, lay anchored by stone at the bottom of a lake of blood. Pray you never find them, for you may join them..’”

“...well, fuck,” Rubble grunted.

Act Eight: No Flash Photography

Act Eight: No Flash Photography

Sigil magic is one of the most widely-known, and poorly executed, arcane practices in the world. There’s no guarantee that what you’re drawing is going to do exactly what you want, and altering a sigil, even on accident, is all too easy. Wards, spells, glyphs, all depend on accuracy, detail, and knowledge. Even the simple wards can be rendered completely ineffective by running water or one line where there should be two.

To craft a detailed, massive, and intricate design takes patience and confidence. Some forms of warding magic are so particular that not only will making the smallest mistake render the ward ineffective, it may actually change the entire function of the spell. This is why most sigils are done on the floor, where it is easiest to ensure space, correct mistakes, and all but guarantee efficiency. Walls are valid, too, if you don’t mind crouching on your knees for the annoyingly detailed parts most spellmakers like to put at the bottom.

Many symbols and glyphs are also dependent on what material is used to draw them. Chalk seems to be a universal constant, if not one hundred percent reliable. One of the theories behind its usefulness is the basic fact that you are drawing with what equates to raw earth. Elemental materials are distinctly effective, and earthen ones invoke a sense of stability, permanency, and make a great medium for mental and magical energies. Hence the widespread use of crystals as foci. Of course, this all falls apart when you introduce Equestrian magic, but such combinations are exceedingly rare.

There is one medium that is considered by many to be a guaranteed success when drawing sigils. Blood, being a combination of all five elements, is one of the most potent material components in any kind of spellwork. It’s capacity to carry oxygen grants it similar magical properties to air, its connection to water is obvious, and the various minerals and metals in the human body are viable mediums for earth magic. While there is some dispute as to whether life is in fact the fifth element, it is a powerful source of magic, especially when willingly given. Blood is a symbolic lifeforce in spellcasting, which is an art and science that relies heavily on symbolism.

Those of you who may wonder where the element of fire comes from, well. There’s a reason we say fire in our veins. Human emotion, especially pain and anger (which comes in copious amounts when you’re bleeding profusely), shares many spiritual properties with that of a roaring flame. Although some spellcasters like to light the whole thing ablaze just to be sure, which has received mixed reviews as to its efficacy.

Considering all of these factors, a large, well-drawn, highly detailed sigil done entirely in blood, and undisturbed for a long period of time, is a very dangerous thing. Sigils, glyphs, and wards are meant for continuous magic, creating a constant effect in a localized area. Think of it like leaving your motor running if your car ran on fission energy. Eventually, something is probably going to explode.

“That is a lot of blood,” Treble groaned, eying the massive drawing with a mixed sense of curiosity and appall. “It must be old, too, if we couldn’t smell it coming in. Hell, I still can’t smell it. Usually the smell of blood lingers for years. It’s the copper. Kind of like that weird taste in the back of your mouth when you walk into a factory or a boiler room.”

“That’s all well and good,” Raven said with more than a drop of condescension, “But WHAT THE HELL IS IT?!”

Not taking his eyes from the ceiling, Treble shrugged. “No idea. I only recognize a couple of the smaller symbols. You see there and there, where the larger circle has smaller circles in it? The small symbols in those are like links in a chain. Or better yet, more like extra spices in the recipe. It’s additional effects to whatever the core function is. Hold on,” he added, taking out his phone. He snapped several pictures, getting as much of the cryptogram as he could, doing his damnedest not to miss an inch. After he was done he sent the lot of them to Spooky, grumbling under his breath as the poor reception forced him to use the much less efficient file transfer their push-to-talk function offered. “Hopefully our resident freakyologist has an idea what this mess is supposed to do. It might take a while to get a response, so we might as well keep looking around. At least there’s good news,” he added with a hopeful smile.

Indigo, who up until that point had been doing her best not to revisit her lunch, groaned an incoherent sentence. She was deeply regretting the extra pepper flakes on her tacos. She tried again, with more luck, “Good news? What’s that?”

“If this sigil was put here as a trap, it would have gone off by now. Either it’s done its job, or it’s still doing it. Either way us finding it doesn’t seem to affect it. Miss Inkwell, is there a basement to this little house?” Treble asked, in an effort to distract his superior from the dried blood above their heads.

She stared for a second longer, then seemed to snap out of it like a trance. “Well, yes and no. There’s a basement under the entire house. It’s all one solid structure. But there is an entrance to the basement from this house.”

Treble felt an eye twitch. “I swear to god if someone uses the word catacombs I’m going to go out to the courtyard, climb up to the roof, and sleep there till this mess is over.”

Inkwell smiled sheepishly. “Well, they’re not catacombs in the classical definition of the word. Just a large underground labyrinthine structure that extends several meters in every direction past the walls of the house.”

Whatever contest Indigo was having with her gag reflex, she seemed to be winning. “And why the hell did you not mention this before?! Is there a way out through the basement?!”

Raven shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. It’s basically a giant secret passage to get to other areas of the house. Remember, this estate is rather old, and dates back to a time when the ‘help’ wasn’t supposed to be seen doing there jobs. They’d scurry through the basement from one task to the next to give the house the illusion that the place basically cleaned itself.”

“What, they didn’t build false walls and secret passages upstairs for that?” Treble asked.

“No. That wasn’t Dry’s style. He wanted good, solid construction through and through. No fake walls you could crash through on accident, and nothing the rats could hide in. Although that doesn’t keep them out of the house entirely, it seems,” Inkwell drawled, as a squeak or two disrupted the otherwise quiet room.

Indigo stomped on the floor. “Well, if he wanted it good and solid, why’s there a big-ass empty room beneath this one?”

“Probably because the entire basement is lined with concrete or something like it, right?” Treble volunteered.

“That’s right,” Raven agreed, with a nod of her head. “Originally it was just to act as support for the rest of the house, but with the Cold War and the immigrant scares over the last century or so, the other, less savory members of the family have reinforced it into what equates to a fallout shelter. I’m entirely confident that if the house itself were to implode or collapse the only way anyone underground would know is that the power went out. For a few seconds, and then the generators would kick on. Remember, my family isn’t exactly small. Even the less savory branch members were considered important enough to the history of the Inkwell name that the main family made sure there was enough room underground for the lot of them. It’s basically an entirely different house down there.”

Treble kneaded his temples, not looking forward to what he was going to say next. “Alright. As much as I absolutely HATE the idea, we’re going to have to search that basement. Whatever cold spot Twilight detected under the sitting room is most likely in this underground structure, and if it’s large enough to be detected above ground, it’s massive. Which means we should most likely deal with whatever’s causing IT first.”

Indigo looked around sadly. “I could be home right now, watching Netflix.”

Spooks, having calmed down considerably, had moved the new book on to the table in the middle of the room, as the rest of Buried’s journals and notes were shoved unceremoniously into the trunk. A few other texts sat out, but they, too, had been set aside to allow the group to gather around the tome. Bones tapped his fingers on the desk as he poured over a section, while the rest waited on him to say… something.

“Ok,” he said after a minute. “Ok, I think I have an idea of what might be going on here.”

Dusty gave him a look of disbelief. “How much of an idea?”

“Like… three-fifths of one. Maybe. Half. Half is good,” Spooks offered. “Look, this whole section that talks about the Inkwells doesn’t actually talk about them. It’s all generalities and vague descriptions. Most likely because, and I should have noticed this sooner, of the publisher.” He dog-eared the section he was on, and flipped the book back to the front two pages.

Rubble read the legal script upside down. “Copyright Buried Bones, Published by… oh, fuck me. Inkwell Publishing?! THAT’S why they have this book?!”

Dusty groaned. “That explains a lot.”

“What do you mean?” Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow at Double D.

“Think about it,” DD drawled. “Who in their right mind would actually publish any of the crazy-ass old man’s bullshit? Nobody. Absolutely no one. All of the stuff we have is hand-written, but this is basically an official text. And a huge company, a huge family wouldn’t touch a loony-tunes family like the Bones unless they had to.”

Spooky leaned back in his chair. “So that’s it. Grandpa had some dirt on them. That’s why he wrote about their family secrets. That explains why there’s only one copy of the book, at least that we’ve found. They probably retracted every other copy and maybe even destroyed them when they found out that there was even a single sentence in here that made them look like anything less than benevolent philanthropists. Whatever he knew, it was enough to convince them to publish the book in the first place, but once they did, I bet they shoveled so much legal crap on him that he had no choice but to let them do what they wanted with the printed copies. I’d bet even THIS copy wouldn’t exist if not for family pride.”

“Well, there’s some good news, then, isn’t it?” Twilight offered hopefully. When Spooks gave her a curious look, she explained, “Well, he probably couldn’t tell you about it, could he? Not with an army of lawyers breathing down his neck. You’d probably come knocking, demanding a copy, and they wouldn’t let you get five steps past the door if you read it, just to hide the fact that they had something to hide. I don’t think he kept this a secret from you because he wanted to, Spooky.”

Bones’ diminished presence seemed to inflate, ever so slightly, with her hopeful words. “Yeah, maybe. Right, I said I had an idea, didn’t I?”

Rubble nodded. “Yes, and we’re all aflutter waiting to hear it,” he chided.

Flipping the book back to his marked page, Bones pointed out a few more lines. “Look, this part talks about this… great secret they had, or whatever, right? No matter how big or small it is, it has to make them look bad, or they wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to bury it. But there’s another part, back here,” he shuffled the pages until he found another dog-eared page, “That talks about secrets in general. Namely, secret magic. Now, there’s a whole bunch of magic designed to hide things and keep stuff out of sight and out of mind. There’s an entire school of magic dedicated to it, in fact.”

“There is?” Twilight asked brightly, the student in her rearing it’s excitable head.

“Yeah, it’s called Obfuscation,” Dusty answered. “I use some of it in the warding I do for the hideout. It’s the kind of magic that hides stuff in plain sight. Like the ‘nothing to see here, move along’ kind of stuff.”

“Exactly,” Spooky chimed in. “But there’s another kind of ‘secret’ magic. The kind designed to lock stuff IN. Most Obfuscation magic is like the padlock on a treasure chest. Your run of the mill ‘keep out’ kind of thing. But there’s a sub-school to it that’s just the reverse. Instead of keeping people OUT, it keeps something IN. This part right here? It talks about secrets in blood. Blood magic is nasty, powerful stuff. Really potent, really hard to do, really dangerous if you get it wrong.”

“Do you want ghosts?” Dusty chuckled. “Because that’s how you get ghosts.”

“For lack of a more eloquent explanation, yes,” Bones deadpanned, rolling his eyes. “Blood magic gone wrong can dredge up all kinds of negative energy. Like an Ouija board for the living, you never know what’s gonna pop up. Also, don’t use Ouija boards. Bad. Anyway, if I’m reading between the lines correctly here, which I like to think I AM, he’s basically telling us that whatever’s here is a secret being held in place, not hidden from the rest of the world. Which may explain why the grandfather’s passing triggered the hauntings.”

Seeing Twilight about to ask more questions, Rubble preempted, “Blood magic works a few different ways. The most effective, especially for long-term spells, is to use blood that’s willingly given from someone who’s still alive. And if they hang around the place the spell is cast, they act like the lock on the door. The blood in their veins keeps the spell strong.”

“Which means that whatever’s here no longer has a guard dog,” Spooks lamented. Then his phone went off. Then again. After a few more chimes, he finally fished it out, and scrolled through the array of messages he’d received. His eyes widened, and he scrolled faster. “Twilight? Please god tell me that you have a printer in all that crap.”

Slightly incensed, Sparkle said, “Of course I do! And it’s not crap, it’s-”

“Great, do you have a micro-USB cable?” Spooks interrupted.

“Well yes, but-”

“Good. Get it out. I need to print this stuff,” he pressed on, scurrying over to her computer banks.

Rubble gave him a worried look as they went about hooking up the phone to the computer and printing off the large number of files. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Treble,” Spooks answered. “He sent me a bunch of pictures of this… glyph he found. It’s MASSIVE. I mean an entire living room ceiling massive.”

Dusty whistled appreciatively. “Wow, they must really want it to work. When you draw a glyph,” he added, seeing Twilight ready to ask more questions, “Detail is really important. The larger you make it, the easier it is to get the smaller details right. Like high resolution.”

She nodded, seemingly in understanding, as Spooks tapped his foot impatiently waiting for the last few pictures to print. A few frustrating minutes later, he scooped up the lot and gestured for them all to follow him into the foyer. Rubble groaned, as Twilight helped him up, and brought a smaller chair for him to sit in while she, Dusty and Spooks put together the large pictographic puzzle they’d just printed out.

It took several minutes still. Finding where certain lines met, judging overlaps, and accounting for Treble’s lack of photographic prowess, eventually they got what looked to be as complete a picture as they were going to get. When all was done, Rubble whistled appreciatively. “That is… that is an ENORMOUS sigil!”

“Look at the detail,” Dusty breathed. “I’m decades behind what they did here! I mean, I only recognize a few of the smaller markings in these circles. Here and here. And don’t get me started on the script in the inner rings.”

“What IS it, though?” Twilight asked. At which point all three of them tuned to look at Spooks.

Sensing the eyes on him, he looked up. “What? I have almost no idea! I only recognize a handful more than Dusty does! Not to mention I’ve never SEEN this script before!” he protested, pointing to a large circle of written text in a language he didn’t recognize that encompassed the majority of the inner ward.

“Lemme see that,” Rubble grunted. Twilight begrudgingly helped him to the floor as he stubbornly leaned over the mass of pictures. “That… that’s Enochian. Shit, that’s Fallen Enochian.”

“...how the HELL do you know that?!” Dusty demanded.

Rubble gave him some serious side-eye. “How do you NOT?! Don’t you remember the spells we watched that priest perform when that rain demon popped up during finals week? We almost all failed our classes because he made us stay late to help us write them all!”

Spooks nodded. “He’s right. I mean, I can see some Low Enochain in it… but how do you know it’s Fallen?”

Rubble rubbed his temples. “Ok, one of these days I’m taking you all to my church. Look, you know what Enochian IS, right?”

The other boys nodded. Twilight, however, raised her hand. “Um, I don’t.”

“It’s a language developed by humans to talk with angels,” Spooks explained. “Low Enochian is like… common English. You use it for basic spellcasting and script. High Enochian is used to speak directly to an angel. Like, as close to face-to-face as you can get without getting your mind blasted out of your skull at the speed of light. Fallen Enochian is… it’s nasty stuff. It’s a mutation of both High and Low Enochian, taking the spellcasting aspects of Low and mixing it with the direct communication of High. It’s the kind of script and spellcasting you use when you want to bind an angel and drag them from the High Heavens down to Earth.”

“Or up out of the pit,” Rubble added grimly.

“Yes, there is THAT,” Bones groaned. “...but this doesn’t make sense. I mean, now that I know what I’m reading I can kind of make sense out of it. GOD this lighting is terrible, Treble. But this isn’t a spell to bind an angel.”

“What is it, then, Professor?” Dusty grunted.

There were a few minutes’ silence as Spooks poured over the sigil, now that he had a better grasp of what it did. “It’s… well, it IS a binding spell. But they’re not binding an angel. They’re asking the angels to HELP bind… whatever is under this lock. This center glyph, though… what the hell IS it?”

Twilight leaned to and fro trying to look around the boys who had huddled over the puzzle. “This part looks familiar,” she mused, pointing to a smaller circle connected to the larger ones with a few lines. “It looks almost like Latin, but… it’s gibberish.”

Something sparked in Rubble’s head. “What do you mean, gibberish?”

“I mean that, if I’m reading this Latin correctly, and I AM, that it’s just nonsense words,” Twilight groaned. Maybe they’re using one language to write another? Like a cypher? But wouldn’t putting a code into a glyph make it… not work? It doesn’t sound like it would work,” she mused.

Spooks nodded. “You’re right, it wouldn’t, unless the entire glyph was the puzzle. It’s called cryptomancy, and it’s basically the high-security bank vault door version of magic. Takes years of study, decades, and a really sharp mind. Not to mention all the little details you have to get right. No, that’s not what this is. This sigil is too… strong? No… that’s not the right word. Oppressive. Whatever it’s trying to lock down, it’s doing it TIGHT. Cryptomancy would be a good idea here, but mixing it with Obfuscation is hard as hell. Usually you use cryptomantic sigils as either time-locks or incomplete spells that need extra work to finish. This is… permanent. There’s no room for being tricky, here, and… Rubble? What’s that look?”

Rubble had taken interest with the segment that seemed to be confusing Twilight. “You said this is Latin?”

She nodded, seemingly annoyed by the writing. “Yeah, but it’s just… nonsense, like I said.”

“Did you try… reading it backwards?” he offered.

“What? Why would anyone write Latin backwards?! That’s not… it’s… oh my god they wrote Latin backwards,” she groaned, taking a closer look at the picture. “Let’s see...”

Dusty moved rather quickly, given his seating position. Then again, he was the fastest person in their group. In a second he’d clamped a hand around Twilight’s mouth. “Do. NOT. Read the Latin backwards. DO NOT DO THAT THING YOU’RE DOING,” he said, very sternly.

Spooks nodded. “Agreed. Do you want demons? Because that’s how you get demons.”

“Oh my GOD, Spooks,” Rubble groaned.

Act Nine: Props

Act Nine: Props

What is the first thing that comes to mind when someone talks about a haunted house? Some might say phantom voices. Others, faces in the mirror or at the end of the hall. Many people also associate objects moving on their own as a symptom of spiritual activity. In truth, any of these can have any number of causes. From monsters to poltergeists, home invaders to alien life forms. The only thing we know about the supernatural is that we don’t actually know anything. It is simply a word we attach to occurrences and beings we can’t explain.

Now, those who spend any amount of time researching such happenings might tell you that, while those are all possibilities, there are certain combinations, certain phenomena, that are hallmarks of a ghost or spectre. Cold spots, EMF readings, and the like are staples of ghost hunting. Which is one of the many reasons most technologically-minded paranormal investigators use devises like EMF meters, thermal scopes, even Geiger counters. Many investigators use these devices as a form of proof: measurable data that they can attribute to unseen forces.

The most notable issue with using any of these tools to measure supernatural phenomena is that they were all created to measure natural phenomena, and as a result can detect perfectly ordinary sources of energy. An EMF, for example, can either detect the electromagnetic field of a spirit (in theory), or simply bad wiring in the walls where an open electric current has gone unchecked. The same is true for any other mundane device used in an attempt to measure the extraordinary.

Some people have put considerable effort into developing technology that can measure spiritual phenomena and nothing else. Of course, then the flaw becomes, how do you know what you’re measuring if no one has measured it before? The logical counter-argument is that the same question was asked of the Geiger counter, the EMF reader, and several other devices in the same vein. Around and around this argument goes, with no clear winner, and no end in sight.

That doesn’t stop people using the things anyway, of course.

“Are you sure you’re reading that correctly?” Indigo asked, leaning over Treble’s shoulder.

The wannabe rocker tilted his head back in a silent prayer for strength. “Indy, please. It’s literally the easiest device to read since the digital clock. To quote a madman with a box, it goes ding when there’s stuff.”

Zap tilted her head in confusion as Raven walked a few paces behind, wanting to stay out of the petty squabble while still being within arm’s reach of the only person in the room with have a clue as to what they were doing. “Meaning what, exactly?” Zap pressed.

Treble turned around with a flourish, holding up the EMF detector like a talisman against stupid questions. “You see this needle? If the needle is on the left, then there’s nothing. If moves to the right, there’s something to investigate. The farther right it goes the closer we are to the source of whatever energy it’s detecting.”

This earned little more than a shrug. “Whatever. I’m not that big into the science-y stuff anyway.”

“Buh-wuh-I… WHY DID YOU ASK, THEN?!” Treble barked, looking an awful lot like the picture in the encyclopedia next to the word ‘aneurysm’.

“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t getting us super lost down here,” Indigo answered, in a frustratingly calm tone that DT was all too familiar with, having used it himself a few times.

“That’s what RAVEN is here for!” he yelled.

“Ahem,” Raven coughed.

“Sorry. Miss Inkwell. She’s literally here to make sure we don’t stumble off into the darkity-dark and die,” he insisted, turning back around and returning his diminishing attention span to the device in his hand. The needle wavered slightly, reflecting his current temper rather accurately.

Because of course I needed that pressure on me right now, Inkwell thought to herself. “He’s right, you know. This is also the main reason I’m carrying this god-awfully large flashlight. It doesn’t do me any good to guide you down here, though, if you wander off, so please stay close and, you know, away from sharp things.”

Zap just shrugged and let her gaze wander around the area the flashlight illuminated for her. They’d made their way into the basement after a bit of bickering, using the entrance in the gardener’s house disguised as a hall closet. In fact, it had been used as such, and they’d taken the opportunity to take a baseball bat and a large lantern with them, which Raven was carrying with slight difficulty. It was her opinion that the gardener had been a much larger man than she, to use such an ungainly device so frequently.

The basement itself was a maze of tunnels, lined with concrete very obviously after the fact, and looked much like it had been worked on one decade at a time. They’d round a corner, and find a typical, if a bit heavy, wooden door, then walk through it to see a giant metal storm door on the far side of the room. Many of the walls had been reinforced with concrete or steel beams, and the entire place had the feel of a patchwork bunker as opposed to a basement for a multi-million dollar estate.

Treble had lamented early on that even his walkie-talkie was basically useless down here for little more than pictures, and so he’d turned the thing off for now. Not knowing how long he was going to be down here, he’d learned long ago that battery life was a thing one should be keenly aware of.

The next corner they rounded led them into a rather open area, where the support for the structure above consisted of large pillars every few feet. Strewn about were cabinets, chairs, and other furniture of all kinds, as well as a wide assortment of almost stereotypical Bric-a-brac. There was even a rusty bicycle leaning at an odd angle piled on top of a writing desk. Something that did not escape Treble’s attention, as he said, “Hey Indigo.”

“Yo,” came her eloquent response.

“How is a Raven like a writing desk?” he asked.

Inkwell sighed. “Because there’s a ‘b’ in both,” she groaned. “Please, Treble. I’ve heard that riddle so many times it’s almost insulting. And I swear to god if you say ‘nevermore’ I will fire you. Into the sun.”

He frowned, deflated, and went about his exploring, pocketing the EMF in favor of a free hand. Indigo just chuckled. “Was it really that bad?” she asked.

“You have no idea. I’ve come to hate Poe on general principal. I have great espect for him as a writer, of course, but one can only hear so many dead poet jokes before they consider the occupation a viable alternative to hearing one more,” Inkwell deadpanned. “It doesn’t help what my family does for a living. Every year, without fail, someone somewhere thinks to get me a copy of Poe’s works for either Christmas or my birthday. I’d collected so many at one point that I’d built a small fort out of them as a teenager, only to set the entire thing aflame when I turned eighteen and my parents insisted I take all of them with me to college.”

Indigo whistled appreciatively. “I hear ya. I mean, I don’t have it quite that bad, but I get a lot of Indy 500 and Indie Go-Go jokes. I think it’s something everyone deals with, you know? I can only imagine how many DT jokes this one’s gotten,” she jabbed a thumb at Treble, who was rifling through a large wooden chest that seemed to be filled with old toys.

“No, please, go ahead, make another one!” Treble yelled, the sound muffled due to him being neck-deep in the furniture.

“DT?” Raven asked.

Indigo blinked. “Really?”

“...what?”

“I just… I thought everyone knew what that meant,” Zap mused.

“Well pretend I don’t,” Raven snipped.

Treble stood up with a groan. “Deep throat. She’s talking about blowjobs. I mean, come on, you said you went to college!”

“Yes. In Trottingham. And thank you for that wonderful mental image,” she grumbled, rubbing her temples. “Did you find anything useful?”

DT juggled a small item in his hand. “Define useful. Found a key. No idea what to. Kinda big-ish. Only two teeth. Old looking.”

Raven strode forward to inspect his discovery. “Hmm. Couldn’t tell you, myself. Hold onto it, though. If for no other reason than I might find what it goes to long after you’re gone.”

Treble shrugged and moved to pocket the item, only to pause as a small whine emanated from his pocket. “...what,” he said flatly. He took his EMF out of his suit pocket, brushing off some accumulated dust, and raised an eyebrow. The needle was dancing slightly in the middle of the display. Key in one hand and reader in the other, he moved them back and forth away and towards each other, only to find that the device seemed to be reacting quite enthusiastically to the key. He touched the end of the key to the device, and the needle bounced to the far right, and stayed there. “O..kay… haunted key?” he asked no one in particular.

Indigo took a step back. “Yeah, how about YOU keep that? Away from me?”

Treble shrugged, looking to their employer for any insight. She gave little more than a noncommittal grunt and a slight shuffle of her shoulders. “Don’t look at me,” she protested.

Pocketing both, Treble turned to go about his digging, only to stop mid-stride. “Um, Indigo?”

Zap sighed, awaiting another bad joke. “What is it, Treble?”

“Look to your right. Do you see a bicycle sitting at a janky angle on top of a desk?” he asked, in a rather measured voice.

Both Indigo and Raven turned to look at the writing desk that had sparked their conversation moments before, only to find that no, there was no bicycle. “That’s a negative, Ghost Rider,” Zap remarked, returning her attention to their ‘fearless leader’.

“Oh wonderful,” he mused, planting his foot back on the ground. He hadn’t noticed he’d left it hanging in the air when he’d stopped.

“...whyyy?” Raven asked.

“Because I found it,” he answered plainly, pointing in front of him.

The girls peeked their heads around him to see that there was, in fact, a bicycle in front of them all. Standing up. With no kickstand. Or rider. “...is this the part where we start running?” Indigo asked, swallowing loudly.

DT shook his head. “Run away? From a bike? Hardly!” he exclaimed, summoning as much false bravado as he could all at once. Which, given his personality, was quite a lot. “I mean, it’s not exactly a Harley. Not even a Yamaha.” He took a few steps forward, stopping only a foot or two away from the peculiar vehicle. “Now listen here, you curious little thing, you. I understand the need to get out every once in a while to stretch your… wheels. Or chain. Whatever needs stretching. But my friends and I are currently rather occupied in trying to walk this direction and dig rather callously through whatever interesting and assorted paraphernalia happens to share the rent with you. If you like, we can certainly step to the side while you go about your merry way, but I must insist that one or both of us move sometime soon.”

Zap stared incredulously as Treble addressed the seemingly possessed bike. “What… what the hell are you doing?” she hissed in disbelief.

He didn’t turn around. “Talking? You know, with words? Although I can’t imagine you have mush of a vocabulary, so how about one ring for yes, two for no?” he asked the bicycle.

It gave no response.

“Hmm. Might help if you had a bell. My apologies. So how about this. We will casually step to the side, like this,” he said, taking a large step to the right, making room for the bicycle. “And you can pass right by.”

When the bike didn’t move, Treble gestured for the girls to follow his lead. Zap seemed hesitant to do anything that involved movement, until Raven grabbed her by the arm and coaxed her out of the way. “Just go with it, I guess?” Inkwell said, the tone of her voice suggesting she had no better suggestions.

Indigo was about to retort when the bike casually wheeled itself through the now-open pathway, quietly turning its pedals and bypassing the three as if they weren’t there. She stared, wide-eyed, as it slowly wheeled itself out of sight, around a corner. “H… how. HOW. Did you know that would work?!” she exclaimed, when it had vanished completely.

“It’s called being polite,” Treble mused. “Honestly, you’d think that just because someone’s dead they don’t have any manners to-”

He was quickly interrupted by the toy trunk exploding.

“Treble?” Dusty asked, leaning back in his chair as he chirped his phone. “Come on, man, reception’s not THAT bad.”

“Maybe it is, in the far side of the house. Or maybe they’re knee-deep in one of the cold spots. All kinds of stuff,” Spooks volunteered, strolling into the sitting room from the foyer, carrying the large stack of photos they’d printed off. With little more to go on without further research, the group upstairs had decided to divvy up parts of the sigil and research them individually. Bones handed out evenly distributed stacks to the other three, taking the last for himself and delving back into the Encyclopedia Unnatura.

“Hope so,” Rubble groaned. “His mom would likely kill us all in broad daylight if we had to bring back a corpse.”

“Is she overprotective or something?” Twilight asked, peeking over the top of her computer monitors. Without internet access, she was forced to rely on the multitude of textbooks she’d accumulated in digital format, and was scrolling intently through her Latin sources.

“Hardly,” Spooks grumbled. “She’s just crazy. Treble’s parents are...”

“Fucking useless,” Rubble groaned, shuffling through the stack of photos in front of him, looking for a good starting point.

Dusty raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never met them, myself. How bad could they be?”

Rubble looked up, and raised an eyebrow. “You know how we never talk about your parents?”

“...no. No, Rubble, I’m completely oblivious to this fact of life. Please, continue,” he snapped, more out of habitual annoyance than actual frustration.

“Imagine if they were still together, and lived under the same roof,” Spooks jumped in, his eyes glued as usual to the book he was reading.

Dusty flinched. “Ouch. Really?”

Twilight looked back and forth between the boys. “I don’t get it. How bad are they?”

Rubble and Spooks traded glances, and Rubble sighed. Leaning back into the couch, he set aside the photos in his lap, and looked at the ceiling. “Where do I start. Ok… I imagine you have a good relationship with your parents, Twilight.”

She nodded. “Of course! They’re really supportive. When I told them I wanted to drop out of Prep School and go to a Public High School, they were actually super happy. It’s closer to our house, and it doesn’t cost them money every year.”

“Well, imagine the opposite of that,” RM groaned. “Treble’s mom is -was- a lawyer. She got disbarred for jury tampering. Nasty piece of work. Now she’s a legal aide for some ambulance chaser downtown. Dee Facto is the definition of a sleazy lawyer, and is currently trying to find a way to sue the juror she tampered for getting her debarred.”

Twilight spluttered incredulously. “But-wha-she can’t DO that!” she yelped.

“We know,” Spooks muttered. “Doesn’t stop her from trying.”

“Whoa… I heard about her. THAT’S Treble’s mom?!” Dusty asked in surprise.

“Yup,” Rubble answered. “And if you can believe it, his dad’s actually worse. You know those guys that are constantly patenting new, useless crap that doesn’t do anything, trying to find their first million-dollar idea?”

Dusty flinched. “Oh god, he’s that guy?”

Spooks shook his head. “Worse. He’s the guy that loans money to them. A lot of people think that Deep Pockets is in with some kind of organized crime. He’s the slimiest kind of loan shark, too. And the two are constantly fighting, mostly about money. God knows why. But it’s all they ever do when they’re under the same roof. I’m pretty sure the only reason they don’t get divorced is because he couldn’t survive taking her to open court, and she thinks she’ll get more money out of him the way things are now.”

Twilight just stard at them, wide-eyed. “Good lord. No wonder he’s such a relentless flirt. Doesn’t exactly have a shining example of a loving relationship at home, does he?”

“Well, that and Sunset really did a number on him,” Dusty groaned. “Man, I didn’t know his parents were such absolute douchebags.”

“Kinda makes you miss your folks, huh?” Rubble chided.

“Oh god no. I’d rather spend the afternoon in the hospital getting a bottle of bleach pumped out of my stomach,” Dusty groaned. Seeing Twilight about to ask, he cut her off. “Don’t. Trust me, just don’t.”

Twilight left her mouth hanging open a second as she considered asking anyway, then decided against it, returning her attention to the screen. There was a moment’s silence as they all went about their research, until Twilight let loose a string of baby swears again. Rubble looked up in time to see her smacking her monitor a few times. “Come on, you… you… you douchebag,” she grunted, shaking the screen. “What’s wrong with you?”

Dusty stood up and walked around to stand behind her. “Problems?”

“The darn thing isn’t responding. It’s not frozen or whatever, cause the cursor’s still blinking, but my mouse isn’t doing anything, and neither is my keyboard,” she whined, shaking both.

“Maybe they’re unplugged?” Rubble offered. “Awful lot of cords back here, you know. Maybe someone kicked something?”

Twilight frowned cutely as she leaned around the tower of her computer, eyeballing the connections. “No, it looks fine.”

Dusty clapped her back. “See, there you go! It’s typing again!” he cheered.

Twilight raised an eyebrow at him, then turned her attention to the monitor. Sure enough, in the middle of the page, right above a diagram about Latin pictograms, there were a few words where there hadn’t been earlier. “Um… I didn’t type that,” she said slowly.

Dusty looked from her to the computer. “What.”

She leaned forward, reading the tiny font. It was much smaller than the print on the rest of the page. “It says… oh. Oh dear. ‘Hello, children’,” she finished quietly.

Spooks looked up from his book in alarm to see a matching expression on Rubble’s face. “Oh, boy,” Rubble said.

Dusty took a step away from the monitor. “It’s, uh… typing more. What’s it saying?” he asked, in that all-too-familiar tone of not wanting to know the answer.

“Um...” Twilight leaned in again, adjusting her glasses as she inspected the new words. “‘Hello, children. It’s so good to have company after all these years. I do hope you stay the night.’”

Spooks shuffled in his seat uncomfortably. “Um… that’s nice?”

“… ‘Please mind the other guests, they aren’t as fond of visitors as I am’.”

“...that’s less nice,” Spooks said sourly. “Man, why are all the monsters we come across evil dicks?”

“Hey, there was that one fox spirit at the end of the last school year. She was kinda cool,” Rubble said defensively.

“NOT THE POINT RIGHT NOW,” Dusty exclaimed, a little louder than was necessary. Or perhaps not, as the group looked up at him, then followed his alarmed expression to the corner of the room.

There, hanging from the doorway on awkward strings, was a marionette.

Author's Note

Who's ready for the nope?!

Act Ten: Down in Front!

Author's Note

Hope you're ready to not be ok.

Act Ten: Down in Front!

Act Ten: Down in Front!

The single most difficult task in the early legs of a paranormal investigation is determining the nature of the disturbance. Truly, there are so many theories, legends, and myths surrounding the world of the supernatural that many people are insistent on defining the source down to the letter. Many demons, creatures, and spirits have so many subtle differences, depending on the country of origin and a variety of smaller circumstances, that declaring all spirits ‘ghosts’ or all creatures from the pit as just ‘demons’ is not only seen as amateurish, but insulting.

A prime example is determining the difference between a ghost, poltergeist, or demonic presence. They have many similar traits, including levitating objects, phantom noises, and disturbing behavior from animals and humans alike. Of course, any armchair investigator will happily describe in great detail the ‘obvious’ differences, such as a demon’s tendency to possess an individual, changing their appearance, voice, and behavior drastically. Or how a poltergeist is actually a person-oriented phenomena, or in layman’s terms, psychic phenomena orienting from someone in the home.

Really, we know so little about any of these unnatural beings that we tend to latch on to the best guess of someone who says they have experienced these things before, and take them as law or gospel. This isn’t to say that there aren’t those who have encountered a malevolent presence, nor that there is no such precedent for the many rules and ideologies surrounding supernatural occurrences. No, the difficulty comes from those who have done little in the way of research and even less in the way of personal experience claiming to know ‘for a fact’ how to properly define a haunting, possession, or poltergeist. Those people who have done little more than watch a litany of horror movies and ‘reality’ television and assume that Hollywood knows more about spiritual manifestation than a proper exorcist or experienced paranormal psychologist.

The single greatest obstacle that this plethora of ‘knowledge’ presents to anyone actually encountering a spirit is that there is little to no evidence of any of it actually working, beyond word of mouth, and yet many of those unfortunate souls coming face to face with a malevolent presence will try nearly anything they’ve seen on TV and hope it sticks.

Deep Treble was not one of those people, however. Having dragged the nearest individual under a sideways desk with him (that person being Indigo), he threw his back to flat surface of the furniture, trying to minimize himself as a target, dropping both their bags in the process. “Get down!” he’d roared, nearly as soon as the trunk had erupted, toys flying in all directions.

Raven had reacted much the same way, although with much less practice. She grunted in pain as her head knocked loudly against an ajar dresser drawer in the small alcove she’d dived into for cover. Rubbing her head with a loud groan, she made an effort to look for something to cover her exposed angle as soon as she could see straight again. Finding little in the way of cover beyond a teddy bear that had landed nearby, she simply shrunk herself into the nook of the dresser and the bed frame leaning against each other around her.

Indigo, however, had no such instinct to dive for cover, and in fact had moved almost counter-intuitively, reacting to Treble’s firm grasp on her shoulder as a challenge. Tugging one direction while he tugged the other, the only thing keeping them both from going arse over teakettle was Treble's practiced reactions and sure footing. Indigo was so disoriented by the deafening noise of the trunk bursting open, and the sudden lurch on her shoulder, that her resistance amounted to little more than a loud protest and a knee-jerk in the other direction, which was easily compensated for by Treble throwing almost his entire weight into the dive.

Her struggle wasn’t without consequence, unfortunately, as it had left her much more open to projectile playthings than the others. Namely, the croquet ball that ricocheted off the ceiling and nailed her in the collarbone with a sickening crack. She fell to the floor with a loud cry, as Treble moved hesitantly to come to her aid.

The only saving grace seemed to be that, beyond the initial explosion, there was no immediate sense of danger. DT crawled out from his hiding spot to drag Indigo out of the open, tucking her against a wall and sitting her up. She verbally protested to such treatment, but seemed to be in such pain that she offered no physical resistance. She leaned against the cold cement, face scrunched in pain, as Treble eyed her remorsefully. “How bad is it?” he asked, keeping his voice low. One might say unnecessarily, as there was little other noise in the basement beyond the settling of ‘debris’.

Zap moved the related arm slightly, and winced hard. “OW. Fuck. I think that… whatever fractured my clavicle.”

Treble blinked largely. “Your what?”

“My collarbone, you nerd. I don’t think it’s broken all the way through. Do you see any bulging?” she asked, pulling the collar of her shirt away with her good hand.

“Hold on,” he muttered, and rustled over to where their bags had dropped in the commotion. Dragging them back, he dug through one until he found the large-ish flashlight, and flicked it on. Indigo smirked as he made the rookie mistake of looking at it as it blinked on, and he had to shake the spots from his eyes. He angled the light at her shoulder, and gave it a closer look. “...no, I don’t think so. That’s a nasty-ass bruise, though.”

“Well, duh, it would be. There’s a fractured bone under there, No doubt I broke a blood vessel,” she groaned, the pain giving her voice more of an edge than usual. “That’s good, though. Bulging means it’s straight up broken. A fracture wouldn’t be so obvious.”

“You seem to know quite a bit about this particular injury,” came Raven’s voice behind the desk. They both jumped in panic, and Treble wheeled around, holding the flashlight like a club. “Oh! Sorry! Wasn’t trying to startle you, it’s just me,” she said soothingly, leaning on one knee next to the injured party.

Treble waved his flashlight over her to double-check, and noticed a large spot of blood on the top of her head. “Uh, boss? Yer’ bleedin’.”

Raven tapped the top of her head, and her hand came away red. “Oh, dammit. Hit my head on a dresser. Don’t worry, it’s better than it looks.”

Indigo nodded. “Yeah, head injuries tend to bleed a lot, because the skin is so thin and there are a lot of blood vessels up there.” When the other two gave her curious looks, she added, “I study sports medicine. You didn’t think I went to a Prep school just cause I could kick a ball around, did you?”

“No, I just had you pegged as an engineering major,” Treble mused, rifling through the bag again. “Shit. Left the medkit with the others. Hold on,” he added, and loosened his tie. Undoing the knot, he repositioned himself next to Indigo, and tied it as a makeshift sling for her arm. “It’s shitty, but it’s all I got.”

Raven raised an eyebrow at him. “Et tu?”

“Hey, not the first broken collarbone I’ve come across. You’d be surprised how often Dusty’s broken his,” he explained.

“Then why did you look at me like a dead fish when I explained it the first time?” Indigo said suspiciously.

Treble rolled his eyes. “Because nobody I know except Twilight would use the word ‘clavicle’, ok? I’m a C student, give me a break.”

Raven shook her head. “Hmm. You really ought to put more effort into your studies.”

He gave her a rather annoyed glare. “Real life tends to get in the way, Miss Inkwell. And Eaton doesn’t exactly consider monster hunting a valid extracurricular.”

“I see,” Raven said uncertainly, not having a valid response.

“More to the point,” Indigo grunted, “There aren’t any other toys about to explode at us and break, I don’t know, more of my bones, are there?!”

DT relaxed his expression and stood up cautiously, taking a look around the room. “No, I don’t think so. Although I’m sure a head wound and a broken bone is a good enough reason to highly consider relocating. As in, not being in this creepy-ass basement anymore?”

Indigo stood up slowly, with some assistance from Inkwell, and looked around. “Yeah, I’m all about the leaving part. But come on, where’s all that bravado you were marching around with earlier?”

“It comes with the tie,” Treble said distractedly, pointing at her arm. “Use it wisely, young tadpole.” Not waiting for a response, he picked up both bags, and offered the lighter one to Raven. As he moved, he heard a sad, metallic crunching sound coming from his suit, and dug his now-free hand into his pocket with an apprehensive look. It came back with a handful of shattered electrical parts and loose wiring. “Welp, so much for Twilight’s EMF. Hope it wasn’t that expensive.”

“I don’t suppose any of that fancy-ass equipment has anything to say about our newest… guest, does it?” Rubble said out of the side of his mouth at Twilight, who was furiously pouring over each of her systems in turn with an increasingly distressed look.

“Yes, but I have no idea what any of it means!. I’m getting the same kind of energy signatures as the doors and windows, but it’s… wavy. Like an unstable field,” she complained.

“That might be because it’s moving,” Spooks noted calmly, in that infuriatingly flat tone he reserved for truly distressing news.

Indeed, the marionette had bounced through the air on its strings farther into the room, now waving back and forth over a circular table. It lowered quietly, until its feet rested on the surface of the wood, and its head tilted to the side as it came to a rest. Twilight hit a couple switches and turned on a flood light, pointing it at the far side of the room. It had a rather similar effect to a spotlight, which seemed to get a reaction out of the doll. They now had a better view of the thing, which many of them regretted almost instantly.

The first impression, based on its color and rigidity, had been of a typical wooden doll of slightly more robust proportions, with smaller eyes than expected and rather tattered dress and hair. This was quickly dispelled under the power of the light, as it was revealed not to be made of wood, but rather, flesh. In fact, it was less a marionette than a body on strings. The body of a young girl, no more than six, with thin arms and legs, almost gamine features, and an old, broken dress that could once have been called eggshell blue. The wooden appearance was due, in fact, to the withered and darkened nature of her skin, which had shriveled and hardened like old leather. So much so that one might think it would feel like an old bootstrap, should one be brave or foolish enough to test it. It wore cracked wooden shoes, reminiscent of the forced, cracked smile seemingly etched onto its face.

The worst part was the eyes, though. As dead and gone as the rest of the body looked, as old and fragile, the eyes still shone with the light and hope of a small child, slowly dimming with the reality of her situation. They seemed to slowly pan back and forth, as if asking what it was that she had done wrong, pleading for help.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Rubble groaned, leaning over the back of the couch with a pained expression.

“Someone’s getting their everything chopped off for this,” Dusty growled. Twilight offered little more than a painful sob as she looked away from the pitiful girl’s gaze, unable to provide any comfort.

There was a crackling sound as the speakers in Twilight’s computer began to spit and sputter. After a few seconds, a voice rang out. “Do you like it?” it asked. It sounded male, if it was ever human, though raspy, forced. As if being filtered through a sieve of inhuman emotions and ideas before forming actual words. “It can even dance. Watch.”

Lacking a valid response, the group watched on in horror as the girl’s feet flailed dispassionately in an atrocious farce of tap-dancing, then ballet. Her body twisted and bent at odd angles and spun at inhuman speeds, until finally she took a sickly bow and looked back up at them. If her body could still produce tears, they had no doubt she would be crying.

“All of my toys are very talented,” came the voice again, even as Twilight scrambled for a way to turn it off.

“Make it stop,” Twilight wept loudly, even going so far as to tug the speaker off the table, the cord snapping behind it.

Still, the voice came. “Why would I do that?” it breathed. “There’s so much more my dolls can do.” It spoke dispassionately, as if reading a script.

“E-fucking-nuff,” Rubble growled, and pulled a knife from… somewhere. With a practiced flourish, he flung it through the air, until it planted itself loudly in the wall behind the girl. Immediately, one of her arms dropped to her side. A few more throws later, and the body crumpled slowly to the table, resting in an almost relaxed seated position.

Twilight looked ready to say something about Rubble’s uncanny skill with sharp objects, but the air in the room and the look on the boy’s faces said quite loudly that ‘now was not the time.’

Dusty marched up to the doll as the voice crackled back to life. “Now that was unnecessary. I simply wished to provide some quality entertainment for my… guests. But there you go, breaking my toys. Oh well. I guess your tastes are more… modern, shall we say? I believe I have something for that. Somewhere.” With that, the speaker crackled off, dying in Twilight’s hand.

DD leaned over the crumpled body with an apologetic look. The eyes slowly turned to him, filled less with panic and more with a sense of gratitude. At least, that’s what he’d like to think. Slowly, he passed a hand over her eyes, closing them. Then, the body fell flat on the table, and moved no more.

Nobody spoke for a while. Dusty picked up the girl’s body, and laid it out on a couch, draping his jacket over it. Her body was so small that you could barely see her legs under the bottom of the coat.

“It appears our gracious host is a psychotic fuckbarn,” Rubble groaned, recovering from the awful display enough to stand up straight and turn his attention back to his friends. “Thus, I recommend we find a way to shut his ass down, and fast. Spooks, tell me, TELL ME you have something.”

The pale boy nodded, even as the color seemed to have drained from his face permanently. He spoke slowly, and carefully. “I do. But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“I already don’t like everything right now. There’s not a lot you could say to worsen this wonderfully awful mood I have going on,” RM growled.

Dusty nodded. “Same. Give us what you got.”

Spooks sighed, closing his eyes. “Well, I found some of the symbols in the photos. And I think I know what book we should be looking in.”

Twilight squeaked out a hopeful, “Oh?”

Rubble just rolled his shoulders. “Good. Go get it.”

Spooks shrugged dispassionately, and leaned over the trunk, rifling through its contents. “Just out of curiosity,” Dusty broke in, “What book are you talking about?”

“If I’m right,” Spooks replied with a grunt, “It’s the same book the ‘genius’ behind this whole fiasco used in the first place.” With a final tug, he pulled out an ancient-looking square parcel, wrapped in white cloth and tied with a curious red thread. Dusty and Rubble flinched, as Twilight eyed the thing curiously.

“What IS that?” she asked incredulously.

Spooks untied the thread, and unwrapped the cloth, revealing a curiously-bound book with more locks on it than a book ought to have. “I like to think of it as Plan Z. Apparently someone considers it required reading in this house. It’s an old text written during the crusades by a coven of witches looking to escape the trials and summary executions. It consists of really nasty magic designed specifically to spit in the face of god and the Good Word, and open doors that not only should stay closed, but be welded shut with orbital lasers. Officially, it’s referred to at the Cantet Manus, or the Crow’s Hand.”

Dusty gave Twilight a hard stare. “If you have heard of it, and I doubt, you’d know it as The Book of The Morrighan.”

Act Eleven: Read the Fucking Script.

Act Eleven: Read the Fucking Script.

One rather clever use of topography in horror films and video games today is that of buildings and hallways that change around its occupants, in a distinctly effective method of confusing and entrapping them. Doors you’ve recently left will now lead into entirely different rooms, some of which you were sure weren’t even part of the original floorplan. From a cinematic standpoint, it’s extremely effective in creating tension, setting the tone for the severity of the situation, and allowing the viewer or player a visual medium with which to align their mental state with that of the protagonist as their confusion begins to mirror the characters’.

In, for lack of a better word, ‘practical’ application, it is extremely rare. The amount of energy required to generate such physical changes in the scope and time portrayed in common media is such that the resulting cold spot would present a greater threat of hypothermia than the shifting rooms and corridors would an unsolvable maze. One seemingly senseless constant that supernatural phenomena seems to follow is that of the First Law of Thermodynamics, stating that the total amount of matter and energy in a closed system cannot be created nor destroyed, but can be converted from one form to another. The amount of ‘spiritual’ energy -a common term used to refer to the seemingly nonphysical presence of a haunting spirit- required to enact a change so drastic is nearly unfathomable.

Of course, the boy’s experience of this phenomena less than a month ago could easily be accounted for by the presence of another dimension rubbing against our own. It is difficult to create a ‘closed system’ when there’s an entire other universe to account for. The closed system represented by the house was, if not expansive, much more finite. There was no way to create such a drastic change in the environment without either a massive unchecked source of energy, or breaking down a substantial amount of matter in another location-

“-which brings me to the question, how the hell did you get us lost in a straight fucking line?!” Treble finished, having spoken at length about how ‘the walls could not be shifting around them’ when Ms. Inkwell had tried to use exactly that excuse to account for their lack of bearings or proper direction, having emerged from the basement at the nearest available exit, into a rather unfamiliar -if not cozy and immediately useful- sitting room. Having taken a break and aloud their injured a moment to rest in a less hostile location, Treble, Indigo, and Raven had opted to simply head back to camp and tag out their exploration team with people who weren’t bleeding or broken.

Upon leaving said sitting room, however, and following the guidance of Ms. Inkwell herself, they found that the front door and, in fact, their base of operations was significantly more elusive than it should be. “Excuse me,” Raven sniped, but I think I know my own house. This isn’t what the first floor should look like at all.”

Indigo peeked around the kitchenette they’d stumbled across, and mused, “Nope, no front door here.” Seeing the less-than-enthusiastic expressions on her companion’s faces, she added quickly, “Maybe we didn’t come out on the first floor? I mean, there were a lot of stairs on the way up here.”

Raven scoffed. “That’s ridiculous. I think I’d know the second floor of my… own… house,” she finished slowly, as the color returned to her cheeks with enthusiasm. She quickly turned on her heel and stomped a ways down the hall, at which point she threw open a set of double doors Treble had thought for a second might have been the front entrance, sans the grand entranceway. Treble and Zap looked over her shoulders to see, with no lack of disbelief, a shorter set of stairs descending to a lower floor. “Ahem. This way, children,” she said with an air of no authority whatsoever, trying and failing to save face.

Indigo rolled her eyes so hard they could have dislocated, while Treble settled for a smug grin that would have sent some politicians out of the office at speed. “So, um, where exactly are we?” he asked, rather admirably stifling an ‘I told you so’ as they descended the stairwell to a familiar hallway- that of the one opposite the corridor leading from their base to the library. In fact, once they were all the way into the hall, they could see around the corner some of the hallmark décor of the entrance.

“Somewhere between ‘shut your mouth’ and ‘paycut’,” Inkwell growled, as they rounded the corner and made their way into the sitting room with the rest of their crew. “Someone here please have some good news for meohGOD what is that smell?!” she bellowed, backing out of the room with almost the same urgency as she’d entered.

Indigo pulled a face not unlike those of the psychedelic acid trips that passed for cartoons in the fifties. “Oh sweet Jesus H CHRIST that is rank!” she yelled, and turned to leave the room in a similar hurry, only to be pulled back by Treble Who, to be fair, was similarly distressed.

“That’s the smell of decomp. Where the hell did you all find a dead body?!” he barked, frog-marching a rather protestant Indigo to a chair and ordering her in no uncertain terms to sit down. “Stay put or I’ll find the smell and bury it in your van’s engine,” he threatened, returning his attention to the rather solemn-looking group.

Spooks was, predictably, so nose-deep in a book that Treble wasn’t sure he could smell anything more than newsprint. The only clue that he was aware of his surroundings was the fact that he’d pulled up his faceguard. Which DT wasn’t even aware he’d brought with him. Dusty and Rubble were leaning over a… something with Dusty’s coat draped over it. They seemed either completely immune or indifferent to the odor, which seemed to be emanating from the jacket. Twilight had crammed herself into an even smaller corner behind her machines, a fan going and a bottle of air freshener at the ready right next to her keyboard. “Alright, what did we miss while we were getting assaulted by teddy bears?”

“I’m sorry WHAT?” Twilight asked loudly, almost faulting out of her chair. The boys seemed to have similar, if watered down reactions.

Indigo gestured to her arm in its makeshift sling, which Dusty immediately set about tending to with a proper first aid kit. “Toy chest exploded. Took a croquet bal to the collarbone. Hairline fracture. Also Raven’s bleeding, but that’s what you get when you dive headlong into a table.”

Spooks gave their employer a concerned look as he set the book on the table. Now that it was closed and out in the open, Treble got a good look at it, and flinched away visibly. “Bones, why in God’s name are you anywhere near that forsaken thing?”

The wispy kid gave his friend a stern look, and went about grabbing some rubbing alcohol and leftover bandages out of the same kit, getting Raven set up with a head wrap. She thought about protesting, but Spooky had a way of getting people to stop talking with a look. “I’ll explain once I cover this bleeding. Dusty, do you have a splint on you?”

“You don’t splint a collarbone, Spooks,” Dusty groaned. “Her arm’s in the sling to limit her mobility so she doesn’t stress the surrounding muscle and compound the damage. Rubble, do we have any ice in the cooler? I think both our fair maidens need some,” he added with a smirk, as both ‘fair maidens’ gave him glares to kill a man at forty paces.

Rubble grunted his way across the room and kicked the cooler open with his good leg. “We do, but it’s kinda free-floating. And I don’t have any plastic bags, natch.”

“I do!” Twilight chirped, happy to be talking about anything other than the decomposing body or the atrocious dark magic at work around them.

“Why do- nope, don’t care. Not sue I even want to know,” Treble groaned, giving the book one last nasty glare and scooting the cooler around the table, where Twilight started making ice packs. Rubble took the opportunity to take a seat at the couch again, in the middle of the group (and away from the body). A few peppered conversations filled the air as everyone busied themselves all at once, but when that was all done, and everyone was sitting down, silence reigned again. Until Treble had had enough. “So, ok. Let’s start with maybe the easier stories first? The basement is a fucking fallout shelter. Concrete walls, three-inch thick storm doors, the works. Except it’s like a hedge maze and a storage unit had a creepy incest baby. There’s crap everywhere, and all kinds of passages leading to all over the house We came out on the second floor when we left.”

Twilight clacked away on her computer, pursing her lips in frustration. “I don’t see really any of that on the blueprints. I might be able to find the permits and stuff online, if I could connect she growled at a particular little gray box with several cables sticking out the back. “Unfortunately I think our host has about as much patience with satellite internet as he does satphones. But it would explain some of the missing information I have, if there are parts of the house that were built without sending the final plans to city hall, or really even asking for permission in the first place. I imagine the Inkwells weren’t one to shy away from greasing palms?” she asked, poising the question to the only Inkwell in the room.

“Not even close. I mean, my grades were okay as a kid, but some of the schools I went to, there was no WAY I got there on my own,” she muttered, wincing as she adjusted the icepack on her head. The bandages, while well-applied, weren’t doing her hair any favors, and a stray lock had snuck its way underneath it all, sitting just over her eye. She blew at it in annoyance, and continued, “So to answer your question, the likelihood that someone paid someone else something to keep something out of official records is a distinct possibility.

“Well that’s nice,” Indigo interjected. “But I doubt any of that money went towards explosive toy chests, or self-steering bicycles.”

Rubble raised an eyebrow. “HOLD up. Be kind, rewind. What about bikes?”

Indigo relayed with great enthusiasm, if not cheer, the events from their leaving the room to their tactical retreat. Spooks jumped in at the part about the large sigil on the caretaker’s ceiling, to which Indigo had few answers, but otherwise her story went uninterrupted. When she finished, she demanded, “Which brings us to now and the question of ‘Why does this room reek like decomp?!”

The boys all traded various glances, until Rubble stood up, metaphorically, to explain. “It started a bit after you sent up the pictures, Deep. We’d gotten some ideas about what the big-ass spell is, and had sat down to try to piece it together a block at a time, when this… when she showed up.” He explained, in unfortunate detail, the ‘puppet show’ their host had provided them, and the discovery of the nature of the ‘dancer’, now currently laid to rest underneath a jacket DD never intended to wear again. “I took a look at her body afterward, and found a bunch of weird scar tissue patterns on her arms and legs. Like, the holes where the wires were-” he stopped, seeing the reluctant expressions on the girl’s faces, “-the explainable injurie were obvious, but there was a bunch of extra damage that seemed… extraneous. But it wasn’t like those rage-killings you hear about where there’s a bunch of stab marks for no reason? And there wasn’t a pattern to it, like symbols or anything. More like… ok, you know how you get bored in class or detention or whatever and draw on your arm with sharpie, not really paying attention, just like making patterns and stuff?”

Everyone but Twilight and Raven nodded. “Um… sure, ok, let’s say I understand what you’re talking about,” the latter added, wanting to move forward.

“Right. It looked like… absentminded doodling, but with a knife. Like the guy was… bored,” Rubble growled, feeling his temper rise the more he spoke. “How do you get bored turning a little girl into… that?!” he asked, his voice peaking as he jabbed a thumb over his shoulder.

Spooks patted his shoulder lightly, a gesture that might have looked less like actual contact and more like a ghost of movement. Neither were very good at physical emotion. “I don’t know,” Bones said simply.

Twilight shivered. “That sounds like that serial killer from the Twenties,” she whimpered. She looked up to see all of the boys staring at her very intently. “What?”

“What ‘serial killer’?” Dusty demanded sharply.

“Um… it was almost a hundred years ago, and… right. Ghosts. But it was on the other side of the county!” she protested.

Spooks raised an eyebrow. “Hmm. It doesn’t sound right, but why don’t you tell us anyway? We’ve got more questions than answers, so really, anything helps.”

Twilight fidgeted, but relaxed a bit with Spooky’s calm demeanor. “Well, we did a project about him in our Local History class last year. Nobody knew his real name, he was never caught, the typical urban nightmare. He would kill kids of all ages and tie them up, hanging them from streetlights and signs and trees in the park. They referred to him, or her, as ‘The Marie’ or ‘The Mary’.”

“Makes sense,” Treble mused, which garnered looks from everyone else. “What?”

Dusty sighed in disbelief. “This is one of those weird things you know that we don’t want to know how you know, isn’t it?”

Treble shrugged. “The word ‘marionette’ is french, meaning ‘little Mary’, as the first marionettes were made of religious figures, most commonly the Virgin Mary.” Seeing as he hadn’t answered any of their questions as to how he knew, he continued, “Look, my mom worked a divorce case where these kids were contesting the will of this old lady that collected the things. She had like, half a million in rare dolls and dollmaking stuff. I asked, got an answer, and it just kinda stuck.”

Indigo shrugged, and Raven seemed satisfied, but the other boys kept staring at him. “Ok, ok, there was this French transfer student at the time and I wanted to impress, ok? Didn’t help, turns out she’d watched ‘Chucky’ at an early age and hated dolls. Sue me.”

“...anywayyy...” Twilight interjected, before the obvious mocking could start, “They were active for almost a decade nearly a century ago. I remembered it because for the longest time they’d suspected this one guy from the Inkwell family, because all the kids were children of Inkwell employees, but nobody’d found any evidence.”

Raven’s eye twitched. “Um… this suspect wouldn’t happen to be named Culling Song, would he?”

“Yes, how did you- oh no,” Twilight groaned. “Please tell me your family didn’t pay to cover up a serial killer in the family. Please?”

Raven shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t even know about The Marie until just now. I know him because there’s this family saying, ‘Don’t be like Cousin Song’. He was considered a major disappointment to the family, bringing embarrassment and shame to them all at the time. Nobody would talk about why, but the timeline matches, as far as I know. I mean, I asked a bunch of times what Cousin Song did, and the furthest I got was ‘If your great-grandfather was here, he could tell you,’ but that’s it. I just don’t know.”

Rubble leaned back into the chair. “Ok. So, we have a possible serial killer that the family covered up that has the same MO as the decades-old corpse behind us, a giant sigil in a house within a house designed to lock something in that requires so much spellwork we can’t even source it all, a ghost that considers himself an entertainer in the worst way, a bunch of major cold spots, and a big-ass library with books so secretive even the author’s families didn’t know about them. SO, what ELSE do we know?”

“What I want to know,” Treble growled, staring at the book on the table, “Is why somebody thought it was a good idea to bring the Crow’s Hand out of the box?”

Spooks leaned forward and grabbed the book, pulling it to himself and flipping to a marked page with a practiced hand. “Because some of the smaller glyphs used in the overarching spellwork in the Groundskeepers house pointed to it. And I think I found the exact spell they used.”

DT threw his hands in the air. “Oh, fucking wonderful. Glad to know I was standing underneath a giant armed nuke with nothing more than a taser and some holy water.”

Indigo flinched as she leaned forward. “Someone want to explain Mr. Drama Queen here?”

Dusty chuckled. ‘There’s no explaining this guy, honestly. But what he’s currently got his nipples in a tweak over is this book. It’s called The Book of The Morrighan. Written during the crusades by a coven of Celtic Witches who worshiped a goddess known as the Crone of War, it was a how-to manual on not only evading capture, rigging the ‘tests’ the crusaders used to determine if someone was a witch, and outright killing soldiers of god, it was intended as a countermeasure to the Malleus Maleficarum, or the Witches Hammer, a book written by the church that detailed in great measure the proper methods of torture, execution, and disposal of those guilty of witchcraft. It was war, back then, and these were the nuclear options. Unfortunately, neither side was shy about using either of them.”

Raven gave the book a distasteful look. “So what good… or bad… does any of it do now?”

Treble groaned and took over the explanation. “Because people are psychopaths. These weren’t just spells about killing soldiers in large numbers, evading capture, and cheating on the final. This was the kind of magic written specifically to subvert the power of God on Earth. There’s even a rumor that one of the spells in here can kill The Walking Man.”

“Who?” Twilight asked, then quieted down as Rubble gave her a strained look.

“Trust me, don’t ask. We’ve never met him, but we’ve heard stories. Like how he almost tore a hole in the heart of London a few years ago. But back to more pressing and depressing matters. Spooks, you said you found the spell?” RM redirected, looking to their resident scholar.

“I have. Mostly. It’s more like a template. The finer details are all situational, of course, like time, place, person, all that happy hoo-hah. But I was right that it’s a binding spell. It’s designed to lock a vengeful spirit in place, and turn it into an attack dog. It’s like that scene in Harry Potter where they blinded the dragon in the goblin’s vault,” Bones added, to the comprehensive relief of pretty much everyone in the room. “And it’s not just normal spirits. We’re talking like, Jack the Ripper moves to Amityville. Seriously deranged and psychotic presences. Which, naturally, isn’t the worst part.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Dusty whined. “I hate it when there’s more.”

“Which is always,” Spooks mused. “The spell isn’t just a cage. It’s a generator. It’s designed not just to trap a spirit, but to empower it. Feed it.”

Twilight cringed. “What do you mean, feed it?”

Treble shook his head sadly. “I’ve heard of this shit before. I mean, not this spell in particular, or I’d have just ran out the room screaming in the first place, but stuff like it. It’s ritual sacrifice. Which is both extremely powerful and super nasty magic.”

“Wait,” Indigo jumped in. “Don’t you have to do a bunch of stuff for a ritual sacrifice? Like, I don’t know, a ritual?”

“Normally, yes,” Spooks answered. “That’s something Hollywood gets disturbingly right, if not the details. There’s usually a lot of to-do in a ritual sacrifice, because you have to get the thing’s attention first, so it knows it’s dinner time. Otherwise you’re slaughtering cattle in an empty field. But imagine not having to get its attention every time. Having a monster in your basement you can just throw the hogs to whenever they step out of line. This is ritual sacrifice turned into fast food. If this thing is strong enough, they might not even need to do the killing themselves. Of course, there is still an element or two they need for each death, otherwise it’s just a body. Sacrifice requires intent. Accidents and murders in blind rage don’t have the right… they don’t flip the right switches, so to speak.”

“So if they’ve been feeding this thing since… god knows how long,” Raven interjected, having regained enough of her senses to ask questions again, “Why haven’t there been any stories in my family about the ghost before? I’d imagine keeping this thing on a leash would lead to at least someone in the family seeing a floating book or two. I mean, I don’t expect they’d have let outsiders know, but I’d like to think I wasn’t that out of touch with things around here.”

Spooks gave her a sad look. “Because the phenomena didn’t start until the meat ran dry. Your grandfather, I assume, was one of the people feeding the thing. When he died, the fresh food went away, and the seal started to weaken. Now it’s slowly getting out, it’s a lot stronger, and it’s very pissed off. Even the dead have a survival instinct. Your family probably tuned tail and ran from the house when they realized what was going on. I think your grandfather left you the house because you were the only one who didn’t know about the ghost. Maybe he wanted to just let it die. He certainly couldn’t have expected you to fed the damn thing, or he’d have given it to someone else,” he offered consolingly.

It wasn’t much in the face of the knowledge that her family was not only responsible for covering up a serial killer, but had taken over his work to keep him happy in the hereafter, but it was something. A sign that her grandfather regretted his actions, and sought to put things in the hands of someone with no blood on them.

“Of course, there’s also the possibility that he brought you here so the damn thing could eat you, shut up again, and the house would go to someone else who would keep on feeding it,” Treble mused darkly.

“You are SO CLOSE to fired, young man,” Raven growled.

Act Twelve: Understudy

Act Twelve: Understudy

While horror as a genre, in all its mediums, possesses many cliches and tropes within its trappings -monsters and madmen, strange phenomena and disturbing imagery- there is an entire end of the spectrum that goes woefully undervalued and unnoticed by all but the most careful critic and avid reader: the protagonist. Many people focus so intently on the villain, the danger, and the visuals of a ‘proper’ horror story that their only concern when it comes to the main character is that they aren’t a bland, inorganic fill-in for any John Doe who might have happened into whatever unfortunate circumstance would happen to befall them.

A proper protagonist is a difficult trap for any writer to fall into. Some writers rely on a familiar framework set in motion by their predecessors, finding a template that has proven popular and empathetic to the scenario, applying their own spin and careful touch to their ‘hero’s’ creation. There is nothing wrong with this approach, technically speaking. If it is to be believed that there are no ‘original ideas’, then the next best option is an ‘original combination’; an individual take on a popular recipe that falls perfectly in line with the rest of the menu. It is the responsibility of the author, of course, to ensue that even if the character they commit to the page is an ‘homage’ to a previously existing entity, no matter how far-reaching or how tentative the relationship, that there is enough individuality in their creation to both hold the attention of the reader and generate an emotional connection that drives the audience to root for the hero’s success, no matter how slim.

For some characters, it seems, the best way to a reader’s heart is through a healthy blend of humor, compassion, and the well-developed capacity to be an absolute pain in the ass. “I’m just saying that we need to be wary of the possibility that this entire house is a bear trap with your name carved into the pressure plate,” Treble said politely, addressing their more-than slightly frustrated employer. “If you walk around in a hell hole like this, thinking that you’re just here to do a load of laundry and leave quick as you like, you’re gonna end up with your head in the dryer.”

Raven Inkwell, to her credit, understood exactly what DT was trying to say. In his own weird, overly descriptive way, he was showing concern for the idea that she might become complacent in light of the idea that her grandfather had brought her here under the impression that she was to do something good with all this evil. What she did ‘not’ appreciate, however, was the boy’s rather disturbing proficiency in listing all the ways her new house could kill her if she so much as sat in an armchair incorrectly.

“As much as I would enjoy hearing more of your theories on how my obituary could be a wonderfully colorful affair, I’m going to have to ask very nicely for someone in this room to shut you the fuck up,” she finished tersely, leaning her head into the back of her seat and redirecting her rather narrowing attention span to the ceiling situation. Which seemed to be the most generically uneventful thing in the room. She took at least a little bit of comfort in the fact that, even in a haunted house, something could be boring.

Treble’s response, whatever it may have been, was immediately drowned out by the sudden presence of a rather well-stitched throw pillow all up in his face. “Gladly,” Dusty groaned, holding the fluffy gag in place with a single arm and only a modicum of actual effort. He was, after all, much stronger than the resident ‘pretty boy’. “Look, he has a point. Especially with you walking around with a head injury, which our resident creepologist will tell you is a massive handicap in a haunted house, keeping you in one spot is probably our best bet.”

“And who exactly is going to show you around the house?” Inkwell countered, rather perturbed at the idea of being benched. Indigo had long since forfeited the argument, rather well-practiced in letting bone injuries heal. She was also completely in favor of any idea that kept her the hell away from the rest of this creepy-ass house.

“Twilight is,” Treble said cheerfully, much to the dismay of Miss Sparkle herself.

“Ex-cuse me?!” Twilight shrieked, nearly falling out of her computer chair. “H-how...what… absolutely NOT you two-toned snake charmer!”

Dusty and Rubble exchanged smirks. “Snake charmer,” Rubble chuckled. “That’s new.”

“Strangely appropriate, given his neighbors,” Dusty agreed.

“Sirens are part fish, not snakes. You’re thinking lamia,” Bones interjected. The group stared at him for the half second it took to realize there wasn’t really any point in commenting, then returned their attention to the conversation at hand.

“Well, who else is going to show us around?” Treble asked calmly. Almost infuriatingly so. “None of us has read the most recent blueprints, and the only device you trusted me with in the field is currently… indisposed.”

“You mean demolished. Annihilated. MURDERLIZED,” Twilight growled, holding up the loose bundle of wires and plastic that once was the EMF reader. “So who’s going to sit here and watch all of my equipment?!”

Raven raised a hand. “While I won’t pretend to know what each and every thing you’ve dragged into my house under the false assumption that it would survive the experience, Miss Sparkle,” a comment that elicited a weak moan from the scientist, lamenting her poor, sweet, uninsured computers, “I do know my way around a computer or two. I promise to do little more than alert you when something goes ‘ding’ rather alarmingly, and stand at attention with a fire extinguisher.”

“And it’s not like I’m a complete idiot, you know,” Indigo growled. “I may not be the scientist you are, but I am one of the highest-ranked students at one of the most academically inclined schools in the county, thank you very much.”

Twilight gave them both very careful, highly appraising looks. Unable to think of an argument that didn’t sound both highly degrading and extremely pompous, she pressed her argument in a different direction. “So what, I’m just supposed to follow you around with my tablet and read the map to you while you boys swing wildly at anything that looks even remotely out of place?”

There was a soft thud as Spooks closed his book and set it on the table. Treble noticeably scooted away from it. “It’s what I do almost all the time. Listen, Twilight, I know you don’t know us anywhere near enough to be comfortable. But I would like to point out that I have, on multiple occasions, depended on these three to save my life on multiple occasions, and have never been disappointed. I can assure you, with no hesitation, that under the current circumstances there isn’t a safer place in the house. The way I see it, our best option is for you to come with Treble, Dusty and I, while Rubble stays here with these two.”

Rubble groaned loudly. “And why, exactly, am I staying on the bench?”

“Because stairs,” Spooks said simply.

“Oh.”

“Um...” Twilight said slowly. “Stairs? Why? All of the cold spots are on this floor, or immediately adjacent. Even given the one staircase he’d have to traverse to go down a floor, I sincerely doubt he’d be much of a hindrance.”

“Except when we have to run away,” Dusty said pointedly.

Indigo chuckled. “I thought you guys were the type to never back down from a fight?”

All four of the boys, in a comfortable moment of camaraderie, exchanged amused looks before bursting into laughter at all four corners. “Please!” Dusty howled. “Why do you think I wear sneakers with wheels in them?!”

Rubble held his stomach as he gasped for air. “Sugar, we’ve run from pretty much everything we’ve ever fought, at one point or another. I mean, I love a good fight as much as the next guy, but we’ve run afoul of the kinds of things that make your eyeballs hide somewhere anatomically improbable.”

Spooks nodded politely, still wearing a small smile that would look almost sad on anyone else. “He’s right. We need to be ready to run -to OR from- at a moment’s notice. But besides that, Twilight, I can understand your primary concern. You’d much rather stay here, hiding behind the safety and familiarity of your machines, right?” he asked, not unkindly.

Twilight nodded, still taken aback by the outburst of laughter. “Yeah. But if you trust these guys as much as all that, then… I guess I’d be just as safe on my feet. I mean, I doubt anywhere here could be considered ‘secure’ or anything like that, but at this point it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other, right?”

“Exactly!” Treble agreed, all too loudly. “Now then, if we’ve an accord, I’d like very much to get back to walking around and sticking my face where it most annoys our esteemed host! I don’t know about you lot, but I’m feeling rather emboldened by a sudden urge to find the most disagreeable anger of this so-called Marie and shove my foot so far up it it comes out the other end well-buffed!”

Dusty rolled his eyes and rifled through their bags. “Oh, boy, he’s feeling heroic And here I thought tonight couldn’t be long enough.”

Twilight assembled a smaller bag full of equipment the boys hadn’t even bothered to look at let alone try to learn. “And where was this heroism when our school was neck-deep in extradimensional alien flesh?”

There was a light shuffling sound as Spooks sidled up next to the departing party with nothing more than a rather disagreeable book in his shoulder bag. “Probably ALSO neck-deep in extradimensional alien flesh.”

“...point,” Twilight muttered.

After the boisterous entourage had left, Rubble sank back into the largest couch available, after doing what little he could to help the ladies move some furniture and computers around to make monitoring them more practical. Not to mention within reach of the snack cooler. They’d even repositioned the cameras to keep watch down the hallways so nothing like the little girl-doll could sneak up on them again. Assuming it hadn’t just materialized.

It was getting later and later, and despite their enthusiasm and assorted machismo, even the boys were feeling the wear and tear of the night shift. “Alright, that’s it. If I keep forcing my eyes open like this I’m gonna break the hinges. We gotta do something about sleeping,” Rubble whined.

Indigo coughed indignantly as she fiddled with one of the more hopefully simplistic computers, which looked an awful lot like some kind of radar. “You want to SLEEP?! In this death trap?!”

Raven gave her a baleful sideways glance, but grunted her agreement. “Indeed. I aim to live here and I wouldn’t dream of closing my eyes for any length of time. So unless one of the skills on your surprisingly long list of things I’m not sure a teenager should be able to do is sleep with your eyes open, then I doubt any of us is going to feel anything close to rested before we leave this building.”

“Nah, Spooks is the eyes-wide-open sleeper. But we could, you know, do it in shifts?” Rubble offered.

Indigo blinked. “Isn’t that how people get offed in horror movies? One person stays awake and gets killed while the rest of the room is unconscious?”

He shrugged in response. “So two of us will stay awake. You only need 45 minutes at a time to recover a little energy. Fifteen to reach REM, fifteen to actually rest, and fifteen as a buffer. Look, I’ll even stay awake first and second, as long as I get to sleep sometime.”

“As good as that sounds, one of the few things I do know about head injuries is that you shouldn’t let yourself fall asleep That’s how comas happen. But if you two want to take turns napping on the job, be my guest. Just don’t expect to get paid for snoring,” Raven chided.

“I don’t even WORK for you!” Indigo protested.

“Hmmm. Fair point. So you get to sleep first. I’ll keep an eye on the machinery, and Rubble can watch the doors. Sound fair?” Inkwell offered.

“Fine with me,” Rubble grunted, sitting up in his couch so his gaze met the entire room.

Indigo shuffled around, maneuvering her bad shoulder around the sharp metal edges and heavy wood surfaces, finding solace in the loveseat under the window that she wished to the high heavens would just open. Laying herself out and putting extra pillows under her bad arm, she let herself get as comfortable as possible. She only wished she had more room to get comfortable. Like the hospital bed she -and with a side note, Rubble- ought to be lying in right now.

Zap had done a fine job of ignoring Rubble’s blatant disregard for his well-being. She understood not being able to afford the bills: her athletic prowess had earned her the scholarship she’d needed to get into Crystal Prep, which was only the first step in her rather lengthy and demanding life plan. Even so, before Crystal, when she was just an adolescent kicking the ball as best she knew how so that her parents didn’t have to couch-dive for loose change , she knew the value of taking care of yourself. She knew little to nothing about Rubble’s own plans for his life, his own goals, but he knew no one ever got where they wanted by breaking their foot through sheer stupidity and bullheadedness. If Rubble didn’t seek professional help for his injury -beyond the therapy and occasional appointment- he might lose the calf muscle altogether.

Of course, in the time it took her weary mind to reach that conclusion, she’d found enough of her exhaustion to douse the flame of consciousness.

“I swear to god if Rubble is asleep when we get back I’m waking him up with a goddamn hysterectomy,” Dusty growled as the troupe stomped their way to the library. Even with all the talk about stairs, nobody had wanted to venture more than a floor in either direction, and Twilight had been rather dour about missing out on the vast collection of knowledge presumably less than half a kilometer away. Spooks was still a little spiteful about his grandfather’s secrecy, and had decided to dig around for any other mentions of his family’s name, while Treble simply wanted a big giant fuck-off room in which he could see the bad guys coming, and Dusty had little interest in exploring the rest of the house anyways, for fear of digging up more kids’ corpses. Or worse, running afoul of them.

“I don’t think that’s how being a guy works,” Twilight said with a distasteful look.

“It’s certainly how being a pu- OW,” Dusty barked, as Treble elbowed him in the ribs. “Jesus, ok. I’m just saying, if he’s gonna be all gung-ho about getting checked out AMA and diving right into another case, the least he could do is stay awake for the goddamn thing.”

“...wait, he did WHAT?!” Twilight shrieked, as they rounded the corner to the open area that marked the entrance to the grand library.

“Oh yeah,” Treble said, with a hollow laugh. “His mom was pissed, even with how little money hey have. I mean, I’m pretty sure any parent would gladly shoulder whatever debt they needed to to see their kid happy and healthy, but Rubble’s… well, Rubble.”

Spooks shook his head. “Personally, I think he just hates doctors.” The other thee looked to him for further elaboration, and found none. Instead, he simply pushed the doors to the library open, and gasped slightly at the sight before him.

Treble and Dusty rolled their eyes at him at first, mistaking his surprise for awe. Then something occurred to them. They looked around, unsure of what to look for, or what was different. Then Treble looked back to Spooks, who was still staring, wide-eyed, up at the higher levels of the room. Following his gaze, he quickly found the answer to his question. The light. It was the light that was different. It had paled in some areas, focused in others. Where once there was a gentle blanket of even yellow light, offered by luminescent bulbs, there was now an eerie, sickly glow.

The source of which was not difficult to find, as Dusty and Twilight soon caught up with the others and saw as they did: each lamp, each hanging bulb, each candle on every table, now shone out of the hollowed out cavern of a dead child’s head.

Act Thirteen: No Flash Photography, Please

Act Thirteen: No Flash Photography, Please

What is it about children in a horror setting that people find so disturbing? Could it be the obvious corruption of innocence? The natural protective instinct in adults to protect the younger generation? Surely seeing a child suffer would cause great pain for most people. To see an adolescent, a toddler, a child of any age, be taken by something evil, malevolent, and used for some dark malicious purpose is a great source of discomfort and turmoil for adults. Many may feel that they had failed in their natural responsibility, their evolutionary drive, to protect the young in the tribe, to ensure the survival of the species.

There is a more sinister possibility. Many postulate that children are the pinnacle of innocence. That we only grow corrupt and evil thanks to the world around us. Some children may just be born bad, of course, but what if they weren’t the exception? Is it possible that the innocence we so blatantly cherish is, in fact, a result of the nurturing behavior of their guardians? If it were possible to raise a child successfully, with no emotional motivation or input whatsoever, would they still be the sparkling gem of untouched joy we so ignorantly assume? Or would they turn out just like all of those ‘bad kids’ who ‘never had a chance’? What if the malevolence and insidious behavior in horror movies that so disturbs us is just a glimpse into the true nature of humanity, before we stamp it out with ‘good behavior’?

“You know, we really should have stopped to use the restroom before we left,” Treble remarked. Even as he spoke, all of his emotion and reason seemed to whoosh out of him in a heavy sigh. One that said ‘Why me, God? I said I was sorry.’

Twilight took a few steps back towards the door, her back hitting the wood of the door frame. This struck her as curious for two reasons. One, she didn’t remember the door being closed. Two, the doors opened into the library. She spun on her heel to see that the door had, indeed, closed behind them. Not with a great whoosh and bang, but so quiet as to be almost courteous. “What?!” she shrieked.

“Lemme guess. Door’s closed?” Dusty asked, not turning around.

Twilight shook the handle voraciously. “Yes!”

Spooks heaved a sigh much like Treble’s. “And it’s locked, isn’t it?”

She gave one last jerk, falling back a step as she lost her grip. “Also yes! Is this… normal for you guys?!”

“Yes,” the three said in unison.

Everyone stood rather still for a second. When none of the heads moved, save for the flickering of the lights in their skulls, the group slowly made their way further into the room. Twilight had stepped quickly to stand between the boys, who had unconsciously closed in around her in a protective circle. “Dusty, tell me you brought something heavy and swingable,” Treble asked in a small, uncharacteristic whisper.

“Always,” DD responded, pulling a large wrench out of the bag.

Twilight eyed the weapon for a second. “Ok, not that I’m complaining about you having something nice and heavy and metal to swing at… whatever there is to swing at, but why is it a wrench?”

Spooks glanced over his shoulder. “He once took it as an impromptu weapon into the boiler room of the school when we were fighting a warg, and ended up knocking a steam pipe loose. And then immediately fixed it. Now it’s his favored weapon. Seriously, I think he has all the necessary proficiencies for it.”

Dusty just chuckled unevenly, both amused and highly put-off. “I’d say we should split up, but I could feel my body rejecting the words even as I said them.”

There was a general murmur of agreement, and the group seemed to shuffle, massed together, down the center of the library. The middle of the room seemed to be perfectly framed to guide newcomers to a large wooden desk. In any normal library, this might be a receptionist’s desk, but in this private library, it seemed to simply be a reference desk, with a great card catalog to ease what would normally be a great chore of finding one book amongst the many. Almost literally a needle in a needle stack. Twilight rounded the side of the desk quickly, giving a large berth to the child’s head lamp at the end. She tried not to look at it, but as such things went, she saw more that she would have liked.

The ‘lantern’ was little more than a face. No eyes, no teeth or tongue in the mouth. As if a small mask with short brown hair had been stretched over a hollow sphere with a light in the middle. The eyes cast small beams of light like an unearthly gaze, even as the mouth gave the illusion of screaming light. Tearing her eyes away from the awful sight, she moved quickly to stand behind the desk and rifle through something she finally understood in this giant mess: the Dewey Decimal System.

In the meantime, the boys had taken up post around the desk as Twilight went to work. As the desk was effectively a circle with an opening at each side, and a generous amount of room to move around in the middle, Treble and Spooks had taken one side while Dusty stood guard over the other. Of course, this put him closest to the hollowed out head, and he debated whether turning it away from him was worth touching the damn thing. Visibility in the library wasn’t exactly limited, as the lights, such as they were, still seemed to cover every corner of the room. Which could also mean that, should someone be looking through those children’s eyes, they could see everything going on.

“What are you even looking for?” Treble grumbled at Twilight, after a few minutes of quite shuffling and fussing about.

Twilight pouted at the catalog almost childishly. “Honestly, I only have a general idea. Mainly books with weird titles like your… Crow’s Hand or whatever. Or anything with the Bones name on it. Something that falls in with all the weird stuff we’ve put together since we got here. It’s not exactly like we’ve found any kind of paper trail.”

“That’s true,” Spooks muttered. “Besides my grandfather’s text, we haven’t found anything exactly newsworthy. I mean besides the weird shit going on. Normally people in horror movies find like, a suicide note or some incriminating letter or something tucked away extremely convenient. I don’t suppose they’re a loose envelope or postcard floating around back there?”

Twilight coughed. “Hardly. Besides the dust it’s pretty immaculate back here. If we weren’t surrounded by god-awful monsters from beyond the grave I’d be very impressed. You guys didn’t see anything else the last time you were here getting that book?”

“Besides a distinct lack of kid’s skulls with glowing everything?” Dusty chided. “No. Please, keep looking.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and dove back into the catalog.

In the corner of the room, a ‘lantern’ blinked.

Indigo looked around the girl’s locker room, relaxing in the absence of other people. She liked changing in private. Not that she was ashamed of herself. She took good care of her health, and like to think she was in great shape. No, she just preferred to avoid locker room chatter. For some reason, most of the girls she knew seem to take their mental filters off with their uniforms.

Shuffling through her gym bag, she fussed over her tie and skirt, which seemed to have fused together into one great inconvenience. She was halfway through separating the two when she heard a locker door slam. Wonderful, Indigo thought. Hope they aren’t the chatty type. Digging her fingers into a particularly stubborn not, she jumped as she heard the same slamming sound, but closer.

“Don’t tell me another club is coming in,” she groaned to herself. She paused to listen for the shuffle of footsteps and the chatter of teenage girls (a rather unmistakable sound), and was somewhat confused when she heard neither. Her second assumption was someone looking for something, but she heard nothing but silence. No ruffling of bags and equipment, no stomping about, no voices, large or small. She was about to write it off when she heard another slam. This time, it was straight down the bench from her. She looked up from her bag, her clothes temporarily forgotten, as she leaned to the right to try and peer around the edge of the row of lockers.

She saw nothing, save for empty space. Although the far end of the room seemed a bit darker, as if a bulb had burnt out. Then it happened again. The slamming sound, and with it, the darkness seemed to lurch forward. She felt herself fall back on the bench, her rear end perched precariously on the edge of the seat. Another slam, and she slid off entirely, as the shadow grew closer, chasing the sound.

Once her butt hit the tile floor, she instinctively scooted back to the wall, her eyes wide and heart beating in her chest in a painful attempt to burst out of her ribcage. The sound grew more frequent, the shadow creeping forward at an almost steady pace. Leveraging herself against the wall, she pushed herself up with what little strength was left in her legs, as the rest seemed to have left her in a more successful bid to escape the oncoming threat. She looked to her left and right, and saw, rather curiously, that either side was flanked by the same stale gray lockers. She felt a rush of air behind her, and stumbled as she turned around to see the rows extend far beyond her line of sight.

A slam behind her made her turn back around, followed more quickly by another, then another. Whatever was coming after her was gaining, and she suddenly found the presence of mind to not be around when it got there. She turned tail and ran, a short moment of clarity bringing her back to the conversation about the boy’s track record of running away. She found herself making a mental note to not begrudge them their tactical cowardice.

A loud chorus of slamming metal brought her back to her present, as the sound and the unseeable fury behind her advanced at an inhuman pace. Locker after locker blurred past her until the walls were little more than a metallic haze as she ran as fast as she’d ever gone before. Daring a look past her, she found an extra burst of speed as she saw, almost felt the darkness on her shoulders. Whipping her head back around to the front as she pressed herself even harder, she stumbled over her feet as the ground in front of her came to a halt, with nothing beyond. Unable to repress her momentum, she all but threw herself over the edge, and found herself falling into the pitch.

Waking up in a cold sweat, Indigo panicked as she didn’t recognize her immediate surroundings, flailing wildly until she was quickly reminded of the pain in her shoulder. The sharp stabbing in her collarbone brought her back to reality. She forced herself back to her lying position, cursing her childish nightmares and exaggerated reaction.

Rubble noticed her flailing, not that it was hard to miss, and gave her a concerned look. “I’d ask if you were OK, but despite popular opinion, there is such thing as a stupid question. Bad dream?”

“Bad wake,” she groaned. “How long was I out?”

“Probably not long enough,” came a familiarly distressed voice from the other side of the computer desks. Raven poked her head up from under the table the monitors were set up on, her hair frazzled even beyond the presence of the bandage on her head. “I’ve been trying to get a grip on some of the more complex machinery here, and I think I know one or two of the bigger ones now. Like this radar looking thing? It counts localized telemetric signatures. Basically it counts how many people are in the room, alive or not.”

“Please tell me you’re just bringing this up as an anecdote, and that number is still three,” Zap groaned, settling her shoulder back onto the pillow and scolding herself for jarring the injury.

“Mostly, yes,” Inkwell said, climbing back into her chair. “It still says three, but at least now I can tell you if someone, or something, creeps in here without us having eyes on it.”

Rubble shifted his leg around to face the row of computers, and to get a better angle to lie down. “So what’s the other doo-dad you figured out?”

Inkwell poked a big metal case with a few buttons, dials, and a bright green display. “This thing. It looks like that EMF meter Treble broke. I think it’s basically a more powerful version. Unfortunately, this one I’m bringing up because it’s relevant. It’s been going crazy for the last few minutes, and I’ve been digging around under the table trying to see if I’ve got a loose wire or something. No such luck.”

Zap rolled her eyes in the general direction of Raven’s voice. “In layman’s terms?”

“Something’s happening,” Raven said sourly, “It’s been happening for the last few minutes. And since none of us has seen or heard anything beyond a bad dream-”

“The guys,” Rubble breathed. “Something’s going down in the library.”

Act Fourteen: Improv

Act Fourteen: Improv

The restless spirit is a continual focus of debate. Their causes, natures, and intent are all open to conjecture, and no two researchers can seem to agree on more than a handful of various ‘facts’ at a time. There are a few commonly accepted ideas, ones that permeate from the most well-read scholars on spirituality and psychic phenomena to the layman sitting at home watching a ghost story. Unfortunately, that very short list does not include a consensus on whether or not they’re dangerous.

Common theory points to the idea of two types of spiritual hauntings: intelligent and residual. Some investigators consider poltergeists a form of haunting, but they, by definition, are caused by a living being. Residual hauntings, or static hauntings, are akin to a stone tape recording. They’re a type of spiritual energy trapped in a specific location, performing the same action and making the same sounds over and over again. Ghosts that can be seen on specific nights of the year, or under certain conditions, fall into this category. It is generally accepted that they do not acknowledge their surroundings, simply repeating themselves over and over. Many cases involve this energy being tied to a specific object or location, and may require either a cleansing, or for the object in question to simply be removed, breaking the link.

Intelligent hauntings are, if not more common, much more popular in fiction and pop culture. It is a self-aware presence, capable of acknowledging and interacting with its environment. These spirits may manipulate small objects, verbally communicate, and move throughout their environment freely, even recognizing changes in their surroundings (i.e. new people, moved furniture, renovations, etc.). Most often these spirits may not be aware that they are dead, or that whatever obligation they feel to the world of the living has been fulfilled. Some experts encourage communication with a spirit of this nature, to encourage it to move on, or to hep it fulfill its last goals.

Unfortunately, there are some spirits with which bargaining is impossible. Some ghosts who have become so malevolent, so powerful, as to become something else entirely. We call them monsters.

The blinking went unnoticed at first. Unless someone was staring in the right direction, the most they would see would be a flickering light in the corner of their eye. The kind of thing most people had become used to, especially in a public school with a janitor seemingly allergic to new light bulbs. Infrequent to start, the lights in the room began to flicker at more rapid intervals, for varying lengths of time. It wasn’t until Treble looked back at the door they’d come in, did he see the lights go out. Only for a second, across one table down the aisle. He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head as the light came back on after a couple of seconds. “Um...” he started, in a low, unsure tone.

Spooks was the only one who heard him. “Um… what?”

Treble thought about what he thought he’d seen, then shook his head. “Nothing. Just a-” he stopped talking as one of the ‘lanterns’ on a nearby table blinked. That one he hadn’t imagined. Of course, the face was pointed away from him, so all he saw was a dimming of light in that general direction. “Ok, you know how once in a while we’ll ask one of those questions and have a brief moment of clarity in which we realize exactly how weird our lives are?”

Spooks nodded. “Yes. I’ve considered writing those down and selling them as a book.”

“Well, here’s your title: Is it possible for the light in a child’s skull that’s been turned into a lantern to go out if it’s not plugged in to anything?” he asked in a disturbingly calm tone completely out of sync with the slowly rising panic in his chest.

“Hmm, too long. Also, what?” Spooks asked, following DT’s gaze. By that point, the light had come back, and all was as it was a minute ago.

“FUCK ME!” Dusty barked. “This thing just fucking blinked at me!”

Spooks and Treble exchanged glances. “Is this the part where we run? I feel like this is the part where we run,” Treble reasoned, his voice wavering slightly.

“Run where?!” Twilight asked, having been yanked out of her reverie in researching the catalog by Dusty’s yelling.

“The door IS locked,” Spooks pointed out.

“Gee thanks. Dusty, is the lamp… head… thing… moving?” Treble asked, turning to address his friend.

Dusty tore his eyes from the offending décor to look at Treble. Then his face went almost as pale as Spook’s. “No, but THAT one is!”

Treble blinked, not turning around. “Let me guess. There’s one behind me?”

Spooks nodded, having seen it as well. Twilight just swallowed loudly and said, “Yes.”

“And it’s staring at me?” he continued.

“Uh-huh,” Dusty grunted.

“And it’s floating, isn’t it? Weird ethereal light coming out of its neck pointing at the ground like the beam from a UFO or something?” DT asked, reaching that level of panic where every sentence was as even and calm as a science lecture, if only because he’d burned out all of his energy trying not to spontaneously combust in fear.

“You’re surprisingly good at this game,” Spooks commented, taking a step back.

“One last question: Is it coming towards me?” Treble said, his entire body seemingly frozen in place.

Twilight nodded again, backing away at a slightly faster pace than Spooks, who had already reached the middle of the desk. “Unfortunately.”

“Dusty?”

“Yeah-huh?”

“Wrench.”

DD grunted as he tossed the heavy metal tool to Treble, who caught it after only a brief fumble. He then spun on his heel and yelled in what to some people might sound like panic, maybe, bringing the wrench around with all of his might. His eyes widened as the blunt end met the almost alien-looking head-lantern dead in the temple, bursting it open like a ceramic jar and sending pieces of… itself flying across a nearby table. Almost as soon as the hit connected, the light inside extinguished like someone had flipped a switch. “HO MY GOD let’s never do that again!” Treble cried, leaning on the desk as he held the wrench like a baseball bat.

“Do you mean before or after we deal with all of those floating kid skulls with lights in them?” Bones asked flatly, pointing towards the aisle leading towards the door. Indeed, all of the lanterns that had rested on the tables or hung from the ceiling in place of the normal lights had left their posts, floating in the air like a swarm of oversized, malicious fireflies.

Dusty toe his eyes from the oncoming swarm to level an unpleasant glare at Spooky. “Do you ENJOY being the source of all of these really disturbing sentences, or something?!”

Spooks pulled out his book and a flashlight, setting the tome on the desk and reading quickly. “Or something. Now shut up and play ball while I read.”

Treble nodded uncertainly, handing Dusty the wrench back in exchange for a sturdy metal pipe, which was shorter but easier to wield. Twilight just looked around in panic. “Um, what can I do?!”

“Hold the flashlight!” Dusty barked, as he swung for the fences, shattering a head and scattering the pieces to the wind. Some of the shards hit the other oncoming lanterns like shrapnel, which only served to disturb their flightpath, which they then corrected to aim themselves at Dusty. “He’s gonna need both hands!”

“What?!” Twilight shrieked, looking at a very focused Spooks with no lack of confusion on her face.

Treble grunted as his pipe knocked one of the heads into another, causing them to tailspin and clatter to the floor into pieces. It was less destructive, and impressive, than his first swing, but it was also much less tiring. “Just do it!”

“OK, OK! Here,” she sniped, grabbing the flashlight and holding it over the kid’s shoulder.

Spooks just nodded his thanks, and turned the pages as fast as he could. “Come on, where did I put it?” he grumbled to himself.

“What are you even looking for?!” Twilight demanded, as bits of face and hair flew past her. She tried her best not to think about it.

“I can’t remember how to pronounce it, alright?” Bones barked. Twilight balked at his uncharacteristic aggression, and decided to leave him to his work, silently urging him to hurry the hell up.

“Ey, Spooks, we’re running out of swinging room here!” Treble relayed urgently. “And I think the other half of the library just noticed there was a party going on over here!”

Dusty looked over his shoulder at a fresh wave of floating lanterns coming at them from the far end of the room, and groaned in protest as he leapt over the side of the desk to meet them head on. In his haste, however, he missed a head diving at him from above, which crashed into his back and shattered like the rest. Except this one detonated with a splash of fire as it died. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” Dusty shouted, shaking his arms and throwing his burning shirt to the ground. He smacked the few flames in his hair and on his arms away, and ducked under a nearby table as another head dove for him. This one, too, exploded, leaving the top of the table awash in flames. “Really?! Now they fucking EXPLODE?!”

Treble knocked a few more lanterns away, and turned to see Dusty scurry away from the end of the table now on fire. He snapped his head back in time to duck under a would-be kamikaze attack, then rose to knock another out of the air. “SPOOKS!”

“Yeah, I got it!” Bones shouted, climbing up on the desk, waving his arms wide.

“What are you DOING?!” Twilight shrieked.

“Giving them a target!” Bones yelled. Which is exactly what he did, as the heads stopped in the air, some mid-dive, and charged for him. Of course, he was planning for exactly that, and dove back under the desk with less-than-elegant results, landing solidly on his feet and feeling the shock throughout his legs. The lanterns, on the other hand, simply crashed into each other, leaving something akin to napalm showering over the desk. Spooks swept his book up in one arm , and held it open in front of him.

With the first wave having been knocked out of the air or lost in Bones’ fakeout, he found himself with a few spare seconds before the next wave reached them. Pulling a simple metal relief, brass and sharp, out of his pocket, he weilded it like a dagger, holding it in the air high above his head. “Guys, get in here!”

Treble and Dusty didn’t need any more encouragement. They scrambled across the floor and dove behind the desk just as Spooky started chanting: “Nomaku samanda bazara dan senda makaroshada sowataya untarata kanman! On sonbani sonba un bazara un patta! On amirite un patta! On shuchiri kyara roha un ken sowaka! ON BAZARA YAKUSHA UN!”, he shouted, punctuating the last sentence by jamming the relief into the wood of the desk still untouched by the flames.

The effect was almost immediate. A great ripple of energy washed over the area, bursting forth from the brass dagger in a fierce wave. It pushed back the lanterns, and even served to douse some of the flames. Not entirely dispatched, the lanterns tried their aerial assault again, only to be forced back as if against a great tide. Again and again they tried, only to be washed away and sent spiraling into the air over and over again. Spooks closed the book and leaned on the desk, taking a deep, raspy breath. Treble and Dusty followed suit.

Twilight looked around at the small armada of floating lanterns, now circling the barrier like vultures, then to the boys. “Alright. I’ve seen some absolutely weird stuff since I started hanging out with you guys. Floating, exploding heads! Dancing dead kids! Meat on the damn walls! But what. The HELL. WAS THAT?!”

Spooks opened a single eye and looked at her half-heartedly. “Japanese Buddhist Mantra. Derived from Sanskrit. It’s a prayer to the Five Great Wrathful Kings. Now please be quiet. If you get any louder this headache is gonna knock my ass out, and the only thing holding that barrier up is me staying awake.”

Twilight stilled herself for a second, then sat down hard on the floor, her exhaustion catching up with her. “And why do you know that?” she hissed.

Spooks gestured lazily at the book in his lap, which Treble picked up, taking over the explanation. “This,” he said raspily, catching his breath, “Is Spook’s own journal. It’s all the spells we’ve tried at one point or another that actually DID something, so we wrote them down. Well, he wrote them down. And now that we have some breathing room, there might be something in here that we can use to supplement the barrier in case this kid falls asleep.”

Spooks rolled his head to look at Treble, holding his eyes open. “Near the middle, the page with the blank papers clipped to it. Onmyodo barrier spells. You’ll need to make some talismans. I don’t have any proper ink, unfortunately. Maybe there’s a pen around here somewhere...” he mused, looking around him lazily.

Twilight held up a hand. “I got this,” she muttered, and fished around the top of the desk, brushing a few remaining flickers of flame out as she fetched a small bottle and quill out of a drawer. “Found it when I was looking for something useful. That work?”

Spooks nodded. “For now. Ideally I’d be using a homebrew ink made of some plants and minerals, but we’re not going for gold here.”

Treble held up one of the rectangles of off-white paper and groaned. “Is this that weird mulberry stuff? Last time you tried to get me to make a talisman I perforated the damn thing.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Give me those,” she huffed, taking the paper and book. “You boys write like you’re trying to bully the paper into finishing your sentences for you.”

Dusty raised an eyebrow as Twilight went to work copying the kanji and related symbols out of the journal. “Where’d you learn to write so fine?”

Not looking up, she answered, “Well, I don’t practice calligraphy, if that’s what you’re thinking. And from the looks of this journal neither do you,” she chided at Bones, who just shrugged. “But you learn to write softly when you’re trying to fit several hours of quadratic equations on a single 3x5 note card. We do have penmanship lessons, as well, but I only took one or two before I figured my time could be better spent developing my telemetric analyzer.”

“Tell me metric what now?” Dusty asked, tilting his head.

Spooks smacked him in the shoulder. “Telemetric, you ass. It’s automatically measuring and transmitting data wirelessly from a remote source to… you know what? I don’t have the energy or crayons for this. Please finish those barrier spells so I can pass out properly.”

Treble nodded at his weary friend, and reached a hand for some paper to help. Twilight, though, swatted it away. “Stop that. I don’t need your barbarian mitts getting us all napalmed.”

Dusty gave her a curious look, and glanced at Treble. “You’re right. We really DO need a word for that moment of clarity when you realize how fucked up your life is.”

Author's Note

Yay, references.

Also, if you know anyone who's decent at cover art and is a fan/would like this story, please let me know. I need better cover art.

Also I have a Patreon.

Act Fifteen: Monologuing

Act Fifteen: Monologuing

Spooky Bones had always thought the absolute best of his grandfather. Raised from a young age to not only believe, but understand the world beyond what he saw, Spooks never once doubted the old man’s sanity. Even as a toddler, Buried Bones would read him the most accurate, true-to-source fables, legends, and fairy tales he could find, in a rather successful bid to encourage not only an interest, but a sort of fearful respect of the supernatural world. Buried saw it with a kind of reverence, after a lifetime of personal experience, and never once took his abilities for granted. He had, at one time, been afraid of them. That much is certain. Yet he never, ever, let himself become complacent.

Bones’ mother, Summer Lullaby, had quite a hard time believing the ‘family way’ the Bones’ lived in. Her fiancee’, Bone Marrow, had warned her early and often that staying with him meant taking a dive into the deep end of the unnatural. She had, at first, thought it a running joke, as Buried ran a mortuary in his later years, and Marrow was a forensic medical examiner for the county. She’d always thought of their strange and fancifully dark banter as ‘gallows humor’. Marrow, however, was (and is) a good man, and refused to let himself marry someone who didn’t understand what she was getting into.

She still hasn’t forgiven him for leading her blindfolded into a room with a gumberoo, no matter how well-behaved it had been.

After she had come to terms with the existence of an entire world she couldn’t explain, she’d done her best to keep her normal life separate, which wasn’t too terribly difficult. Given that she didn’t share her husband’s penchant for attracting the strange and unnatural, and had a much more difficult time finding it, even when she was brave or irritated enough to go looking, it was few and far between that she needed to worry about any kind of crossover.

That is, until her son was born. In fact, even before Spooky Bones saw light for the first time, she had started seeing the world much as her husband and father-in-law did. Of course, it terrified her, and as an expectant mother, she did everything she could to learn how to protect herself and her family. Her immediate solution was to try to sever their connection to the Bones’ family legacy, moving away, changing jobs, and leaving behind everything of her in-laws’ that might leave the door open for anything dangerous or unexplainable.

This didn’t last long, as Spooky’s birth was heralded by a whole host of strange and unusual events, much to the distress of his mother. Marrow, of course, had lived with such phenomena his whole life, and did his best to ease his wife’s mind and soul, trying valiantly to show her that not everything inhuman was dangerous. In fact, it was thanks to these efforts that later attempts to keep his father’s legacy in tact had any success at all.

Spooky himself had never feared the unnatural world around him. Unlike Buried’s parents, Spooks grew up in a house where the weird and wild were commonplace. At least, more than usual. They didn’t exactly sit down to dinner with vampires, but very, very few other children could tell you what a Raven Mocker was at such a young age. At first, he’d thought it perfectly normal. Raised in a family that considered ghosts and goblins as facts instead of fictions, it was quite a few years before Spooky started to understand exactly how different his life was from others. Of course, he’d never considered it a bad thing.

That is, until he turned ten years old.

It wasn’t one of those ‘on your tenth birthday’ prophetic situations. In fact, besides hitting double digits faster than his parents were expecting (no parent expects their child to grow up as fast as they do, of course), it wouldn’t have been very different from any other year. Until his grandfather died. Buried Bones had lived to a ripe old age, and his death wasn’t a sudden, unexpected affair, but a death in the family is foreign territory to any ten-year old, no matter how many ghosts they’ve talked to.

For the longest time, Spooks looked for his grandfather’s spirit. Always the quiet sort, even before his old man’s death, it took his parents a while to understand what he was doing. Eventually, though, his father sat him down and explained that not everyone who dies leaves their spirit behind. He did his best to explain that his grandfather had lived a happy life, and didn’t have any regrets. There was nothing he felt unfinished in his life, and thus had moved on. Of course, telling a ten-year old that his favorite person in the world was not only dead, but didn’t see fit to stay around long enough to have a word with him for a minute or two, went about as well as you’d think.

His first reaction was to become, if possible, even more withdrawn. Even his usual outlets and conversation partners, whoever and whatever they were, noticed him grow quieter and quieter. Everyone chalked it up to mourning, which it was. The problem was, however, that the members of the Bones family didn’t even mourn like others. Spooks spent all of his time reading his uncle’s journals, his notes, trying to understand hide or hair of them. This would eventually lead to Summer’s adamant insistence that the journals be disposed of completely (a fight we know by now she lost, for a variety of reasons), but in the meantime, his parents simply assumed he was trying to be as close to his grandfather as possible.

Close, in this case, unfortunately meant looking for a way to talk to him, no matter where he’d landed himself in the afterlife. Spooky read on and on, focusing all of his effort on finding a way to contact the old man, to just have one last conversation with him, even if he only got to ask a handful of the millions of questions floating through his ten-year old brain. Finally, he’d found what he thought was a perfect answer: a simple ritual to speak to someone on the other side of the veil. He was so sure, as any child would be, that he had everything in order.

The truth, however, was that not only did he have the wrong ritual, as was expected of his level of experience, but the ritual he’d decided to use, he’d done so incorrectly. The night of the ritual was something out of a nightmare. Of a nightmare. Hiding himself in the far side of the attic, Spooks had gathered everything he’d needed for the spell. There was nothing out of the ordinary, at least to him, about the components: no blood, no sacrifice. Simply some rare flowers and some strange writings, which Spooks had become accustomed to.

Which also meant that there was no reason for his parents to suspect anything, right up to the moment when they heard their son screaming at the top of his voice, two stories up, over a television. When they finally reached him, after taking the stairs three at a time and breaking down the (unlocked) attic door, all they found was Spooky crying on the floor, surrounded by a whirlwind of papers and flower petals, and a crackle of energy on the air.

Spooky was blind for a year afterward, and all he would tell anyone about what he saw was that he’d ‘seen the true monsters of the world’. Besides his family, only three people in the world knew this story.

Two of which were watching him trying to hold his eyes open as he fought off a growing wave of fatigue. “So,” Twilight said after a few minutes, having drawn up a handful of charms, which had been stapled to the desk around them. Spooks had asked for nails, but the desk’s usefulness as a supply closet had run dry after the ink. “Setting aside the fact that you happen to have a book with just the right spell to ward off a bunch of possessed lantern head things, and that you happened to have just the religious relic to make it work, and wildly ignoring the reality of the situation I’m in that I can say any of that without a hint of sarcasm-”

“Little bit of sarcasm,” Treble noted, stapling a charm precariously close to the edge of the barrier. A lantern pushed against the invisible force, and came within half a foot of his hands, which he snapped back rather quickly.

“I would like to know how exactly you know onmyodo magic and Buddhist mantras,” Twilight snapped, her hand shaking in frustration over the last charm, which she moved away from the pen so as not to accidentally poke a hole in it. Like she had the previous one. She’d made a few attempts at this last charm, and in her frustration, was running out of paper. And patience.

Spooks sat up a little further, propping his weary head against the desk. “It’s a long story.”

Twilight looked around her with a sense of indignation. “Does it look like we’re going anywhere anytime soon?!” she hissed.

Treble and Dusty traded glances as Spooky heaved a sigh. “Look, I’ve seen… things. Monsters and maladies the likes of which drive people mad just by existing. After… after my grandfather died, my mother was adamant that we separate everything of my family’s strange and unnatural legacy from our lives. But even before then I’d started learning how to protect myself. My father, my grandfather, they taught themselves how to live with our gifts. And at first, that’s what I did. But when my grandfather died, I learned the hard way that not everything out there is just as afraid of us as we are of it. So I taught myself to fight. Onmyodo charms are just the tip of the iceberg. And truth be told, there’s an entire host of spells and wards in that book that could have saved us. But that mantra was the only one I had the materials for. We’re lucky there’s something here more effective than a ballpoint pen, or even this warding magic would be little more than five minutes’ rest after I pass out. So to answer your question, Miss Sparkle,” Spooks added, with a rare edge in his voice, “I would think you could be spending less time questioning my training and more time finishing the goddamn spell.”

Treble and Dusty had both edged slowly away from their friend, quietly convening in the corner as Twilight shrunk away from the slim teen, who now seemed like the largest person in the room. “...sorry,” Twilight muttered, more than slightly belittled. She finished the last ward with a steady hand, and stapled it herself to the desk behind her. Even though there were no outward signs of the magic at work, she swore she felt a slight breeze around her.

Dusty looked back and forth between them, deciding that the moment of tension had passed, and crawled back to sit next to Bones. At least, he was going to, until he felt a hitch in the floor underneath his hand. He pressed on it curiously, and felt a bit of give. “Um, Treble?”

“Yeah?” DT replied.

“Got a flashlight?”

His only answer at first was a bit of rustling as Treble checked the surprising amount of pockets about him. Of course, there was a rather large, heavy flashlight in the bag, but it was on the other side of Twilight and Spooks, and at the moment Dusty would have rather crawled under an electric fence, and figured he’d have about as much luck asking one for help. Feeling a light tap on his shoulder, he reached around and grabbed the small keychain light Treble handed him.

There was still light in the library, of course, thanks to the glowing heads, but the barrier kept them far enough at bay that even with their intensified glare, they did little more than provide enough light for Twilight to write by (with no lack of grumbling). So Dusty needed all the help he could get in trying to find a small hitch in a large floor. Of course, after a few passes with the flashlight, he located it again. Then swore in a quiet, frustrated string. “Well, the good news is we don’t have to sit around waiting for the second barrier to fall.”

Spooks gave him a sideways glare that could have shrunk a dragon into a gecko. “And what, exactly, is the bad news?”

Dusty, to his credit, had decided well ahead of time that the floor was a much better place to stare than his friend’s face, and thus only slightly felt the searing gaze as it nearly lit his overly-gelled hair on fire. “You’re gonna have to do some walking. And maybe climbing.”

Treble looked over Dusty’s shoulder to see exactly where he was going with this, and sighed in disbelief. “You’ve got to be shitting me. A trapdoor?! We’ve been sitting on a fucking exit for the last fucking hour?!”

Twilight looked down at the tiny circle of light, then up at the boys, then back to the floor. “I want it on the record that I have never hated anyone or anything as much as I have everything about this right now.”

“Noted,” Spooks drawled with a low groan as he rolled over on his side, blearily dragging himself to all fours. “Now can someone open the damn door so I can climb into whatever hole we’re sitting on top of and go. The fuck. To sleep.”

Dusty flinched as Spooks’ normally calm demeanor devolved in his exhaustion to an uncharacteristic (and disconcertingly accurate) imitation of Rubble’s general outlook on life. “I got it,” he groaned, and lifted the trapdoor.

The door ended up leading them to a ladder, which led to a tunnel, which led to, almost insultingly, a smaller library. Actually, to call it a library would actually be an insult in and of itself to the grand display of bibliophilia above their heads. It was more like one of the many sitting rooms in the house, with a single chair in the center of a circular series of bookshelves. It was more like a private collection than anything else, made only more suspicious by the series of chains and thick glass protecting them.

Spooks had commandeered the only chair, and had passed out in almost seconds, while Twilight had sat on the angled ladder, somewhat uncomfortably. Dusty and Treble, however, had no such intentions of staying still. The former had immediately taken to looking for another secret door or passage, in case something else awful and flammable decided to rear its ugly head. The latter, in contrast, had taken to picking locks and breaking glass, digging through this secret, locked up book collection for anything more relevant than a cookbook. “You would THINK,” Treble barked, as he tugged a rather impressive iron chain off of one shelf, “That SOMEONE,” he added, throwing it aside, “would have thought to put their OWN WARDS up in a library full of magical tomes and old-ass religious texts! Especially if it sat on a room like THIS,” he finished loudly, ramming the sturdy lock on the glass door with a practiced shoulder.

“Oh sure,” Dusty grunted, patting the floor and baseboards like they were hiding drugs, “But where’s the fun in that?!”

Twilight just held her head in her hands. “What the hell is wrong with this place?” she muttered. “I just… I just wanted to do some research. Maybe find like, a woman’s ghost at the top of the stairs. Get some okay-ish readings. I mean, this is the first time I’ve even gotten to USE most of that equipment. How did this go from some stupid overnight field trip to hiding in secret basement rooms from exploding kid’s skulls?”

Treble gave her a sympathetic look. “Honestly, I don’t have an answer from you. That’s the problem with what we do. We never know how bad it is until it IS that bad. There’s not really an early warning system for this kind of thing. At least, not one we’ve found that works. Oh, there are all kinds of talismans and stuff that are supposed to ward of evil spirits and foretell misfortune, but they’re about as likely to tell you that your fridge is going to die as point out the monster hiding in your basement. Magic and spiritualism is mix-and-matching at its worst, most of the time. That’s one of the reasons we even keep that journal Spooks pulled out. And even then not everything in there works on everything out there,” he jabbed a thumb at the trapdoor to punctuate his sentence.

Twilight rolled her head in frustration. Her hair was a mess, her ponytail long forgotten. Dark circles had painted themselves under her eyes, almost as prominent as the ones Spooky was wearing. Of course, he almost always looked like that. “What are you even doing here, anyway?” she asked wearily.

“What do you mean? You’re the one that wanted to tag along on our ghost hunt. We’re getting paid for this,” Treble pointed out.

“Not that,” she said dismissively. “This. You, in particular. How did you even get wrapped up in this insanity, anyway? From all the horror stories you’ve told me, I’d think there would be easier methods of self-harm available. And don’t give me that PR bullshit. I mean yeah, you talk fast and sometimes say the right things, and are either brave or stupid enough to go first in a darkened hallway, but what do you even DO?”

Treble gave her an appraising look, as if sizing her up and determining what kind of answer he felt she deserved. Eventually, he turned to Dusty, who had taken to sniffing around the base of Spooks’ chair. It was a testament to the small boy’s exhaustion that he didn’t wake up, even after being tilted a good two feet in the air, and dropped carelessly back. He even seemed to snore louder afterward, somehow. “Dusty, you got some insight into our little lady’s line of inquiry?”

“Oh no. Nuh-uh. I know better than to jump in the middle of this conversation.” When he saw the look Twilight was giving him, he elaborated, “You’re not the first person to ask that question, and probably not the last. But just like Spooky’s little tirade up there, Treble’s got his own story. And we all learned a long time ago to let each other tell our own. Besides, Treble just gets mad if I answer for him.”

“That I do,” DT chuckled.

“Then why did you ask?!”

“For fun,” Treble said simply, much to DD’s chagrin. “Listen, Twilight. If you’re serious about this… paranormal investigator thing you seem to have going on, then let me tell you you’re going to hear a lot of stories like ours. Everyone in the field’s got one. Some are more… troublesome than others. Take Spooky here. He’s got more right, responsibility, and reason to be here than the rest of us combined. But there’s certain things that he can’t do. Just like I couldn’t tell you which spell in that journal would have saved our ass in a moment’s notice, and Dusty couldn’t pronounce half of them anyway-”

“True story,” Dusty interjected, having moved on to digging around the tops of the bookcases.

“This kid couldn’t throw a punch to save his life. Believe me, he’s tried. That’s what he has Rubble for. And he’s a good kid. The kind that would never think to pick a lock or climb a fence or dig through somebody’s life story without a second thought to get answers. That’s what he has Dusty for. I feel confident that I can, at least a little, speak for the three of us when I say, we’re here for him,” Treble explained, waving a gentle hand at the sleeping boy. “Look, it’s a long story, and one I promise I’ll tell you when we get out of here. And that’s not and if. That’s a when. But I owe Spooky here my life. We all do. This kid… he’s something special. The things I’ve seen him do, it’s nothing short of amazing. And he’s given us something we didn’t have on our own. Purpose. Imagine, if you will, a world where we didn’t have to fight monsters. Where there was actually no such thing as magic and ghosts. Do you really think any of us would hang out with each other under normal circumstances?”

Twilight tilted her head in thought, her bangs falling in front of her eyes. “Not especially. I mean, Dusty and Rubble maybe, but you don’t seem like the violent type. Hell, you don’t even seem the type to really get into trouble.”

Dusty laughed out loud at that. “You obviously haven’t talked to many of the girls at our school yet.”

“Hush ye, good sir,” Treble hissed.

“You know what I mean. I’ve seen you in detention a couple of times, but you’re not exactly… him,” she gestured to Dusty, currently digging around under the ladder. She shifted a little to adjust her skirt.

“You’re right,” Treble replied. “I’m not. I can’t do the things they can. I can’t fight like Rubble, or even Dusty. I mean, he’s the one who taught me how to pick locks in the first place. Even with a name like Deep Treble I’m not really a good musician. But I do know something they don’t.”

“Which is?” Twilight pressed, sensing he wanted her to ask.

“People. Can you imagine Spooks just walking up to someone and saying ‘Hey, I think your house is haunted, can I poke around with this big bag full of stuff?’. Or Rubble, for that matter? I mean, this one would just as soon sneak into their house while their gone and perform a little Breaking and Exorcising. But people like me wouldn’t survive two minutes in a place like this without someone else throwing the punches, and people like them couldn’t even get their foot in the door without someone else to do the talking for them. So yes, I am the PR guy. I’m the guy that gets you to trust the Rubbles and Spooks and Dustys of the world so we can actually do our job and save people’s lives,” DT finished.

Twilight thought about this for a second. “Ok, I get why they keep you around, at least. But why do this to yourself at all? Why not find someone with more experience and just as good people skills? You know, someone who doesn’t need to stand in the back while everyone else does the fighting, no offense.”

“Oh, we never said he stood in the back. He likes to be front and center when shit hits the fan, if only to laugh at the bad guys when they stand in front of it,” Dusty chided. “It’s our job to make sure he doesn’t get his stupid ass killed in the process.”

“And you’re doing a fine job of it,” DT said encouragingly, earning a well-aimed middle finger from DD. “Anyway, Twilight, it’s like I said. I’m here for Spooks. I owe him a really big debt. I mean yeah, he saved my life, but we’ve all done that for each other time and time again. But he gave me something I can’t ever pay back, not really. But I’ll be damned if I don’t try.”

“Yeah,” Dusty agreed wistfully. “Rubble would tell you the same thing, actually.

Twilight looked around at all of them, rather seriously. “What?”

Treble paused for a second, before giving a meaningful look at Spooks, sound asleep and blissfully divorced from reality, if only for a moment. “A purpose.”

Author's Note

I swear I didn't mean this chapter to be as long-winded and talky as it got, but these guys have a mind of their own.

Act Sixteen: Eliciting a Reaction

Author's Note

Holidays were crazy. Sorry for the hiatus. Hopefully regular updates start again next week. Have a thing.

Act Sixteen: Eliciting a Reaction

Act Sixteen: Eliciting a Reaction

No good athlete likes being benched. Forced to sit on the sidelines, watching the action, unable to do anything but provide moral support, likely enough to be heard by their teammates as any individual in the roaring crowd. Yet there’s more to it than being bored or put-out, convinced that their talents are being put to waste. It’s the feeling of being helpless. Seeing your teammates, your friends, face obstacle after obstacle, one mistake after another, with no way to step in and save them.

This isn’t a problem reserved only for athletes, either. Anyone being told by someone else, or simply by circumstances beyond their control, that they can’t do anything to step in and assist those closest to them is one of the greatest frustrations of the human condition. A family member waiting in the hospital while the doctors do their job. A victim of a bank robbery unable to fight back against their assailants. The reader, seeing the events unfold before them as their favorite characters face challenge after challenge, armed with knowledge they only wish they could share with the people in trouble.

Few people understand this unique emotion more than those held back by physical injury. All of the willpower, motivation, and reason to jump into action, without the ability. Rubble glared at the only mildly foreboding doorway with all the welcoming grace of a claymore mine. More than once he considered the notion of actually setting one up, held back only by the knowledge of his friends’ unfortunate habit of running headlong into a room with no consideration for their surroundings until a few seconds after the fact. His gaze rolled over the series of books, tomes, and notes that, up to this point, had done little to answer any of their questions beyond what they already had.

The Book of the Morrighan, as appalling as it was, had done little to answer their more specific inquiries beyond explaining some rather unsavory details of the spellwork found in the Groundskeeper’s house. The rest of the book, while darkly informative, had little bearing on their current situation. What they needed was more detail on the house itself, its previous owners, and about the spirit currently hosting what had to be the most uninviting evening party the house had ever seen. At least, in recent memory. Hopefully.

Indigo had taken up as much of the couch as humanly possible, falling back asleep with little issue. Even with the possibility of her friends in danger they couldn’t define, there was little she could do with her arm in its condition, and running in half-armed and blind would only put everyone involved in more danger. Rubble had encouraged her to sleep, anyway, even helping her set up some pillows to support her arm and let her collarbone heal.

Unfortunately, that meant that only two people were left to maintain watch, one of which had a concussion. Raven had since reduced the swelling on her head with some ice from one of the coolers, which, thanks to a recently developed drop in temperature across the entire house, was melting slower than normal, and proving rather useful, if uncomfortable. Taking a nap, however, was out of the question, as a head injury put her at risk of not waking back up.

Rubble also didn’t feel safe falling asleep again, as he didn’t trust Raven to be able to hold her own against whatever the newest threat would be in her condition, and lack of experience. Not that his hobbled form was doing him much good. He’d rather walk into the dark naked and unarmed than admit it, but the pain in his leg had reached rather unfortunate heights, a side-effect (or rather, effect) of his injury that everyone from his doctors to his therapists to the damn dog had warned him about. He of course had pain medication, but anything stronger than Ibuprofen would put him in even worse condition than he was already in, and he might as well at that point go to sleep anyway.

He leaned uncomfortably on the arm of his chair, casting a sideways glance at Raven, who had taken over monitoring the equipment, if only to keep herself busy. His eyes rolled over Indigo, who was snoring mildly in her own little world, hopefully far away from this one (and the nightmare she’d had the first time round). Eventually, his gaze fell on the covered-up body of the poor puppet girl that had danced into the room only hours before. He’d lost all track of time, incidentally, and was merely guessing at how long it had been. Of course he could look at a watch, or clock, or computer screen, but in his experience they were about as reliable in a haunted house as a screen door on a submarine.

Ideas rolled around in his head as to exactly what to do with her, as even her morbidly preserved form had started to give off an unfortunately familiar foul odor, one that had filled him like spoiled drink at the Fall Formal. Eventually, he settled on one, and forced himself up to his feet, his leg protesting in impressive and unwelcome ways as he righted himself. Raven looked over the top of the monitors as the movement caught her eye. “What are you doing?” she asked, if only to know where to stand to be out of the way.

“I think we should burn the body,” Rubble groaned, leaning on his crutch and pivoting to face her.

“She’s just taking a nap you… god!” Raven bellowed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Rubble looked at her in confusion until her misunderstanding caught up with his. “Wha-NO. Not Indigo. The little girl! JESUS.”

Raven looked around the room for half a second, before her eyes fell on the bulging form underneath the coat, and she blushed sheepishly. “Oh. Yes. That… I mean… her. Well, ok, but the smell would be quite awful, wouldn’t it? It’s not like we have any ventilation in here.”

“Well, wasn’t there a great big wood stove in the kitchen?” Rubble pondered.

“Oh, sure, let’s hop on over to the other side of the house, leave Indigo here by herself, and the both of us can take our injuries to the far side of the building while hauling a corpse with us. There’s no way that can go poorly,” Inkwell said dryly.

“...Well, is there a CLOSER place we can light a fire without burning the whole thing down?” he grumbled.

“We could, you know, NOT burn the body. At least until we’ve either run out of things to do, ways to keep warm, and good ideas in general, or someone somehow fixes this mess and we can all walk outside,” Inkwell reasoned.

“OR,” Indigo barked, startling the two of them. Raven rushed to steady Rubble, who had spun on his good heel and missed the step with his bad. He gave her a grateful look as he leaned back on his crutches again. “We could NOT yell a bunch when someone is trying to sleep here?” Zap finished grumpily.

“Sorry,” Rubble groaned, taking the hint from Raven’s continued manhandling to sit back down. “I just… to say nothing of the smell, I don’t like the thought of that girl’s body just sitting on a couch like that. It’s not right.”

Indigo considered him thoughtfully, then looked around the room. Eventually, her eyes settled on the trunk they’d carried the books and other supplies in. The heavy, iron trunk. That you could easily fit a grown man into, let alone a little girl. “How bout that?” she asked, pointing at the box.

Rubble followed her finger, his eyes landing on the trunk. Immediately, he tried to think of all the ways that could go horribly wrong, But in fact, it wasn’t a terrible idea. It was solid metal, and even if it did grow hot, it likely wouldn’t melt any time soon. The worst that would happen would be burning the floor beneath it, a problem quickly remedied by finding a few even pieces of stone to set underneath it. Even if the fire grew to big, the trunk was airtight, and all they’d need to do would be to slam the lid shut to cut off the oxygen.

Raven seemed to consider the same idea. “That… might work, actually. I mean, we’d need to set it ON something to keep the wood floor from catching, but I believe there are some stone bookends floating around here. And if not, I’m not exactly concerned with taking a few loose bricks out of the crappy fireplace in the other room. And before you get any ides, I mean CRAPPY. We might as well cremate her on the damn floor,” she added, when Rubble looked ready to inquire about the fireplace.

“Yeesh. Well, ok. We have… a plan, I think?” he mused instead. “I mean, at least its something to DO. Now come on, let’s get to work.”

“Ok, so far we’ve only got one way out, which is up. Dusty, have you found anything?” Twilight asked, as DD knocked on the bare floor, his ear to the ground.

“Not yet, but there’s still a bookcase or two I haven’t checked, and I’m only halfway done with the floor,” he replied, scuttling about like the world’s nosiest horseshoe crab.

“Wonderful. You… keep doing that. Treble, any luck?” she redirected, moving to join him in his hunt through the formerly locked bookcases.

Treble shuffled through another in a growing pile of books, throwing it to the side. “Nothing immediately relevant, although I can understand why they had Bones’ Old Man’s work floating around. There’s enough magical theory and spiritual research here to start your own goddamn Brakebills. Hell, I’m finding stuff we could have used in earlier cases, which just makes me that much more eager to find any other living members of the Inkwell family and PLANT MY FOOT UP THEIR-”

“OK, OK,” Twilight interrupted. “I get it. Don’t suppose there’s anything we can use against… whatever this big bad monster ghost thing is?”

Treble pointed a finger at the smaller of three stacks he’d created. This one only had one or two books, as opposed to a great misshapen pile to his right, and a slightly better-stacked and only slightly bigger stack in front of him. “Those two are the only things I’ve found with anything I’d consider relevant. Spooks will know more once he’s recharged. The big-ass pile is either in a language I don’t read or is way far out of left field. Middle stack is stuff I fully intend to take home as danger pay. If there’s anything in the big pile you can read, have at. Otherwise, the bookcase to your left is also unlocked.”

Twilight looked back and forth between the somewhat disgraceful pile of forbidden knowledge, and the freshly broken-into bookcase of untouched tomes. “You know, had someone told me twenty-four hours ago that I’d have to make a choice between ancient arcane texts on the floor and ancient arcane texts in a bookcase of broken glass, I’d have backed away slow.”

Dusty rolled his eyes so hard they almost tumbled across the floor. “Yeah, we get that a lot, too.”

Twilight shrugged, carefully prying the bookcase open, and picking up a book at random. She’d barely opened the book, however, before a great scream rang out, and she dropped the book to the floor with a thud. “What was that?!”

Treble and Dusty immediately sprang into action, Treble pulling her away from the book, while Dusty leapt at it like a housecat. In fact, he was on all fours as he glared daggers at it, waiting for any kind of reaction. He leaned in, and smacked the top of it, poked it, and even flung the cover open. When none of that elicited a response, he stood up and looked at it strangely.

Then the second scream shook the room, emanating, it seemed, from the very walls. Even Spooks, in his exhausted state, snapped awake, looking around in sleepy panic. “The hell was that?!” he grumbled.

“That’s what I’d like to know...” grumbled Twilight.

Dusty looked around. “That sounded like… the house. So either Mr. Big doesn’t want us poking around these books, or-”

“Rubble found a way, yet again, to piss off the big bad,” Spooky groaned. Though he was smiling.

“Why… why are you smiling? Why is that a good thing?” Twilight demanded, slightly disturbed.

“Because-”

“-anger means weakness,” Rubble explained, covering his face to mask his lungs from the fumes emanating from the trunk. The girls stood on the other side of the room from the flames, eying him warily as he smiled at the fire. Seeing the confusion on their faces, he continued, “If the big nasty is getting pissed at us, it means we’re getting close to something he either doesn’t want us to find, or doing something that threatens his power. So either burning this body is weakening his grip somehow, or the boys and Twilight found something that He doesn’t want us to find. So our best bet, right now, is to keep doing exactly what we’re doing.”

“That’s all well and good,” Indigo mumbled through her sleeve. “But where exactly are we going to find, and I can NOT believe I’m saying this,” more kid’s corpses to burn?”

Some of the enthusiasm fell out of Rubble’s face. “I… have no idea. But I imagine we’re going to find at least one or two in our travels,” he added spiritedly.

“Travels? You’re not suggesting...” Raven said weakly.

Rubble nodded, and adjusted his brace until the pain subsided just a little bit. Pocketing a few prescription meds that he really should have taken a while ago, as well as some heavy and pointy metal things from their assortment of goodies, he hobbled along with his crutches, whistling to himself.

It didn’t instill any confidence in either of them when they realized the song was “A-hunting We Will Go.”

Act Seventeen: Never Say Good Luck

Act Seventeen: Never Say Good Luck

The human psyche is a fascinating creature. Constantly studied, treated, and manipulated, without a true, complete understanding of its inner workings, it continues to surprise and befuddle even the most educated scientists. Which is possibly the greatest possible irony; one of the most powerful supercomputers imaginable, and we can’t even use it to understand itself. Oh, sure, we know a few things. Until someone comes along and proves us wrong, which seems to be a recurring pattern throughout history.

The prominent theory of structure breaks it down into three systems: the ego, superego, and id. Much could be said about all three, but a brief summary describes them as an interacting, non-physical, system of mind. The id, or the unconscious, is responsible for our instinctual reactions. Comprised of the natural personality traits we develop at birth, it dictates our immediate reactions and biological urges. The ego, almost in contrast, is what mediates the outside world with our conscious thought. Its operations are based in logic, not instinct, and approaches external stimuli and problem solving almost mathematically.

The superego houses the conscience and the ‘ideal self’: a projected image of the proper way to interact in society, the image of personal goals and aspirations, and how to treat other people. It is the part of the brain responsible for punishing, psychologically, the conscious self when its actions are in contrast to the image projected by the ‘ideal self’. For example, being rude to someone may fall out of line with the ‘ideal’, and as a result the conscience may produce feelings of guilt as a punishment. Between the superego’s job as a conscience, and the id’s role in governing natural survival instinct, humans are, theoretically, equipped with the proper mental toolbox to approach any threat.

Unfortunately, Rubble failed Psychology.

“Are you sure we should be venturing about a haunted house with an injured party?” Raven asked pointedly, stopping short of outright ordering the boy to sit the hell down and not die. “I mean, what if the others come back and base is empty?”

Rubble, never having been one to allow rational thought to get in the way of good time, was never a fan of logic rearing its ugly head. “I… um… how about we write them a note?” he offered helpfully.

“And what happens when the house EATS IT, like all haunted houses in all horror movies seem to do?” Zap countered, moving to stand between Rubble and the door.

Rubble sighed heavily. “Look, I’m not suggesting that we traipse through every damn room in the house. Hell, not even on this floor. But if we have a goal of some sort, i.e., providing a proper burial to I don’t even want to know how many kids, then sitting on our haunches isn’t going to get us anywhere. We can’t reach the boys and Twilight on the radio, cell, or anything else, and we have no idea when they’ll be back, or even what condition they’re in. That cold surge a little while ago wasn’t exactly a good sign, and I’d rather be proactive then give our ungracious host a sitting target.”

Raven took a steadying breath, running a hand through her hair. “Ok, I get it. But what if burning the body didn’t do anything? What if that was all on their end?” she asked, gesturing in the general direction of the library.

“And what if that’s exactly the conclusion the others came to?” Rubble argued, with a not-too-subtle eye roll. “What if they haven’t found anything?”

“You know,” Zap grunted, “I know you’re making sense, but I’d really rather not walk headfirst into god-knows-what when all three of us should really be in the hospital.” She gave Rubble’s leg a knowing glare, as if willing it to fall off and run back to ICU on its own. “At the very least I’d feel better with you in a wheelchair.”

Rubble looked at her as if her arms had fallen off and flipped him the bird on the way down. “A wheelchair? Seriously? I’m not that broke-OW!” he shouted, as Raven tapped the back of his heel with her toe. “What the shit, lady?!”

Inkwell shook her head. “You aren’t even taking your pain meds, are you?”

He shrugged his shoulder, as if trying to loosen her imaginary grip. “I’d rather not be doped up in this place, would you?”

The girls traded glances. “That’s a fair point,” his employer conceded. “But a wheelchair wouldn’t go amiss. Fortunately for you, you’re not the first stubborn cripple to stamp through these halls. If we are going to trample through my house, then our first stop is the room under the stairs; it’s a storage room, and there’s an older wheelchair in it. You might even not hate it.”

Rubble looked back and forth between the two. “I’m not winning this argument, am I?”

His answer was a stereophonic “NO.”

“Ok, so someone made the big nasty angry. Neat. That still doesn’t tell us who did what, or what to do next,” Dusty whined, slumping on the ladder. He’d given up trying to find a trap door or way out, short of ripping all the books off the shelves. Twilight had actively assaulted him when he tried.

Spooks yawned largely. “Wonderful. Wake me up again when you figure that out.”

Twilight hadn’t even opened her mouth to protest before he’d fallen back asleep. Treble eyed him enviously. “That’s not a terrible idea. We should try and sleep in shifts while we’ve got this safe space. What do you guys think?”

Dusty nodded wearily. “Agreedo. If I don’t get some shut-eye I’m gonna fall down something stupid. Like a first-floor staircase.”

“There’s no such thing,” Twilight pointed out, earning little more than a sarcastic glance from the boys. The ones that were awake, anyway. “Oh,” she said quietly after a second. “I get it. Anyway. Sleep might not be a bad idea, but I’m not exactly tired right now. I’m used to all-nighters in libraries, so I can take first shift with one of you.”

Treble rolled his eyes back and forth in thought. “Alright. I might as well stay up with you. I’ve learned how to operate on little to no sleep. Normally, our local bookworm would happily stay awake and play ‘study-buddy’, but between the barrier up top and his typically abysmal sleep habits, I’m not surprised he’s out. Also, Dusty gets really, really stupid when he’s tired.”

“Um… how stupid?” Sparkle asked carefully, eying the scruffy juvenile.

“Like ‘Felony Misdemeanor’ stupid,” Dusty punctuated, stretching out on the floor. He emptied a bag and bunched it up under his head. Twilight took a quiet step back, deciding to let him rest, for all their sakes.

Treble grunted as he wrestled with another old lock. “Don’t expect us to keep it down, by the way,” he groaned, the rusty chain clattering loudly on the floor. Dusty raised a thumb in the air, and collapsed his arm. “Right. You find anything in that pile of rejects that’s at all useful?” DT asked his new ‘study partner’, who had taken to sitting next to the large pile of discarded books and sorting through them a bit more thoroughly than Treble had.

“One or two. Like you said, there’s not a lot that’s exactly specific to our current situation, but there’s some general knowledge here that might be helpful. I just wish my Latin was better,” she lamented, glaring at a particularly stubborn tome by flashlight.

Treble chuckled. “Please. I barely know two phrases. You’re far better equipped for this work than I am.” He smiled to himself, then squinted at the bookcase he was currently vandalizing. “Wait… Twilight, c’mere.”

Sparkle paused for a second, taking a last look at a particular passage, and set the book carefully aside. Scrambling over the assortment of books around her, she stumbled to her feet, almost crashing into DT. “What is it?” she said ungraciously, getting her bearings. Treble pointed curiously at a book in the middle row, off to the side. Nothing really stood out about it at first. It was similar in size, texture, even font as the ones around it. A simple brown leather book in a row of brown leather books, so well blended it took Twilight a second to figure out which little brown book he was pointing at. It wasn’t until she started reading the titles that something stood out.

“Thaumaturgy in Practice, The Good Book of Bad Men, Solomon’s Lock and Key, Peace and… Love Through Vegetarianism? Excuse me?” she asked indignantly,

“Yeah-huh,” Treble said, amused. “Unless the great Vegan conspiracy has infiltrated our newspapers, I doubt that book actually promises as advertised.” He reached to pull it off the shelf, but Twilight smacked his hand. “Wait!” she cried.

He took a step back, startled. “What?!”

She looked at the book nervously, then at Treble. “What if it’s, I don’t know, boobytrapped?”

Treble raised an eyebrow at her, then the other one at the book. “Actually… that’s not a terrible thought. Between the phone and the flaming death skulls, a trapped book on a locked bookcase isn’t a far-fetched notion. Problem is, how do we disarm it?”

Twilight, for once, had a ready answer. She simply fished her geode out from under her shirt, and shook it with a smile.

Treble nodded approvingly. “Niiiiiiice.”

Rubble leaned uncomfortably on his crutches, holding his bad leg in the air. Indigo held open the door, while Raven rifled through the storage closet. After a few loud moments and some quiet cursing, she wheeled out a tallback wheelchair with a steel frame. It was a dark brown leather seat with heavy wheels, and rather lounge-ish arms. “Get in,” Raven said pointedly. “As much as it pains me to do so, I’ll push you.”

“Oh, no,” Zap said darkly. “Allow me.”

The other two rolled their eyes. “Yeah, sure,” Rubble groaned, turning carefully on his good leg as Raven pushed the chair into the back of his legs. He let himself fall back gracelessly, silently grateful for the relief on his bad leg. “Now, where to next, boos?” he asked, now at the whim of someone slightly more level-headed.

Raven leaned on the back of the chair, pensive. “Well, I don’t want to stray too far from base, and I don’t exactly know any good places to hide bodies in this house. I’ve only ever been in it a few times.”

Zap thought out loud. “Well, the girl’s outfit was kind of torn up, but it could just be from age. It didn’t look burned or sun-damaged or anything, and not shoddy enough to be eaten by moths. So it would be somewhere that preserved the material decently. I mean, that’s if there’s not some weird-o ghost magic being used on the clothes, too.”

Rubble looked at her almost admirably. “That… would explain the condition of her body, too. I thought it was just some stupid dramatic flair by the ghost, but what if it was… mummification? Like the body actually was preserved? Leathering like that could be a result of desiccation.”

His admiring glance was met with a questionable stare. “And… how do you know that?”

Raven sighed. “Let me guess, you’ve actually fought mummies?”

“Twice,” he said, holding up a couple fingers. “And believe you me, nothing is more annoying than a history lesson that fights back.”

Indigo shuddered at the thought. “Okay. So we’re looking for a cool, dry place, right? Like where you’d store food you wanted to keep for… a… while.”

Rubble grinned, and pointed dramatically in front of him. “TO THE KITCHENS! HOOOO!”

Twilight and Treble stood on the opposite side of the library, as the former gripped her geode tight in concentration, pointing at the book. The latter stood in front of her, holding Dusty’s favorite wrench in a guarding stance, ready for any and all projectile whatevers might respond. The book glowed a familiar hue of purple, and shuddered in its place. “Ummm…” Treble said after a moment.

Twilight shook her head. “It’s… stuck. Like… attached.” She shook it a little bit. “Yeah. I can’t move it more than a few inches one way.

Treble thought about it for a second, then his eyes lit up. “Uh, what?” Twilight asked, not sure she wanted an answer.

“Try tilting it forward,” he offered, staring intently at the shelf.

“Why?” Twilight asked, more than a little confused.

“Just a theory.”

She shrugged, and complied. The book lurched forward a little bit, sitting at an angle, until they heard a satisfying click, although nothing really happened. “Ok, what now?” she asked, not sure she wanted an answer.

Which she didn’t get, right away. Instead, he put the wrench down, and shook Dusty awake. “Double D, Double D!” he shouted, then ran over to Spooks. “Bones, get up, get up!”

The boys woke up, of course, glaring daggers at him. “What the hell do you want?” Dusty groaned, a sentiment Spooks was very effectively conveying through sheer force of will and an angry glare.

Ignoring the spite, Treble ran up to the bookcase to the right of their mystery book, and pushed on it gently. When it swung open, Dusty sat up quickly. “Dude… secret door?”

Spooks nodded, smiling sleepily. “Secret door.”

“SECRET DOOR!” Treble exclaimed.

Twilight just smacked herself in the forehead. “Oh, my god.”

Act Eighteen: The Alarum

Act Eighteen: The Alarum

Twilight Sparkle had become uncomfortably blasé with the supernatural as of late. Oh, sure, she was more than excited to go ghost hunting, an opportunity even the magic of Equestria hadn’t afforded her, but the reality of the situation: weird magic, hidden monsters, unseen danger, and strange phenomena, were all starting to feel a little recycled to her. Not that she’d ever had to fight off flaming skulls or been trapped in a house by an unseen force, but between portals to other dimensions, random magic, and the laundry list of villainesses they seemed to fight at almost regular intervals, putting herself in harm’s way or running headlong into the magical firefight had become a habit she’d been loathe to develop.

Just to think, a year ago she’d only been taking readings of strange energy and following internet rumors about magic at a school across town. Now, her natural scientific curiosity had of course driven her to investigate these phenomena thoroughly (a choice she’d both regretted and relished, given the outcomes at the Friendship Games and their time at Camp Everfree), and it was exactly why she’d wormed her way into this investigation in the first place, but she’d started to wonder if her presence was more of a hindrance than anything. Not that she’d gotten herself injured, unlike the other females present, and her own telekinetic abilities gave her an edge over nearly everyone else present, but it was difficult to find her place in such a tightly knit group.

Once they’d discovered the secret door (and after a handful of in-jokes between the boys that she’d made a note to ask about later), they’d given themselves a good half hour to actually rest, letting Spooks get some more sleep. Then Dusty had made the decision to move forward, after she and Treble had noted a few particularly interesting books and bagged them. Taking up the lead with both a heavy flashlight and his trusty wrench, Treble had been given the task of helping Spooks along, the scrawny boy proving a little more worse for wear than they’d thought, looking for all the world like he might collapse at any moment. This left Twilight covering the rear with her own light, the argument being made that she could take care of herself better than Treble or Spooks could at the moment, and bookending their strongest players down the mysterious hidden passage seemed the best play.

“You know,” Twilight admitted, “every time I think to myself, ‘Why am I here?’ there’s a little voice in my head that likes to remind me that it was, in fact, my idea to follow you disaster magnets into a haunted house for, and I use the word in the most ironic sense possible, ‘funziez’.”

“Oh yeah?” Treble wondered. “And what does it sound like? Like who’s voice is it?”

“Sugarcoat’s, actually,” she answered. When Treble threw a quizzical glance over his shoulder, she explained, “Sugarcoat’s a… friend of mine from Crystal Prep. The one at the Friendship games with the pigtails and glasses. Has an unfortunate habit of brutal honesty. As in, all the time.”

Dusty jumped in without turning around. “Oh, you mean the one with the mean glare and great ass? Yeah, I remember her. Surprisingly good with a dirtbike, that one.”

“Of course you’d remember,” Spooks groaned, with a hint of humor in his voice. “Girl hops a living plant monster with a motorbike on a twenty-foot dirt hill, I’m surprised you didn’t ask her out before she even had her helmet off.”

“Well, to be fair, we were trying to keep one of those plants from trying to eat Wallflower,” Treble remarked. “Kind of hard to hit on someone when you’re knee-deep in flytrap mouth.”
The mental image, combined with the memory of the disaster in the triathlon, made Twilight shudder. “Well,” she chided, trying to suppress her unease, “If anyone could do it, it’s you, Treble.”

Treble and Spooks shared a wry grin that Twilight couldn’t see. “Well, well, well,” Treble said, “Look who learned how to be snarky.”

“Oh please,” Twilight scoffed. “I’m friends with Sunset, Rainbow Dash, and an entourage of prep school girls. Snark is nothing. Now, if someone could find the end of the damn tunnel, then I’d be really impressed.”

Dusty gave a hollow bark of a laugh. “No joke. Where the hell does this even lea-” there was a loud thud as his sentence was rudely interrupted by a low-cut ceiling. “BITCH! OW!” he shouted, rubbing his forehead. “Ok, folks, watch your head. Ceiling gets shorter here, by a bit. Mother FUCKER I hope I didn’t break my nose.”

“Oh, sure, cause that’s what we need,” Treble scoffed. “more injuries. God knows what that lot is getting up to now.”

“I swear to god, Rubble, if you say ‘mush’ one more time I’m gonna run you through with a kitchen knife,” Zap growled, as she rather fiercely parked RM next to the counter. She kicked the brake lever a little harder than was necessary, and took some pleasure in leaving him there.

“Well it’s not like there’s a lot for me to do right now. Have to keep myself occupied somehow,” he said, unapologetic. “Now, back to business. The best environment for preserving a body is an airtight, warm, and dry space. Too much air and you expose the body to bacteria that can cause rot. Too cold and it will accumulate moisture and decay. Same with the dry. So I’m thinking either the pantry, like a false door or something, or in or around the oven.”

Inkwell gave her employee a look that greatly implied she did not want to know how he knew that. “Ok, so what are we looking for?” she asked eventually, working her way to the pantry while Zap knelt at the oven.

Rubble took a good look around the kitchen. It was much in fashion with the rest of the house, a period piece that only received updates and maintenance when absolutely necessary. There was a large stove, near the oven where Zap was investigating, near the back wall, alongside a short counter for prep and a sink at the far end. A large metal three-sink fixture, it sat snugly in the corner, partially tucked under a rather generous window that spanned the entire right side of the kitchen. Unfortunately, not only was it most likely locked down by the same force that kept them trapped, it looked like it wasn’t even designed to open normally.

The majority of the space in the kitchen was taken up by a great L-shaped free standing counter, more of a bar than anything, with the occasional stool around it. It was lined with jars, utensils, and a cutting board, indicating that this was where the majority of prep work took place. Rubble was parked on the outside of the L, and couldn’t see as much of the room as he would've liked. He imagined the inside of the bend was lined with shelves or cupboards. Looking up, there was a great hanging rack for pots, pans, and utensils in an L-pattern to match the counter.

On the wall opposite the stove, there sat the door to the pantry, where Raven was rooting around. The wall, unlike the white tile of the rest of the room, was wood paneling in horizontal rows, looking much like the wall of a log cabin, almost. There appeared to be a break in the wall, a vertical line that split the boards neatly, and Rubble had a thought. “Hey, Raven, that wall next to the pantry.”

She looked over her shoulder at him, then at the wall. “What about it?”

“That split. Is that another door or something?” he asked, undoing the break on his chair and slowly turning himself around.

Inkwell raised an eyebrow, not quite seeing what he was, until she ran a hand along the wall. “Huh. Let’s see...” she trailed off, tugging at a corner. When that didn’t work, she gave a light push, and the wall shuddered slightly. After a heartier shove, the wall opened inwards, leading to a wine closet. A whoosh of cold air wafted into the room from the unlit space. “Welp, not in there. Too cold. Not to mention all these wine bottles would accumulate condensation.”

Rubble tilted his head. “Yeah, ok, but who the hell would build a cooled wine closet right next to a pantry meant for dry storage? That’s just hinky.”

Raven cast a look over her shoulder, then took a few steps into the closet, after fumbling around for a second, she found a chain leading to a ceiling light, and clicked on a small, dim bulb. With just enough light to see past the rows of bottles, she knocked on the wall, a dull sound with little to no echo. “The wall is insulated. Even back then they knew a thing or two about temperature control. So, where should we look next-” whatever she was going to say after that was cut short by the cellar door closing rapidly.

“Raven!” Rubble shouted, in a slight panic. “Zap, come here!”

Indigo rushed to the other side of the room, almost sliding across the counter in her hurry, and side-kicked the door.. It rocked with the same resistance they’d encountered when trying to break the windows. “Oh, come ON!” she shouted, throwing her good shoulder against the wall, followed by a few more kicks. “How the hell do we get her out?!”

Rubble rubbed his temples, thinking furiously. “Hell if I know. I don’t exactly have a ghost-proof lockpick.”

Indigo, running out of breath and good limbs to try against the stubborn door, panted in frustration. “Well what now?!”

“So where should we look next-” Raven found herself cut off by a rush of air as the door swung closed, trapping her in the closet. “Rubble!” she barked, rushing forward and pounding on the wall with both fists. Her back to the light, she fumbled around in the dark for a handle, finding a small wedge in the wall that served as a door handle, presumably. Of course, it didn’t move at all, and the wall barely rattled with her efforts. Even the pounding on the other side of the wall -no doubt one or both of the children trying to reach her- was severely muffled, and had little to no impact on the door.

“Well, fuck me,” she groaned, looking around the room dejectedly. Seeing little to nothing of help in the dim light, she fumbled around herself for additional lights. Having handed the flashlight to Zap while she steered Maker around, she had little to no options about her person. The best she could come up with was a key chain light, ironically attached to the keys to the house that now held them all prisoner. A house, for god’s sake. What awful things must she have done in a past life to deserve such an outcome, she didn’t know, but should she ever discover time travel, she would indeed send herself back and deck the old version of herself right in the jaw.

The tiny light in her hand by itself did little to illuminate her surroundings, and received an almost pitiable amount of help from the overhead light. The best she could do was take things a step at a time into the closet, which seemed to stretch farther than she’d first thought. “Well, we’re here looking for secret rooms and trap doors, might as well keep looking,” she reasoned to herself. Her headache had since subsided, dulling merely to a light throb in the spot where she’d first hit herself. She had the nagging suspicion that wasting her time trying to break down the unnaturally sturdy door would only serve to compound her miseries.

She tread lightly into the closet, following the narrow walkway made by row after row of wine shelving, until she reached a corner, seeing a sharp left turn and not much else. Out of curiosity, she inspected some of the wines around her, seeing familiar names of popular wine makers she’d heard of in movies and fine dining menus. Little to nothing that stood out, so she pressed on down the corridor. The closet seemed deeper than she’d imagined, both towards the back and in either direction. A small part of her nagged that, just maybe, something wasn’t right, but just as soon as she’d had the thought did she reach another wall.

The first wall she’d come across had been within arm’s reach of the door; this one was several feet beyond that. Inspecting the area, she saw that, besides the continuing wine racks to her right, the rest of her surroundings was more of the same wooden paneling. False wood, most likely, for real wood wouldn’t survive long in a cool, slightly moist environment for a prolonged period of time, let alone the decades that some of these bottles claimed to have been around for. Knocking on the wall to her left, she surmised that maybe the closet simply stretched around to the rear of the pantry, and she’d simply found the corner where the outside wall met the back of the closet.

Having found no other obvious doors, she thought back to her earlier idea of trap doors, and retraced her steps, making heavy footfalls as she went, listening for rattling or hollow wooden sounds. She made it all the way back to her starting point with no results, though. Just the same heavy thudding with each step, accomplishing little more than sore feet. Again, she tried the door to the kitchen, to no avail. She couldn’t even hear pounding from the other side, which meant one of two things: either they were actually using their heads and trying to think of a way to get her out, or, for some reason, they were simply not out there anymore.

Neither of which helped quell the rising tide of panic in the back of her mind. “Ok,” she said finally, after standing around for a moment. The sound of her own voice almost startled her, having heard nothing but her own footsteps and knocking for the last several minutes. “Ok. Door doesn’t work. No other doors out. No doors in the floor...” then, an idea struck her. “But what about the ceiling?” Turning her tiny light up, she inspected the wood-imitation ceiling above her for seems like the one that had led her into this damnable closet in the first place. Pacing back and forth across the room and around the corner, her tiny key chain was almost sad in its usefulness. It was either too little light over a wide area, or just enough light in what equated to half a square foot.

It was slow going, but eventually her eyes caught the glint of light reflecting off metal. Upon closer inspection, she discovered the copper glint of a metal hinge, tucked into a tiny crevice in the wood. She stretched to the limits of her reach, her fingertips pressing firmly on the surface only after she’d raised to her tiptoes. Lightly fondling the hinge, she followed the crevice to a nearby seem, which led to a corner, to another seem at a right angle. Soon enough, she found the other side of the seem, and another corner, which seemed to encompass the breadth of the trapdoor. Shining her light back and forth, she eventually found the small metal circle that served as the door handle. It resisted her first few tugs, and for a moment she was scared that the force locking her in was also keeping the door above he head sealed shut. After a bit of effort, and her hanging all of her weight on the handle, she was able to pull the latch free and swing the door open.

Which is when the first corpse fell on her head, and she screamed to wake the devil.

Author's Note

Schedule keeps changing. Updating when possible.

Also, FUCK.

Act Twenty: Don’t Say the “M”-Word

Act Twenty: Don’t Say the “M”-Word

The most disturbing thing about reanimating corpses, to most people, is the smell. The odor of decaying flesh is both unique and easily recognizable. Some might say that we are programmed to notice and identify it immediately, as a defense mechanism: surely we would want, on a basic and instinctual level, to avoid anything that not only would kill us, but leave us to rot. Of course, with the advent of mortuaries and corpse-dressing, half that smell nowadays can be attributed to formaldehyde, a smell we are programmed to dislike by sheer virtue of it smelling like ripe, chemical ass.

Barring the smell, the next most disturbing thing about reanimating a corpse, on a subconscious level (seeing as the conscious mind is primarily focused on “Holy shit, zombies!”), is the movement. The dead are not concerned with pulling muscled, dislocating joints, or other forms of damage. This gives them both disturbing flexibility and unconscionable strength. Especially when someone else is doing the driving.

This current incarnation of mobile dead seemed to be driven as a single unit, moving in a single wave, washing over the tile and fixtures like overlarge spiders in tattered clothing. The creaking of their joints and the alien stretching of their leathered flesh was easily drowned out by the heavy, staccato pattering of their feet, hands, or whatever limbs they were using to drag themselves along the floor, and some, the walls. A few had even scattered to the ceiling, and all were in a driving tide towards the back of the room.

Which, unfortunately, happened to be where all of the living in attendance had gathered. Well, mostly. “Hey, HEY! Watch the hair! Someone wanna GET ME OUT OF HERE?!” Rubble yelled, his parking spot by the counter being blatantly disregarded by these newfound intruders. Although, given their tenancy in the house, they probably had more right to be here than the people they were climbing over. Rubble glared around, his eyes narrowing as the girls rushed the rear door to the kitchen, scrambling to get to the hall. Treble and Dusty had taken up arms, a kitchen knife and wrench, respectively, and were guarding the furnace. Well, less guarding, and more backed into the wall. Treble yelped and jumped forward slightly as the heat from the iron brushed against his back.

The children were fast, agile, and filled with unknowable intent. They’d descended upon the back of the room in less than a minute, an impressive feat given the numbers, and size of the room. Dusty had already beaten a few back with his trusty wrench, and Treble had swung at one or two with his knife hand, both to little avail. The ones knocked aside were replaced in an instant, and the knife had little to no effect against dead flesh.

Spooks had woken angrily, glaring around the room as the corpses surged forward, and climbed over him, giving him little to no attention. He eyeballed Rubble, currently guarding his head and shoulders from the little urchins, who viewed him as little more than an obstacle to be surmounted. Following the tide of movement, and analyzing the fighting going on in the back of the room, Spooks yelled over the din, “The book, asshole! They want the book!”

“No shit, Sherlock! That’s kind of why I’m fighting them off!” Dusty yelled back.

Bones rolled his eyes. “No, you dick! I mean they aren’t going to hurt any of us! They literally just want to get the book! Have any of them even attacked you yet?!”

Dusty paused as he held one body at arm’s length while swatting at a particularly grabby young boy reaching for his bag, where he’d shoved the text when the fighting had started. “Uh… no?!” he yelled back unevenly, his attention divided between keeping the munchkins off of him, and doing a mental inventory of any injuries he’d sustained so far. The answer was ‘none’, surprisingly. “Oh. OH!” he barked, finally getting it. He threw the growing pile of bodies off himself, with some help from Treble (who had completely abandoned the knife), and dug around in his bag for the book.

The children seemed to follow his every move, and once he had the book out, it was all they had eyes for. Still they came forward, eyes on the prize, trying to climb up Dusty’s outreached arm to take the book from him. He lightly tossed the book over to Treble, who had freed himself of the mass of bodies, and had maneuvered himself over to the now open oven. Flames still licked the inside of the metal, the scent of burnt leather and small clouds of ashed wafting into the room on invisible waves of heat.

He leaned the book closer to the opening, and almost immediately, the bodies recoiled. Even the ones now grasping his legs and climbing their way up his deteriorating three-piece suit (which he had long since given up keeping in tact), had started to back away and relax their grips. Experimentally, he moved away from the furnace, and the children cautiously approached him again. When they got too close, he reached back to the furnace again, holding them at bay. They watched DT warily, never taking their unblinking eyes off the book, now clenched firmly in his hand as he rested against the wall.

DT looked to Spooks, who took the nonverbal cue. It was few and far between, but Spooks had had occasion to use his family’s gift in front of his friends more than once. It wasn’t painful, embarrassing, or taxing, but in his current state, he rather thought jumping in the furnace and letting the Good Lord whisk him off to the next life sounded almost comparable to doing any more work before he passed out for good. Unfortunately, corpse-talking wasn’t exactly a learned skill, so it wasn’t like he could pawn the task off on any of the others.

With the girls in the hall, and probably some distance away, everyone in the room knew what to expect. It still didn’t make it any easier to witness. Buried Bones made the dead talk like the living. Spooky Bones, on the other hand, could talk like the dead.

In a voice no one should have to hear before they pass on.

The three girls rushed into the sitting room with the kind of urgency one might flee an explosion, and landed in the chairs and sofas like they hadn’t quite escaped the blast. Throwing themselves into the imagined safety of the cushions, they all spent the next few minutes drawing ragged breaths and settling their slowly deteriorating nerves.

“I just wanted to drive like ten miles and make twenty bucks, what even is this shit I just wanna go home this isn’t anything like The Walking Dead why did you LIE to me Norman Reedus WHYYYYY?!” Indigo bellowed into the old fabric of the loveseat she’d landed in. The rest of her ranting was muffled by the cushion she was pushing into her face, and it was a few noisy, unintelligible minutes before she came up for air.

Raven Inkwell had opted for simply staring at the ceiling in an almost trance-like state, the cogs in her head spinning like race tires as she tried to map out everything that had happened to her this evening and put it in some kind of logical order. Even as much as a recollective timeline whould suit her; anything to help her focus and keep her mind off the impossibilities of the events surrounding her newly acquired house.

On the far end of the spectrum, Twilight Sparkle was pouring over her precious instruments with renewed ferocity. She had had a few false starts trying to find her bearings, as her heart slowed and her vision stopped swimming, but some stubborn minutes later she was boring a hole in her computer screen with her eyes as she attempted to retrieve some recordable data. Many of her devices had been left running, but without built-in timers, she had the long task ahead of her of lining up the readings with the timeline of the night’s events, matching spikes to specific phenomena. It didn’t help that there were several she couldn’t account for, and some devices hadn’t even registered the phenomena she was thee for.

All three of them had lost themselves in their own little coping devices, so the voice that joined them nearly flung them all to the ceiling in surprise. “Well, isn’t this the productive evening we’re having?”

Indigo reacted first, throwing herself from her loveseat and sliding across the (now empty) table, coming to a crash on the floor with all of its contents. Twilight looked up from her station to glare at Indigo, then some small part of her lizard brain caught up with the outside world, and she registered the presence of a fourth person in the room. Raven simply glanced over to the far side of the room, where the voice emanated, and jumped up in her seat when she saw who it was that had spoken.

It was the little girl they’d burned not hours before. Though this time she wasn’t a mangled corpse. She was a translucent, almost luminescent presence sitting on a nightstand, kicking her feet in the air like, well, a child. “Hello to you, too,” she added, with a tinge of amusement in her voice. “I can see you’ve all had a very stressful night.”

“Wh-wh-wha-what the hell?!” Zap stammered, baking into the couch Raven had stretched out on, and falling back into the woman’s lap.

“Oof! Thank you for that, Indigo,” Inkwell deadpanned. She turned her attention to the apparition. “Do I even want to know why you’re here, miss...” she left the end of the sentence open, as an inquisition.

The girl ghost tilted her head to the side innocently, as if trying to remember if she’d left a light on. “I think it was Eventide. You can call me Tide. As to why I’m here, it’s to say thank you.”

There was a lot of blinking at this declaration. After a moment of confused silence, Twilight said, almost asked, “Uh… you’re welcome?”

Tide hopped down and strolled across the floor. Twilight watched her feet wearily as she did so, although she neither floated across the room, nor left strange, glowing footprints. Tide disregarded her staring, and approached Raven and Indigo. “For freeing me. Burning my body. You wouldn’t believe how long Mr. Song has left me locked up in that dreary old thing. I daresay I’m older than all of you. At once.”

Zap had scooted to the far side of the couch, regarding Tide with an uneasy smile, while Raven’s common courtesy and innate curiosity had found a foothold over her sense of panic. “So why appear to us now? If you wanted simply to say thank you, I imagine there might be easier ways than manifesting yourself. Of course, I’m far from an expert.”

“You’re not wrong, though. A… manifestation like this, as you put it… is mildly taxing. Although, it’s not like I have an awful lot to do after this, so it hardly matters. Anyway, I did have some more to talk to you about than just a simple extension of gratitude. Prolonged conversations are much easier like this, after all. I also thought it might be a bit more polite than a disembodied voice floating around the room,” she reasoned, taking a seat on the bare table.

Twilight regarded her with a sense of awe and wonder, her fear forgotten and buried under her scientific mind. “Um… if you don’t mind me asking, how do you manifest yourself like that?”

Tide gave her an inquisitive glance. “Not to sound rude, but I doubt you’d be able to understand it. It would be like explaining how I know that an apple is an apple or a different color from a tree. Sure, I could spout a bunch of words at you, most of which you might understand, but the basics, the instinct behind it, is much less scientific, let alone readily explainable.”

“You sure don’t talk like a nine year old girl,” Inkwell observed.

Tide raised a reproachful eyebrow. “Young lady, I am easily several decades older than you. Not everyone who dies ceases to be, and I have been in this house for a very, very long time. The body might not age, but the mind never stops growing. Now, on to more pressing matters. For example, your survival. I believe you have already met the master of the house, Mr. Song?”

Indigo seemed to finally find her voice. “Yeah, that ‘Culling’ guy? What a charmer.”

Tide paused for a second, and giggled, very much the image of a nine year old, despite her protests. “Oh, NO. Culling is a sweetheart. He’s the one who has kept such good care of us over the years. His father, on the other hand, is a macabre and monstrous bastard.”

Spooky made his way around the counter, dragging his feet in exhaustion. He slumped down in front of a particular young boy, who had come to a rest on all fours, some feet away from Treble and the furnace. Taking a seat, Indian style, he leaned forward and met the boy’s eyes. At first, the corpse had no eyes for him, staring intently at the book and the teenager brandishing it in front of an open flame. Slowly, though, as if only now aware of his presence, he turned his gaze to Bones, meeting him eye to eye.

Then Spooky spoke, and the other boys shivered. His voice was like dry leaves and brittle bones underfoot: indecipherable syllables scattered over the rocks of a growling accent, a hollow, chittering sound so far from English as to be alien. There was something else in his voice, too. An old sound, a sense of age and weariness, as if the language had long sense worn out its days and came to him on its last legs, as if he was dragging each syllable along one step at a time. None of the boys could tell what he said given a hundred years, but they would understand him perfectly the moment they’d passed on; they knew that much from second-hand experience that they’d really rather have done without.

When the corpse in question made no attempts to respond beyond a few low growls, Spooks raised an eyebrow. Then, as if a lightbulb went off in his head, his eyes widened, and he turned his gaze away, scanning the floor. It took him less than a second to find what he was looking for: the knife that Treble had cast away. Picking it up in a tense, steady grasp, he brought the blade to the corpse’s mouth. The boy made no move to shy away from the edge, and didn’t even flinch as Bones dug the blade into the expanse of dried flesh where his mouth used to be. With a swift, singular motion, he cut a wide gap in the corpse’s face, which fell open with an awful smell and waft of dead air. Spooks hardly blinked. Once again, he spoke to the dead.

[What are you doing here? What is so important about the book?] he asked, his voice low, slow, and almost unbearable.

The corpse responded in kind, although in a slightly higher pitch, and a bit faster. The dead always spoke faster; it was their native language, after all. [Mr. Song wants the book. The key. He wants the lock open.]

[Why?] Spooks asked. [He wants out? What for? Is he strong enough to leave the house?]

[No,] said the corpse. [Not out. In. Mr. Song wants in. The door is weak, but he is strong. He needs only the right key.]

[In where? Where could be better than here? Heaven? Has he found a way into Heaven?] Spooky’s words came faster, a little at a time. Some with urgency, some with practice.

[Not Heaven. Or Hell. The Other Place. The Bad Place. The Monster Place.]

Spooks shook his head. [What other place? Where else could he go from here?]

The boy tilted his head slightly. [I have seen it. We all have. He shows us the Bad Place. Tells us what he will do there. What he will become. So much more. More than what he is. You have seen it, too. I see the Bad Place in your eyes.]

Treble, Dusty, and Rubble had all gathered round, best they could, to watch the conversation, keeping on alert in case the undead attacked their friend (it was known to happen). Even with Treble’s poor line of sight, he recognized the look on Spooky’s face. One he saw very rarely. They all recognized it.

Fear.

Spooky Bones knew exactly what the boy was talking about. [He wants into the Tenebrae.]

Act Twenty-One: The Orchestra Pit

Act Twenty-One: The Orchestra Pit

Deep Treble didn’t ask for much from life. He wanted, like many other teenagers, to be popular. Noticed, even admired, which was a small contributing factor to why he kept doing this ungrateful, horrible job every day. He wanted his parents to get along, of course, but that was less of a pipe dream and more of an urban legend. He would very much enjoy not being here right now. However, on the very top of his list right now (beating the option to leave only by a small margin, naturally) was the desire to understand exactly why his best friend in the world, the most steadfast and bravest person he knew, was currently shaking like a leaf on a kitchen floor in a haunted house while talking to a dead person in a voice like gravel and grave whispers.

It could be argued that Spooky Bones wasn’t actually brave, as bravery was often seen as action in the face of fear, but instead, fearless. Treble had seen the kid literally shove a demon (a lesser one, of course, more of an imp, but still) headfirst into a hellmouth with his bare hands and stomp on its head until is disappeared into the aether. The moments where Spooks were generally scared were few and far between, as he tended to treat horrible and evil things with a kind of dispassionate exasperation that one would normally reserve for a repeatedly clogging toilet. Treble had a suspicion that Bones’ internal monologue was just the word ‘Again?’ on a loop.

However, standing where he was, seeing the skinny, quiet boy shake like a rattle, DT saw Spooky as something he rarely considered, even taking into account the kid’s small frame: frail. “So, for those of us who haven’t inherited a supernatural penchant for corpse-bothering?” DT asked, trying to look unconcerned in the face of a glaring red flag.

Bones didn’t seem to notice. “Give me a minute,” he said quietly, in a voice that didn’t really offer any room for arguing. Turning his attention back to the corpse, he asked, [How does the key work? What happens if we burn it?]

The corpse turned its head, as if it had never heard those words before. Spooks knew, though, that the dead retained their knowledge, if not all their memories, of living, and they didn’t stop learning just because they were dead. Knowledge could be imprinted on the soul. It’s how some people learned magic. The less favorable kinds. [The key cannot exist without the lock. Neither the lock without the key. With no lock, the door cannot close.]

Spooks motioned in a slight panic behind him. “Don’t burn the book. Do that, and everything goes to shit,” he grunted behind him.

Treble nodded, holding the book closer to his person, but keeping himself close to the furnace, if only to keep the damn zombies off of him. He hated zombies. Especially grabby ones.

Spooks kept going. [Then why do you want the book? Why not let it burn? You work for Culling, don’t you?]

The dead boy shook his head. [No.]

“What do you mean, his father?” Raven demanded. Now that the subject of her family had reared its head, she had taken a solid lead in the conversation. Part of her wanted to turn it into an interrogation, but that involved having some leverage in the matter, which did not. “I thought Culling Song was the murderer? Everyone always said ‘Don’t be like Culling Song.’”

Tide gave a hefty and impressive sigh for someone who had no lungs. “Little miss, you come from a highly corrupt, money-grubbing, highly influential family with a skewed sense of morals and a history of macabre and depraved mystical dealings. Do you really think only one person in the entirety of the family was responsible for all those murders? And if they were, if it really was just one bad apple, do you really think you’d have even heard of him? The Inkwells would have done everything in their power to silence an existence like that. You’re talking about Big City Power in a small town. Forget big fish in a small pond, they’re sharks in the fishbowl. No doubt they left you to this house just to keep the only decent person amongst them from ruining things for the rest.”

Raven balked at that. “But… my father left me this house!” she argued. “He was a fine man!”

With a tilt of the head, Tide considered the woman. “Hmmm. I knew your father. He didn’t know me, of course, but most of the family doesn’t. We all know you, but you rarely know us. Your father was… decent. Maybe not a perfect human being, but certainly a measure above the tried and true garbage that used to traipse through this house. Maybe he thought you could do some good. Or at least no more evil. Still, back to topic. Culling Song was not, in fact, a horrible person. He was like you: a gem in a sack of coal. His father, uncles, even an aunt or two, they were the monsters. Feeding us to the magic like treats after taking the dog for a walk. He, Culling, I mean, was the only one who saw to it that we received, if not proper burials, at least some measure of respect. He even found a way in his family’s horrible book of magic, to let us live out some semblance of life. Even with our souls bound to our bodies, in a house as lively and well-read as this, we could still… learn. Experience things. Why do you think we were so adamant you stall they hell out of our library?”

Twilight felt an eyebrow twitch. “Excuse me? That was you?! I thought that was Song!”

Tide shrugged. “In a way, it was. His spirit still roams the house, naturally. He found a way to lock himself in here, with all of us, to keep his father’s spirit from running rampant with the power of a hundred trapped souls. Every once in a while, he saves up enough power for us to leave our bodies, which we normally use to bother the riffraff, or peruse our precious library. Of course, there are rooms even there that we are barred from. This family’s history with unpleasant magic is older even than I am. Older than the house. Did you ever bother to wonder,” she asked Raven, “Why the house was a perfect square? Because it was built as a giant lock on an even larger door. Symmetry has power in magic. That’s why circles are so effective. But building a house in a perfect circle not only draws unwanted attention, it’s rather damn difficult. So, we have a perfect square. And look at me, getting sidetracked again. By now I’m sure you’ve figured out the seal in the small house, haven’t you? How it’s basically a ritual sacrifice on tap, to which your family has been feeding children for decades?”

Indigo shivered. “Yeah, that thing. Wasn’t that like, a way to empower a ghost, or something?”

“Interesting,” Tide considered the injured girl. “I’d figured at least one of you would have played the part of the foolish athlete. But yes, in a way, you are right. It did serve to empower the ghost. But not just for the fun of it. The ghost, Culling’s father, was supposed to be a battering ram. In fact, he could very well still serve that purpose, if you all fail. Or if one of those boys burns that damnable book you all found.”

“A battering ram? For the door you mentioned?” Twilight inquired. “Does he want to break back in to the world of the living?”

“Not quite,” Spooks explained, having been asked a similar question by his friends. Treble had tried to decipher the text, but his Latin was so rusty as to be considered a viable component in thermite. The zombies still filled a good half of the room, but with Treble guarding the furnace, and Spooks’ rather illuminating, if taxing, conversation with the dead kid, they’d settled for standing guard, lest any of the four boys did something unconscionably stupid. “He wants into a world called the Tenebrae. And before you ask, no, you haven’t heard of it. Very, very, very few people have. I’m talking a laughable percentage of a laughable percentage of people everywhere.”

Rubble adjusted his seat to face Spooky properly. “So what the fuck IS IT? And why does master doucheghost want in?”

Spooky Bones sighed, and straightened his posture; a sure sign he was about to give a very long-winded, and important, lecture. “The Tenebrae is also known as The First Dimension. Do any of you know what primordial ooze is?”

Dusty nodded. “It’s the hypothetical environment predating natural life in which the first natural molecules and structures were formed.” Literally everyone in the room looked at him. He thought he could even feel the zombies giving him the eye. “I thought it was like Gak or something when I was a kid and looked up where to buy it. I thought it was cool.”

“Right,” Spooks said slowly. “Coming back from left field,” to which Dusty gave him the finger, “That’s basically it. The First Dimension is like the primordial ooze for the multiverse. Now, I know I’ve explained multiverse theory to you-”

“Which is pretty much just ‘the multiverse’ at this point,” Rubble groaned.

“-also right. But each of those universes has to come from somewhere. Even the Outer Rings can’t just pop in out of fucking nowhere. There has to be at least some spark, some source of energy and material, for these dimensions to come into being. That’s where the First Dimension comes into play. It’s the fuel for the fires that forge other dimensions. The matter and antimatter and everything in between that spawns all the horrible and ordinary and magical absolute bullshit we fight all the time now. That’s what Culling’s father is trying to break into: the spawning pool of the omniverse.”

“Holy Jesus rocket manger CHRIST that’s scary,” Treble shuddered.

Rubble gave him a sidewas glance. “We need to get you away from Sonata.”

“He’s not wrong,” Spooks groaned. “If this guy gets into the Tenebrae, he could literally remold any new universe that comes out to his liking. With all the power he’s gathered, he could very well survive down there long enough to learn how to create whole new ones.”

“Which is super bad because...” Dusty asked, not quite having kept pace with the seriousness of the situation.

“Imagine being able to create Outer Rings whenever you wanted,” Bones explained. “And then throwing them around at will. Remember the marble bag metaphor? It’d be like throwing new marbles in whenever you wanted, of any kind you wanted, and shaking the bag. We could be looking at new Beast attacks on an alarming frequency.”

Rubble groaned and threw his head back. “Once a lifetime is alarming, Spooks! How alarming are we talking?”

“Daily.”

“You mean,” Twilight said in a very small voice, “That the… thing that attacked our school earlier this month, we could be dealing with something like that every day?”

Tide nodded. “Easily. Even if Mr. Song knew what he was doing, had a user’s manual and everything, there’s literally no way to guarantee control over a power like that. He’d be lighting matches in a gas tank and think himself a god when the whole shebang went up. Fortunately, you all have three very important and powerful tools at your disposal. The first of which is obviously moi,” she said with no lack of pride. “And Culling. Between the two of us, we should be able to limit Mr. Song’s control over events in the house. Culling has already been doing so, drawing on the power his father has accumulated to keep him at bay in the ethereal. Otherwise the lot of you would already be dead. No offense.”

Raven thought of the horrible phenomena that had already happened. “None taken. What’s number two?”

“You have the key to the lock. As Spooky Bones, that adorably doomed child, had learned, and is relaying to his friends, the book you all found is a rather important text. You are all aware of the Inkwell’s blatant abuse of the power of the Book of Morrighan?” As the girls nodded, she pressed on, “Well, it wasn’t like the Templars were fools. Selfish, self-righteous, dangerous zealots, but not fools. That text is the latest, most complete, and rarest edition of the Malleus Maleficarum to ever be printed. It’s mere presence directly interferes with the magic from the Crow’s Hand. It also holds a religious ritual that can, in fact, turn any space it’s performed on into hallowed ground, rendering any obscene magics performed here absolutely useless.”

The girls seemed to brighten, even embolden, at the thought of a useful tool, a proper weapon to use against the house. “But wait, how come I didn’t recognize it?” Twilight asked. “I mean, it’s Latin, which I’m well versed in, but even I couldn’t make out all the words in it. I didn’t even know it WAS a copy of the Witches Hammer.”

Tide nodded. “Which brings me to your third and perhaps most useful tool. Mr. Bones. The boy can speak, and read the language of the dead, which was used in the crafting of the final print of the Malleus. Where else would they get a spell to instantly consecrate any ground you set foot on? The boy can read the book. Perform the rituals. And if worse comes to worse, he can act as your last line of defense. Most people who, by some horrific cosmic tragedy, find themselves in The First, would instantly go mad, self-destruct, or decompose into their basest possible elements. Your friend, unfortunately for him, is uniquely qualified to survive in that hell hole, if only long enough to keep Mr. Song from getting what he wants.”

The three boys regarded Spooks with the kind of wayward suspicion one might approach a turncoat extremist. “And how, exactly,” Treble said slowly, “Do you know that? Hell, how do you even KNOW about the Tenebrae? You said it was some stupidly low amount of people in the world that even knew it existed?!”

Spooky regarded them all with a hollow gaze. “Because I’ve seen it before. When I was ten years old.”

Act Twenty-Two: Flashback and Fast-Forward

Act Twenty-Two: Flashback and Fast-Forward

The boys had all heard the story. Spooky losing his grandfather. The endless nights diving into stack after stack of almost incomprehensible notes, searching for answers. The long conversations with his father about their family’s gift, and curse. What could have been a self-destructive, implosive pattern that might have led Bones who-knows-where in life.

The ritual itself was, in some ways, a legend. More like a fable, really. It was a cautionary tale of the dangers of magic best left alone, of desperation and arcane arts being a recipe for disaster, and the ever-important lesson that the universe was so much bigger than they ever thought it could be, and almost none of it good. None of the other boys, however, had any idea of what it was Spooky had actually seen. He was purposefully vague, as he explained it, because it was not only impossible to describe what he’d seen with the limited vocabulary he possessed. This coming from a mid who knew at least three languages. They weren’t sure.

“Oh… kay...” Dusty said slowly. “So, all we need to do is keep this book out of the big creepy’s reach and we’re solid, right?”

Rubble, to his credit, only rolled his eyes a little. “Sure. Then we can just stay in this supernatural lockdown until the heat death of the universe playing keepaway for all eternity in a madhouse run by an all-powerful crazy-ass inmate.”

“You know,” Dusty sighed, “I know you’re just being a sarcastic ass, but you really know how to just flash-flood a guy’s parade.”

“You’re welcome,” Rubble chidded, although a little hollowly. “So, let’s talk endgame. We know the basic layout now, which is more than we had half an hour ago, and to be honest, more than we usually have going into anything. Which is usually the part where the big bad does something horrible that almost kills us all and racks up our hospital bills again.”

Treble rifled back and forth through the near incomprehensible book. “So, you said this book was written in both Latin and the language of the dead? Does that mean they drudged up the guys the witches killed and interrogated them, then used that to write out countermeasures?”

Spooky blinked at his friend. “Yes, actually. That’s exactly what it means. How did you know?”

DT shrugged. “It’s what I’d do if I could talk to the dead. Well, in that specific scenario, anyway. S here’s my thought for the day, and then I’m probably tapped out till the next grand adventure we stumble into: we’ve got the dead kids this family has killed. We have the book. We even have this weird kinda-cool spirit running defense on our behalf on the other side. And we’re still stuck here with a homicidal ghostly maniac. Mr. Song, apparently, wants us to burn this book. So we need to, at the very least, keep it safe. Ideally, there’s a way to counter the ritual spell in here that he doesn’t want us to find. Which probably means more reading.”

“Are you, I don’t know, going to get to your thought any time soon?” Dusty asked with an edge to his voice. Answers or not, he was still surrounded by dead kids.

Treble gave him an annoyed glare. “My thought,” Treble grunted, “Is that maybe we just let the big guy think we burned the book, and then when he makes his move to break down the garden gate, we hit him with whatever we got?”

Spooks nodded appreciatively. “Yeah, that could work. Set a trap for him in his own house? I mean, we know where this whole thing is gonna go down, right? The big sigil in the house in the middle of the courtyard. We could probably just booby-trap the house Ghostbusters style and throw him in a box or something.”

“That would be a fantastic idea,” said a deep, unsettling voice, “If I hadn’t heard every word you boys just said.”

“Oh, bitch,” growled Tide, staring in the direction of the kitchen. The girls all gave her concerned looks. “You ladies might want to hurry to the kitchen. Your boys are going to need some help, little as it may be.”

“Hey!” Indigo protested, only to be shut down with a disapproving look from Tide.

“You have no supernatural experience, an assortment of injuries, and truth be told, aren’t exactly the most physically capable people in the house. Granted, Spooks and Treble are somewhere at the bottom of the list, but you aren’t beating them out by much. Not where it counts. Injuries included, of course. That booby trap in the basement wasn’t exactly fair play,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“You think?” Raven barked, her headache surging again.

Tide waved dismissively at her. “Not my fault, and not the problem right now. Seriously. Kitchen, boys, get.” When the girls hesitated, even for a second, she added, “GO!” in a voice much more in line with what you’d expect an angry ghost to use. Glass in picture frames shattered as Tide chased them out of the room and down the hall to rejoin the others.

Getting into the kitchen was easy. Finding a place to stand, however, was another matter entirely. The mass of small, dead bodies in disfiguring poses aside, the boys took up a good chunk of the far side of the room, and the rather disturbing ghostly presence floating in the dead center of the room seemed to take up much more space than he should, by virtue of sheer aura.

Indigo skid to a stop, as Raven and Twilight stumbled to a halt at the doorway, not really having a place to stand amidst the riffraff. “Um, what the hell?!” Indigo demanded, getting a good look at the scene before, and around, her.

Spooky glanced past the rather large ghostly old man with a nonchalant expression. “Fill you in later,” he said simply.

“No, Tide pretty much did a great job of that about five minutes ago,” Twilight explained.

“Excuse me,” said the apparition, in a rather stern voice.

“Tide?” Rubble asked, raising both eyebrows.

“Ghost of the girl we burned. Very grateful. Kind of rude. Also rather intelligent. She explained quite a lot, actually,” Inkwell said, a little less nonchalantly than Bones, all the while keeping her eyes on the somewhat irate spirit.

“Excuse me,” the ghost said again, much more sternly.

“There is no excuse for you,” Treble interjected. “I mean, that’s nice and all, and the kids here are rather helpful, but I feel like we have bigger problems.”

Setting aside Treble’s childish insult, the ghost puffed up his chest. “Indeed, I am-”

“Mr. Song, blah blah blah,” said Indigo dismissively. “Yeah, I know. Door’s still locked, lotta zombies, portal into some god-awful superdimension-”

“All of which is my doing, Mr. Song interjected aggressively. “Now, if you don’t mind-”

“Yes yes we’re all very proud, our little Casper is all grown up,” Dusty sniped. “Look, can we just get to the part where we grass this ass? Also, I don’t think the Tenebrae is a superdimension. I think that’s a different thing entirely? Is that right?” he asked Spooks.

Who nodded with half a smile. “Yeah, that’s right. The Tenebrae is more like an elemental plane of creation. Superdimensions are either formed by the assimilation of multiple universes into a single, functioning universe, or created out of a mutation in the origin process that makes it basically way bigger than it should be, much more expansive, and more dangerous. I’ve really only ever encountered one, indirectly.”

“ENOUGH WITH THE SCIENCE LESSON!” Song bellowed, a great zephyr overtaking the room. Even the zombies were thrown about a little as the boys and girls had trouble holding their ground. At this point, Raven and Indigo had decided full well to pay attention to the increasingly angry spirit, Twilight was scrambling like mad to find anything on her person with which to record these phenomena, and the boys…

“So what, the Tenebrae is like a primordial pile of whatever that just happens to take up a whole dimension?” Treble asked, straightening his tie and hair.

Spooks shrugged, not bothering with his appearance, which now made him look like someone went into a wind tunnel and saw their parents doing it: wide-eyed, hair everywhere, and generally pale. SO really, the only difference was the hair. “Kind of? There’s not like, a textbook on this kind of thing. There’s not even really an accepted theory as to how it functions. The only reason we know it does what it does is there have been some people stupid enough to go in, and other people crazy enough to translate for them when they came back out.”

At this point, Song had had enough. His ethereal form surged towards the group of boys, and dove for the text, which Treble gripped tighter and held to his chest. The ghost didn’t get within more than a few feet, as the book pulsed with an invisible, yet perceptible, energy. Like the distortion that comes off a hot car hood in the summer, only more violent. With a disturbing scream, he lurched backwards, as if he’d been burned.

Spooks rolled his eyes. “Oh, sure, yes, each for the holy text specifically designed to counter the exact magic holding you here. Good job, boss,” he deadpanned.

Rubble snorted loudly. “I thought you were supposed to be like… threatening? We’ve literally seen much worse in the janitor’s closet at our school.”

Twilight shuddered. “Please don’t talk about that.”

“Right… sorry.”

Song looked at the book, then the boys. “The book might be shielded, but you all are NOT,” he declared triumphantly, lunging towards Rubble.

If any of the boys had a plan for what was going to happen next, they obviously didn’t act on it fast enough. Treble did make an effort to move the book between them, but Song wasn’t held back by the same laws of physics, and moved with impossible speed, reaching deep into Rubble’s chest. For the first time, the boys actually looked concerned, and a little embarrassed at their dismissal of Song’s presence.

Rubble’s body lurched, shook and went rigid, as if he was having a seizure, until it finally went limp as Song pulled out a glowing teal orb. “You see, children!” Song bragged. “How easy it is to just pluck the life out of one of you?! You are simply bags of meat with energy inside! More than enough o make up for tha measly morsel you stole from me!”

Treble and Dusty looked on in horror as Song brought what was presumably Rubble’s soul to his mouth, which widened horribly.

Then Spooks yelled something in a dead man’s tongue, and the ball lurched.

This really fucking hurts, Rubble thought as Song’s hands reached into his chest. There was a flash of light, and suddenly dark. Yet he could still think. He imagined that, on some level, he was dead, but not… all the way? There was a sensation of being held tightly, uncomfortably, like a football being squeezed before a throw. Then a sound. Distant, yet familiar.

“Dad?” he asked softly.

“..es. Yes. That’d be me. Now open your eyes,” said the voice. He knew it right away as his dad.

“How… I’m pretty sure I’m dead. It’s so dark.”

“That would be because your eyes are, in fact, closed. I mean quite literally, open your eyes, dumbass.” Yeah, that was his father, alright.

He thought for a second, relatively sure that the dead didn’t have eyelids, and opened them anyway. Something he was sure wouldn’t have worked, save for the fact that his view went from pitch black to slightly gray around the edges of a white… room, maybe? And his father standing off to the side. “You know, I imagined this being a bit more… emotional, like I would have some big giant rant about how much I missed you and how pissed I am that you left, but for some reason I’m kind of drawing a blank.”

His dad shrugged. “Yeah, you get used to that. You’d be surprised how many of your emotions are chemically driven. It comes back slowly, which is why hauntings don’t usually happen right away. Or, it would in your case, but I’m hoping you don’t stick around long.”

“Question.”

“Answer,” his dad smiled.

“Right. So, as far as I know, this place where I’m at, or… was, has a tendency to trap or eat ghosts. So how am I here with you?” Rubble puzzled.

“Actually, it’s kind of the other way around. I’m there with you. Have been for a while,” he explained.

Rubble blinked. “Come again?”

“That tends to happen when you die suddenly and violently, and then someone keeps wearing the clothes you kicked off in. I’ve technically been haunting you for a couple of years now. Those weird surges of rage and all that when I first left? Kind of my fault,” his dad admitted.

The son stared at the father like a deer at headlights. “So… why the hell haven’t you said anything? How come Spooks hasn’t picked up on you at all?!”

“Because he’s not psychic, son. He just knows an impossible language. He’s got great instincts, but you and I are so much alike that if he even could sense me, he’d just think you were dialed up to 11. Which, to be fair, is kind of your default setting. And I couldn’t say anything because I’ve kind of been trapped in your head. See, technically, I’m possessing you. I mean, did you really think you’d be such an accomplished fighter so quickly without a little edge? Can’t wear a dead man’s clothes for that long and not get some on ya, son,” the old man explained.

Rubble thought about this briefly, until another thought came to him. “So… does this mean you’re gonna leave? Now that we’ve had a chance to say goodbye?”

His dad looked at him, wide-eyed, then bellowed a laugh. “Not a chance, son! I’ve been waiting for you to do something stupid just so I can help you cram your spirit back in your body and kick some ass! I died fighting a war, son, how much ‘unfinished business’ do you think I have?! Now, do us both a favor, get your ass back in your meat suit, and start wrecking some shit!” he jeered, grabbing his son by the shirt.

He threw him backwards, and Rubble felt a surge of power as he was launched back into the world of the living. Then, another lurch, as he felt something not only pushing him, but pulling. Another voice rang out to him, too. It wasn’t in a language he knew, but he understood it right away. It was Spooks, yelling at him to-

“WAKE THE FUCK UP, RUBBLE!” Spooks shouted in plain English, which was the first sound Rubble heard as his eyes shot open. The first thing he saw was a very startled, very disturbed ghost.

“How?!” Song bellowed. “I RIPPED YOUR SOUL OUT OF YOUR BODY! HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?!”

Rubble looked around wearily at the room of relieved, confused, and angry faces. Then he felt a surge in him, and his father’s voice in his head. Now, about that ass-kicking. There was a tingling sensation in his entire body, slowly growing stronger. He gripped the arms of the wheelchair, and pushed himself up, hesitantly. When his feet hit the ground, he felt… steady. I got this, kid. You focus on the punching, I’ll keep you on your feet.

“Hey Spooks?” Rubble asked calmly.

His best friend looked up from where he was still kneeling on the floor, smiling proudly. “Yeah?”

“You said a while ago that I can’t punch ghosts, right?”

Bones nodded. “Yes. Yes I did. That’s kind of a constant in the-”

“WATCH ME TRY!” Rubble bellowed, and delivered a right cross that made his father proud. Of course, it helped that his father was doing some of the punching. The burst of energy from Rubble’s fist hitting Song in the face was brief, loud, and bright, followed immediately by the apparition flying backwards literally through the wall.

“...oh, my god,” Treble whispered in awe. “He actually punched a ghost.”

Author's Note

NANI?!

Act Twenty-Three: The Foil

Act Twenty-Three: The Foil

One of the many complaints from the psychic investigative community is the oft-shared sentiment that life would be much easier if people stopped getting all their information on ghosts and demons from popular media. Even if the author, editor, or screenwriter actually knew what they were talking about, paranormal investigation is such a new and crude science that there is almost no actual constant. Yes, there are observable phenomena, recognizable patterns, and corroborated witness testimonies, but no proper scientist in the field could or should accept any piece of information presented by their fellow scholars should be accepted as 100% fact. Not only is that true in almost every scientific field, where questioning the current norm is how massive leaps and bounds in progress are made, but doubly so in an area of study that lends itself to almost no recordable and verifiable evidence at all.

There are some things most everyone studying paranormal phenomena agrees on, although they wouldn’t go so far as to commit it to a scientific journal. Demons are generally dicks, magic and spiritual energy interferes with electronics, and you can’t. Punch. Ghosts.

All of this and much, much more sped through Twilight’s brain at admirable speed as she watched the scene before her play out. After Rubble had cold-cocked a rather large, angry, and conceivably powerful spirit through a wall, which she was still having trouble wrapping her head around, he had yelled quite loudly for all of them to get wherever they need to go while he held off the ghost. With his fists.

Spooky had immediately directed them all to follow him to the garden house, where the large sigil was, as their last bid was undoubtedly to either cast a counter-spell or break the sigil in some way, rending the spirit’s power. While most everyone else had no trouble following those orders, Dusty and Twilight had stayed behind both out of sheer curiosity and in case Rubble’s fight started going south. Mostly, Twilight just wanted some answers.

She talked out the side of her mouth at Dusty, “Um, are we at all safe here? I mean, I know I volunteered to stay behind and support Rubble, but… this seems like the kind of thing you should watch from behind a blast shield.”

“Honestly, Twilight, I have no idea. We might as well be the coach in the corner of the ring at this point. I mean, do you have any idea how long Rubble has been trying to hit ghosts with his bear hands?” DD asked, following the fight as well as he could, considering one of the combatants kept getting thrown through the walls, ceiling, and floor.

“Um… longer than any healthy man should?”

“Waaayyyyyy longer. I gave up after the third try.”

Twilight turned to look at him. “Third?!”

“What is it they say? First time’s a fluke, second’s a coincidence, third’s a pattern?” he asked, leaning his head around the stairwell (their fight had taken them into the lobby, where there was much more ground).

“That’s… remarkably scientific of you,” Sparkle mused.

“Well, that’s what Spooks said after I got thrown across the room a third time. I mean, it makes sense in retrospect.” There was a loud crash, and Dusty pulled Twilight back into the hall, as she had strayed a little close to the middle of the room. A second later, the chandelier came down, and the glass erupted in a wave on the floor, stopping just short of their feet.

“Um, thanks?” she said politely, not really seeing the danger of a few shards of broken glass. Then Rubble went flying through roughly the same air Twilight had occupied not a moment before.

“No problem,” Dusty said smugly. There was a loud thud as Rubble hit the wall. “I think this is the part where we go see if he’s okay.”

Twilight nodded, now a few shades paler for the close call, and they trotted over to Rubble, leaning against the hardwood and already standing back up. “Um, Rubble? Not to question your fighting ability,” Twilight said cautiously, “But generally you’re supposed to throw the other guy.” Dusty and Rubble both looked at her with amused half-smirks. “...what?”

“She’s gonna fit in fine around here, you know,” Dusty chided, as Rubble brushed off some broken glass and wood splinters out of his old man’s coat. “Also, quick question. HOW. THE FUCK.”

As if in answer to the not really a question, Rubble’s whole body glowed slightly, and a second form rose out of him, parting a little to the left. To Twilight, it looked like an older, even more athletic Rubble. Dusty, however, recognized him immediately.

“TROUBLE?!”

“Where?!” Twilight barked, turning on her heel and looking around in a panic. Oddly enough, all she noticed was the lack of Rubble’s opponent.

The specter laughed loudly. “Oh, god, I NEVER get tired of that joke. And she’s so genuine about it, too! Hello, Devil. Long time.”

Dusty glared at the spirit as Twilight turned back to join the conversation. “That’ll happen when you DIE.”

Rubble just smiled in an almost perfect mirror of the spirit’s grin, and said to Twilight, “Sparky, I’d like to introduce you to my dad. Twilight Sparkle, Trouble Maker. Dead guy, ex-demon chick turned magical girl.”

The ghost leaned on his son’s shoulder. “And here I thought the military was the best way to meet new and interesting people. Yeah, I remember you, kid. Your little outburst at the… what was it, some kind of field day?”

“Friendship games,” the three teenagers drolled.

“...that sounds stupid. Also dumb. I’m calling it a Field Day. Anyways, that whole portal-spamming succubus thing you pulled really scrambled my eggs for a few days. You should be more careful with dimensional energies. The locals might take exception to that,” Trouble offered in what he most likely considered a helpful tone.

Rubble glanced over his shoulder. “Wait, was that why I was sick for the next few days?!”

“No, that was gas station burritos. Totally different kind of monster, boy-o.”

Twilight shook her head and stared at the ceiling. “This is my life. These are the conversations I have now. Also,” she added, not looking away from what she had to admit was a very aesthetically pleasing crown molding, “The big ghost thing left.”

“What?!” both Maker’s shouted. “DAMMIT!” Rubble took off at speed as Trouble dove back into his son’s body, and soon enough the two were off at a rather impressive pace.

Dusty shook his head. “We are going to have a very, VERY LONG TALK with that man when we’re done here. Come on, Sparky.”

“You know I only let you call me that because I don’t want you coming up with anything worse, right?” Twilight growled.

“Absolutely.”

“H-how long,” Raven panted, having finally stopped running, “Do you think Rubble will be able to hold him off?”

“No idea,” said Spooks, significantly less winded. In fact, all of the teenagers in the room seemed to be much less worse for wear than their ‘supervisor’, who made a mental note to return to the gym immediately following her survival. He continued, “Honestly, probably not long. Not saying he’s gonna lose the fight, but all Song has to do is get some distance, and he can hide anywhere in the house he wants. Now, Treble, the book, please.”

DT dug through his suit and pulled out the text, throwing it to his buddy. “Honestly, I’m just glad to be off it. Those zombie kids were giving me all kinds of weird looks.”

“Well excuse me if our being dead inconveniences you,” said a childish female voice from the floor.

The only one who actually jumped was Treble, to his embarrassment. Raven and Indigo seemed to recognize the voice, and the young female apparition it seemed to be attached to, while Spooks held on to his trademark of not really being bothered by anything unless it directly impacted the fate of the earth he stood on. “Seriously?” Treble groaned. “How many damn ghosts are even IN this house?!”

“Several dozen, swimming somewhere close to the low three-digits,” Tide mused. Treble considered her alarmingly.

“”Please tell me we don’t have to fight, like, all of you?”

Raven rolled her eyes. “No, Treble. The spirits of the children seem to be on our side, here. At least, the ones we’ve been able to set free. Culling Song seems to have some influence over the ones still trapped in their bodies, but once those are burned, they seem to have some kind of autonomy.”

Spooks looked to her, impressed. “Nicely worded. Although I am slightly curious as to why they’re still floating around down here and not, you know, moving on.”

Tide turned in the air and gave Bones a curious look. “Because waiting to see that rotten old malcontent dragged kicking and screaming into hell is the definition of unfinished business.”

“Well, good enough for me,” Treble declared, and strode across the room to stand just beside Tide. “I’d introduce myself, but I get the distinct feeling we’ve made just enough of a mess that you have a general idea of who we all are.”

Spooky smiled half-heartedly. “Oh good, someone’s been eating his Leader-O’s.”

“Hush ye,” Treble replied, only half-jokingly. “Although I can’t say I know who you are,” he added, readdressing the female spirit.

Tide considered Treble as though appraising a dusty old bowl that may or may not actually be a priceless antique. She seemed to decide on a happy medium, as she smiled warmly, and extended her hand to shake, if only out of habit. “I am Eventide. The girl who’s body you burned, setting my spirit free. In fact I owe you a debt of gratitude, which is in fact another reason I’m still here. I’d offer you a kiss on the cheek, but I’ve heard that’s a rather disturbing experience for the living.”

DT nodded. “Appreciated. Now,” he said, turning to the group at large. “I imagine everyone’s up to speed by now? Big bad ghost trying to break reality? That little book the key -quite literally- to this entire mess? Big sigil above our head the source of the spellwork holding these shenanigans together?”

Everyone nodded in various stages of agreement, but the general consensus was ‘Yes.’

“What I want to know,” said Raven, is how the hell is that little book the only thing keeping Song from, well, breaking the universe?”

Spooks, who had already started in on the book, raised it slightly. “Because this is the last edition of the Malleus Malifecarum, the only book in the world designed to contest the power of the Book of Morrighan. Just having the Malleus around directly interferes with any magic originating from the Crow’s Hand.”

“S why the hell would they keep both in the same place?!” Indigo demanded, resting as comfortably as she could against the wall and floor.

“My guess?” Treble offered. “They didn’t want the ritual above our heads to go off or spin out of control before they were ready, and keeping the Malleus around quelled the storm enough for them to keep fucking around.”

“So why now?” Raven asked. “Is there something special about tonight that made him go off like this?”

“You mean despite YOUR CONSTANT MEDDLING, YOU UNGRATEFUL WHELP?!” bellowed a much louder, more agitated spirit. Soon after, the ghost of Mr. Song charged through the wall, uncomfortably close to Indigo, and came to rest in the middle of the room, floating just a few smug feet above everyone else. “Honestly, I would have been content to wait until you-” he yelled, pointing an accusing finger at Raven, “Kicked the bucket, and another, more sensible member of the family returned this house to its natural state!”

“Then why did you go out of your way to scare me off?!” Inkwell demanded.

“How about because I just don’t like you?” he asked simply.

“Raven blinked a few times. “I don’t have a good response for that.”

“I thought so,” Song said smugly. He immediately disregarded her, turning his attention to Spooky. “YOU, CHILD! Turn that book over that I may destroy it, and free myself this infernal cage! Lest I rip your spirit out and MAKE SURE IT STAYS THAT WAY!”

“No, thanks,” Spooks said coolly. Treble had to stifle a laugh.

The room rumbled with Song’s anger. “How DARE YOU DISMISS ME SO! Do you have ANY IDEA the power I possess?!”

“Yes,” Spooks said.

“THEN YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT I-”

“And I’m not impressed,” he finished in an icy tone.

Treble raised an eyebrow above a smug grin and took a few steps back. Raven caught his eye and followed his lead, slowly inching towards the wall.

“EXCUSE ME?!” Song bellowed.

Spooky gently set the book down on the floor beside him, and stood up. In an instant, even with Song and Tide only feet away, even with the enormous sigil above their heads, Spooky Bones was now the scariest thing in the room. Some day I’m going to learn how he does that, Treble thought to himself.

Once again, Song demanded answers. “WHO ARE YOU TO SPEAK TO ME SO DISMISSIVELY?!”

“My name is Spooky Bones. Grandson of Buried Bones. The youngest heir to the Bonespeaker Curse. I have stared into the Tenebrae, thrown fire at Beasts from the Outer Rings, fought monsters of all kinds, breeds, and dispositions. I have stayed into the eyes of a demon from the pit, and made dead men sit up and talk. I have fought devils, dead things, and everything in between. And I. Am still. here.” He gently crouched, picking up the book. “Now here’s where you start learning your lesson, old man.”

Treble almost shook with giddy glee. Goddammit he’s so COOL when he does that! Wait, what’s the lighter for?

Indeed, Spooky had pulled out a peculiar looking lighter from his pocket, a shiny metal case with a cross bored into it. “You want me to light this book up, and set you free, right?!” he yelled.

Treble was at war with himself, internally. Torn between asking his very, very good and very, very scary friend what the hell was wrong with him, and having faith that Spooky knew what he was doing, like he always seemed to. He settled on the option that let him stay put.

Song looked at the boy and laughed. “HA! With all your posturing, you had me worried, even for a second! Commendable! But you still have no choice but to give in to my demands!”

Spooky held the lit flame aloft, dancing it over the bottom of the book. “Here’s the thing,” he said calmly. “The Templars were very, viciously, intelligent. The Malleus Malifecarum wasn’t just a textbook. Did you ever wonder why this was the only copy your illustrious and wealthy family could ever find? Because the rest of them had all been used.”

Song looked on warily, no longer confident in his position here. “What are you on about, you soiled whelp?!”

Flames began dancing along the bottom of the book, and Raven took a step forward. She was stopped, however, by Tide of all beings, who assured her gently, “Trust him. I know what he’s doing, and so does he.”

Indigo was just happy to not have to get up.

“What I’m ‘on about’, old man, is that this isn’t just a book. It’s a bomb. Ignited by a flame from a holy symbol-” he tapped the cross on the lighter with a finger “-carved of silver and blessed by the Dioces. He owed me a favor,” he explained, directing his attention to Raven. She closed her mouth, the question she was posing to ask already answered. “And do you want to know what kind of explosion a holy text sets off?” he asked, his eyes once again on Song.

“...no.”

“Oh, yes,” Spooks said triumphantly. “Forget your phosphorous grenades and Exorcism Bombs. The last edition of the Malleus Malifecarum was, on top of everything else, a Consecration Cannonade.” The flames seemed to dance at his words, leaping up the text eagerly as he finished his sentence.

Song roared with outrage as he dove for the child, only to be rebuffed as Spooky hurled the book straight into him, through him, and straight into the sigil. The effect was immediate: the flash of light brilliant and unbearable, filled with a righteous, powerful presence. The sound a choir of holy determination drowning out a cacophony of indignant, eldritch rage. Even Song’s own screams were drowned out as the victorious cheer of Eventide and a hundred other children rang out like church bells throughout the house. Above it all, however, Spooks liked to think he could hear the gentle ‘thank you’ of a poor, misunderstood soul borne with a good heart into an evil family.

Rubble, Dusty, and Twilight turned the corner into the room at the last second, just in time to see and then shield themselves from the out-pour of intolerable luminescence. “THE FUCK,” Rubble and Dusty yelled, as Twilight simply shrunk away and covered her ears against the cacophany and her eyes against the light.

Even as they shielded themselves from its radiance, though, the children and Raven all felt a sense of warmth, of approval, of gratitude, as the spirits bound to the house were unchained and ascended, all in an instant. When the light cleared and the sound dissipated, there was a moment of silent awe.

Which lasted about as long as Treble could hold in the words “FUCK YEAH!”

“A Consecration Cannonade,” Spooky explained, as Dusty and Treble helped Twilight haul the equipment onto the front porch, “Named mostly for the alliteration, despite how accurate the name actually is, is a last-ditch holy spell created by the Archdiocese at the height of the Crusades. The reason that edition of the Malleus is so rare is, now obviously, because you have to destroy the book to do it. The spell turns everything within three square miles into consecrated Christian holy ground.” He stood with his back to the sun, which had been in the air for about an hour. They were all looking forward to a good night’s sleep. Or day’s.

His audience, Indigo, Raven and Rubble (who was now back in the wheelchair), sat along the front porch, listening intently, if only so Spooky didn’t have to repeat himself when the others asked him the exact same question. Raven thought for a moment, until her eyes widened in alarm. “So, you’re saying this house is now a Holy Site?!” she demanded.

Spooks smiled a little. “Not exactly. It’s more like hallowed ground, like a properly tended graveyard or a church. That book basically ripped away any power the Book of Morrighan had over your house. Without that, there was nothing holding Mr. Song or his son in place. And since this is technically where the children were buried, this became a safe resting place, allowing them to move on. Unfortunately, it did little to nothing to clean up the actual mess, so there’s a bunch of corpses in your kitchen, a lot of blood on your ceiling, and your basement still looks like a grenade went off.”

Inkwell sighed. “Oh, good. Just as long as I don’t have to expect pilgrims showing up at all hours. And the house is pretty much standing, so there’s that.”

“That’s nice,” Spooks said genuinely. Raven raised an eyebrow at him, but he pressed on. “I would like to suggest that the children receive proper burials, if possible. I don’t expect that you’ll be able to find their names or any relevant dates, besides the time period their clothes were from. But it would be a good idea to bury them proper, within about a mile of the house. Also, the local Diocese is going to want to have a word. They have alarm bells for that kind of holy magic. You can just direct them to me for the most part, but they’re probably going to bug you for at least a little while.”

“How long is… a little while?” she asked hesitantly.

“Well, the last time they poked their heads up at our… adventures,” Rubble interjected, “We spent a good month or so getting their robes untwisted. Right uppity bunch of a-holes, mind you.”

Spooks was about to press on as Indigo’s phone rang. She jumped almost a foot in the air, as did Raven. “Jesus! I forgot I had the damn thing!” She pulled it out of her pocket and answered it. “Hello- hi dad! Oh, my god, send a big-ass truck and come get me, please! The van’s all doa! No, I didn’t hit someone! I mean, I maybe have a broken collarbone again but- dad I- WILL YOU STOP SHOUTING?!”

She continued to yell into her phone for several minutes, and stormed off. Rubble and Spooks just shared a laugh, while Raven sighed. “I’m not looking forward to having that conversation. I imagine her father is going to be mightily upset with me.”

Twilight, having just overheard, stopped and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Her father’s very… financially oriented. Her breaking bones and going missing overnight isn’t exactly news to them. I mean, she is a teenager. Just offer to pay for the van and the medical, and you should be fine.”

Raven nodded, slightly assured, until her brain caught up with her wallet. “But I barely have enough left to pay for the boys! I still have to clean up the blood, the bodies, dig a bunch of graves, and-”

“-And my dad runs a construction company that specializes in demolitions and really big holes,” Rubble offered. “Seriously, he could probably have a few dozen plots dug up in a weekend. And honestly? Blood’s not as hard to clean as they make it sound. I mean sure, you’re never taking a blacklight into that room again, but surface damage isn’t that hard. Especially given the kind of treatment you need to make sure it doesn’t dry and rot, having been up there as long as it has. Although you might just settle for replacing the ceiling. Which, given the outrageous costs of cleaning companies, might be cheaper. Certainly less time-consuming than scrubbing the whole damn thing. And he could to it relatively cheap, given current market value. I kind of have an unofficial contract with them in cleaning up the weird shit that gets left behind when we do… this,” he gestured largely to the house behind them.

“Yeah, they’re doing a pretty good job cleaning up the hole in the gymnasium,” Dusty said in passing.

Spooks raised a hand as Raven looked ready to launch into a serious of rather worrying questions. “Trust me, you don’t want to know. It was… a lot worse than this.”

Rubble gestured at his bad leg. “Ya think?!”

“Ok, ok, my dad is on his way, without a lawyer,” Indigo explained, taking a seat on the porch again. “I told him I stuck around to watch you guys ‘hunt ghosts’ and got stranded when the van broke down in a spot with horrible reception.”

“And the broken collarbone?” Rubble inquired.

“Eh,” she shrugged with her good arm. “He stopped asking about that kind of thing ages ago. I mean, it’ll be healed soon enough, anyway. It’s a good thing I play soccer.”

“That is… an alarming sentiment,” Raven noted.

“Pffft, I’m much more interested in the whole punching ghosts thing,” Zap said pointedly, staring at Rubble.

RM sighed. “Ok, so you know how I wear my dad’s old stuff all the time?”

“Yes,” Spooks said quickly.

“Well, it turns out he’s kind of been haunting me for like three years, but I haven’t been able to like, communicate with him until I technically ‘died’. Which I guess puts to bed that whole heart-stopping thing from last Spring Break,” he added with a smirk.

Spooky’s eyes hiked around his sockets. “Ok, ok, so you weren’t dead.”

“Right. Well, apparently now that I know he’s around, we can kind of like, team up? He takes care of keeping me on my feet,” again he gestured to his legs, “And I do all the punching and stuff. Which now means that I can hit pretty much anything, cause he’s also doing the punching.”

“So you can’t punch ghosts, your dad can,” Spooks said smugly. Well, as smugly as he got, anyway.

“Nope. You don’t get to take this away from me. I punched a ghost. A LOT,” Rubble bragged.

“So… did the Consecration thingy send him away?” Indigo asked. There was one last large thud, and Treble took a quick seat next to them.

“Ok, that’s the last of it,” he said, breathing heavy. “Jesus that’s a lot of stuff.”

“I don’t think you should talk like that,” Raven mused. “This is technically hallowed ground.”

Treble mulled that over. “Eh, we’ve all done worse. Speaking of which, you guys said something about Rubble’s dad’s ghost? The fuck?”

Rubble gave him the cliffnotes version of everything up to that point that he’d missed. “And no, he’s not gone gone. When Spooky lit the book up, it went off like a signal flare. So dad hauled ass away from the explosion. Which I didn’t think he could do, earthbound rules and all that, but apparently there’s a few things back at my house that he’s also bound to. Really I just need any one of them with me to go ghost like that.”

“Earthbound rules?” Twilight asked, taking a seat with the rest of them. Dusty followed suit immediately after.

Spooks looked at the now decent crowd in front of him, and put on his ‘professor’ face. “Earthbound spirits are tied to one of three things: people, places, or material items. In Trouble’s case, he’s bound to the things that the military sent home to his family after he died, am I right?”

Rubble nodded. “Good so far, teach.”

“Well, in the case of multiple bindings, the spirit can hop freely between any of them, which makes certain hauntings very difficult. I imagine that the… ‘signal flare’ as you put it sent him running back to your house, which means that until we leave this hallowed ground, you’re stuck without him for the time being. Although this doesn’t mean we’re letting you off the hook in going back to the hospital.”

Rubble made a face. “Man. That’s gonna be like, all the money I made today. Fuck.”

The other boys looked between each other, and Treble turned to address Raven. “Miss Inkwell, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask that you direct my share of tonight’s earnings, save for a hundred dollars, to Rubble’s paycheck.”

“Same,” Dusty chimed in. “Except I’d like to keep like, 150.”

“I only need about 75,” Spooky said thoughtfully.

Rubble looked around to his friends, and said a soft thank you. He then turned the chair around and wheeled himself around to the side of the house.

“Um, is he ok?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah, he just cryin’,” Dusty chided.

“NO I’M NOT. SHUT UP. YOU’RE CRYING!”

Author's Note

Can it be?! Did I just finish another arc?!

Honestly I could have divided this into two chapters easy, but I didn't want to drag it on unnecessarily and come up with bullshit padding to make the chapters ok-sized.

Now for another Interlude!

Interlude 2-1: Bedrest

Interlude 2-1:

Rubble Maker hated hospitals. The smell was atrocious. That chemical, disheartening smell that you shouldn’t be able to get used to, but somehow, after a few days, you don’t even notice it. Sitting in the same bed for days was atrocious, almost unthinkable for someone as active as him. Yet, the doctors had insisted, the extent of his injury requiring an extended period of immobilization which, given his history of checking out AMA and then gallivanting around with a serious injury, had earned him an extended stay in a hospital bed while he recovered.

The best thing he could say for his situation was that he wasn’t alone. His mom visited whenever she could, obviously. His uncle swung by every couple of days. The boys, of course, were here either one at a time or all together every afternoon. The doctor had told him he’d needed to stay immobilized for a couple of weeks, not just to heal the tendon, but the surrounding tissue. Which he hadn’t done a great job of doing on his own. Once he’d had some time to heal up, they’d analyze the leg again, and see if it was truly beyond surgery. The large chunk missing out of the back of his foot was a good indicator, but truth be told, he wasn’t familiar with medicine or biology at all. Except where to hit people.

He felt bad for that nurse that had thrown up when they’d taken the brace off. Cleaning the wound had hurt like a bitch, too. For now, though, he was left alone in his bed with his leg elevated, in a splint, as he flipped through mind numbing channel after channel of cable television. Rubble hated TV. Sure, there were some shows he liked, but he much preferred sitting in a theater with a good movie, instead of waiting for a random episode of a show he liked to air at some predetermined time. God, he missed Netflix.

Of course he wasn’t in bed all day: he had physical therapy. They made him get up and walk around a little every day, just to keep his blood flowing. They checked his pain levels, which had gotten somehow worse after the house, no doubt a result of then clearing out more of the damaged tissue and leaving a bunch of raw nerves and muscle exposed. They’d patched that, of course, but it was still some of the most annoying pain he’d ever been in.

At least they let him wear some normal clothes while he was here. As much as he didn’t mind wearing the robe, he would much rather avoid the inevitable conversation when one of the nurses who didn’t know him saw his scars. His doctor was well aware of his history, as did some of the nurses. The hospital had treated a number of ‘abnormal’ injuries in the last couple of years, much to the chagrin of the administrator and the insurance companies. There were a few nurses, of course, that had never had to treat those patients, and weren’t familiar with Rubble and his friends’ work in the ‘field’.

He’d had to talk more than one nurse out of calling social services.

At the moment, he was deciding between a talk show comprised entirely of a female panel, and yet another episode of Law and Order. On the one hand, he didn’t have much interest in the world outside of his hometown, and on the other, he didn’t need a reminder that some people could be even more monstrous than some of the things they fought. Of course, all of his other options were somehow worse.

His eyes rolled over to the small stack of books his friends had brought him: the old copy of Dorian Grey he’d never finished; a rather heartfelt, if misguided, gift of ‘How to Deal With Possession’ from Twilight; a somewhat interesting reference on Muay Thai that he’d thumbed through, from Indigo; some joke gifts from the boys; and a book from Raven Inkwell he hadn’t touched.

“You’d think they’d have like, On Demand or something,” Trouble mused, leaning on a transparent elbow.

Rubble started, giving his dad an unamused glare. “Really, we’ve gotta put like, a beel on you or something. You’re worse than Spooks.”

“Who? Oh, right, the Bones kid. Scrawny li’l guy, ain’t he?” his father mused, shifting in mid-air to sit a few inches above the edge of the bed. “What was that kid who recognized me again?”

“That would be Treble,” Rubble explained.

“Treble, huh? What was with the suit? His dad some kind of bigwig?”

Rubble choked a laugh. “Hardly. I mean, he’s got money, I guess. Not Inkwell money, but some. Of course, his parents are too busy fighting over it for it to go anywhere. I think that’s the only actual suit he has?

“And he wore it to a haunted house?” Trouble said indignantly.

“More like he wore it to the richest, largest estate in the county. That just happened to have ghosts in it. Although he does seem to wear it whenever he goes somewhere spiritually unpleasant. Kind of like armor. Fighting ghosts and the like is all about mental strength. I guess he gets his from dressing the part,” RM rambled. He’d never really thought about it before. He’d asked, of course, but DT always had some kind of flippant answer.

His dad shrugged. “Well, he’s still alive, so it must work on some level.”

“That’s what he says,” Rubble chuckled. They shared a laugh for a second, then the room got quiet again. Rubble eyed the back of his dad’s head, the old man watching the tv with passing disinterest. “You thought about going to see her yet? Not that the connection’s strong enough?”

Trouble didn’t turn around. “No. I mean, I have, but I’m not… I can’t. You know what it was like when I died. I think seeing me again, amidst all of this, would kill her. Hell, it might kill me, and look where I am,” he added, gesturing at his translucent form. He was silent for a moment. “I want to, you know. Of course I do. I would love a chance to give her a real goodbye. But not… now. Not like this. I mean, I’m not getting any better, naturally, but… I spent so much time just waiting for a chance to connect with you, trying to get strong enough to see you. I’m so tired.”

Rubble rolled his eyes. “And?”

“..excuse me?”

“I said, ‘And?’ Weren’t you the one who told me ‘being tired isn’t a reason, it’s an excuse’? I mean, you were the one who spent a good six hours in the middle of the night digging a trench cause the lake behind our house flooded and you didn’t want the water to reach my nursery. Or how about the time you fixed the window on the third story of our old house just because you were hanging by your ankle off the roof after you slipped, and wanted something to do while they came up and got you?” Rubble scoffed. “You always said if I’m not broken or bleeding-”

“-or DEAD,” his father interrupted, with a pointed look.

“Not stopping you now, is it?” Rubble said sternly. “Look, I’m not saying you need to fuck off right now and go give her a big ol’ ghost hug. Just stop making excuses. Figure out what needs figuring out, and get off your floaty ass.”

Trouble looked at his son for a long time. “If I weren’t incorporeal I’d smack you sideways.”

“And if I wasn’t laid up in a hospital bed I’d drag you home by your ears.”

Another, brief moment of silence, broken swiftly by both of them breaking down into raucous laughter. A nurse in the hall glanced sideways into the room, decided she saw something she’d rather not, and moved on. Trouble noticed. “You’d think with all the ghosts around here they’d get used to one sitting around shootin’ the shit with his son.”

Rubble raised a wary eyebrow. “What do you mean ‘all the’?”

His dad sighed. “Kid, I swear it took you dying just to see one ghost. God knows what we’d have to do to you to see the rest of them. I mean, yeah, I’m a special case. Having a tie to a living soul gives me more strength than normal, makes me more… here. But there are hundreds of us in this city alone. You’d be surprised how few of us actually move on in one direction or another. Some of us hang out because we have to; unfinished business and all that. Some just hang around because we can. Because the alternative is worse. Others are just bitter old farts who want to stick it to the living one last time. Then there are special cases like your friend Eventide. Poor souls held here against their will for some reason or another. Nice kid, that Tide. Got a mouth on her, though.”

“You say that like you had words with her,” Rubble noticed.

“Well, duh. How do you think I finally figured out how to get a hold of you? If she hadn’t pointed me in the right direction when we first got to the house, you’d probably still be floating around the house. Or not. That Spooks kid got a set of lungs on him. He might have pulled your soul into your body out of spite,” Trouble chuckled.

“Probably,” Rubble agreed, and they shared another, shorter laugh.

Then the door slid open, and a familiar bespectacled girl poked her head in. “Oh! Um… hello, Mr., um...” Twilight started.

“Trouble. Please, come in. I’ll leave you to talk. Gotta recharge,” he aded to his son with a wink, and disappeared before Rubble could protest.

The bedridden kid just sighed and rolled his eyes as Twilight entered the room with a chuckle. “He, um… seems like a nice guy,” Twilight said. “Seemed? I don’t really know how tenses with dead people work.”

“Generally, if they can talk back, it’s present tense,” Rubble explained. “So what’s up?”

“Well, actually, I just got done with school. The boys said they wouldn’t be able to come by today, for one reason or another. I think Dusty actually got a job with your uncle’s construction company. Something about a newly opened position?” she asked with half a smirk.

“Oh, thank GOD,” Rubble groaned. “That kid has needed some real fuckin’ work in his life for ages. What about Spooks?”

“He and Treble are cleaning out your… clubhouse. They said they had a surprise for when you got out,” Twilight elaborated.

He sat up in his seat, as much as he could. “Well, that explains them coming here in shifts.” When he still wasn’t comfortable, he fiddled with the remote and adjusted the bed to sit up for him. It lifted slowly with a wrrrrrr. “So you popped by all by yourself, huh?”

“Actually...” Twilight started. There was a brief commotion in the hall. “Oh for, come IN, you guys!”

The door slid the rest of the way open, and a gaggle of girls strolled in. Not the girls he was expecting, though: it seemed Twilight had brought her Shadowbolt friends for a visit. Most notably Indigo Zap, who was finally out of her sling. “Hey loser,” Zap joked. Still stuck in bed.

“Hey sissy. Still crying in corners?” Rubble jabbed back. They traded smirks, and she came around the bed to give him a hug. She kissed his cheek, and stood up. “Thanks for coming by,” he added, more serious. When’d you get your arm back?”

Indigo sat on the edge of the bed. “Earlier today. I’d have come by myself, but the girls insisted they get a chance to see me to celebrate. So I figured I’d drag them all here.”

Rubble eyed the new group. He knew Twilight, of course, and was slowly getting more familiar with the rest. “I can’t believe you hooked up with a guy you met in a haunted freakin’ house,” Sunny Flare said. She cocked a hip and gave the two a snarky grin.

Indigo shrugged. “Hey, when a guy punches a ghost for you, it sends a message.”

“Ok, first off, I punched that ghost for me. I judo flipped him for you,” Rubble elaborated.

Lemon Zest had taken up one of the only chairs in the room, sitting in it sideways. “Man, you shoulda brought me! I’d have been all over that shit!”

“Oh sure,” Sour Sweet groaned. “And the ceiling of blood, the flaming kid’s skulls, the dancing corpses, and the giant soul-trapping ghost? All over them too?”

Sugarcoat, who had since commandeered the remote and made a valiant attempt to find something not garbage on TV, spoke up. “Actually, she’d probably try to do all those things. I’m rather content to be left out of it, thank you. Also, if you two start making out again, I’m going to choke you both with your IV.”

“Please don’t,” Trouble said quickly, popping into existence right above the windowsill. Lemon Zest shrieked and fell out of the chair. “It took quite a lot of energy to put his soul back into his body the first time.”

Sugarcoat and Sour Sweet smirked at Zest, who climbed up sheepishly from the floor. “All over it sure looks a lot like all over the floor,” Sweet chided.

“Oh, shut up,” Lemon growled. “And you! Why you gotta do that every time we swing by?”

“Because it’s funny,” father and son said together.

Twilight sighed and hung her head. “Jesus, there really are two of you.”

The boys chuckled as Rubble shooed his dad away. “It’s already crowded enough in here. Besides, you said something about taking a nap, old man.”

Trouble flipped him off. “I don’t take up space, I’m a ghost, you ass. But yes, ok, I get it. I’ll just fuck off til that crotchety old nurse comes back to take your BP. She’s fun to mess with,” he added with a wink to the girls, and disappeared again.

Sugarcoat considered Rubble for a moment. “You let your dad flip you off?”

“Dude, he literally dragged me back to life. He can flip me off all he wants. Also, you try and stop him,” Rubble sighed.

Indigo scooted farther onto the bed, and laid down on top of the blankets. She wasn’t exactly the cuddly type, but she was a little territorial. Also, the chairs sucked. “So when do you get to go home?”

“Why?” Sunny asked coyly. “Can’t wait to get him in the sack, or something?”

“Nah,” Zap drawled, waving a hand dismissively. “I’m saving that for when we-”

“I really don’t want to know,” Sugarcoat groaned.

Author's Note

It only took me 135 THOUSAND WORDS to get to any kind of shipping. Jesus.

Interlude 2-2: Shipping and Handling

Interlude 2-2: Shipping and Handling

As happy as the boys were to see Rubble getting the care he needed, instead of being a stubborn ass about the ordeal, the hideout really didn’t feel like ‘home’ without all four of them. Of course, it didn’t look much like it either at the moment. Each of them had held onto some spending cash from their hard-earned weekend, and put a little of it into the hideout. Unfortunately, before they could actually make any proper changes to the place, they had to clean it.

Normally, they’d lament the absence of one of the stronger sets of hands in the group, but as it turns out, they had other people they could call. Or rather, that Treble could call. Dusty had suggested asking some of the Rainbooms for help, which the other two had been a little cautious about, until he also brought up the fact that one of them, whose life they had recently saved, could move things with her mind, and another, whom they had fought with not two months ago to save the school, could literally lift buses.

Treble had been nominated to make the phone call, as Spooks still got flustered at the prospect of talking to cute nerdy girls that didn’t run away from him, and Dusty had all the social graces of the pile of debris they were trying to clear out. A brief round of phone tag later, and a whole gaggle of girls had come by to help clean up the place.

“I still don’t understand why you just don’t find a better spot to hole up in,” Sunset groaned, taking a crowbar to some loose nails in the wall.

Whether Treble had wanted them too or not. “If you could find us a spot where four boys can live off-and-on without question or paying rent, please, do let us know. Also, I’d be careful with that wall. It’s hollow right there.”

Sunset looked to the stubborn nail, and the crowbar she almost brought down on it like a hammer. Thinking better of it, she went back to prying it the old-fashioned way. Applejack and Rainbow Dash had taken to cleaning up the outside of the first floor, including the non-essential graffiti and loose metal, while Twilight was busy shuffling through the abandoned supplies on the upper floors (by virtue of being able to levitate the mess and sort through it without having to touch anything). “Well it’s not like you guys don’t have room at your own places, right?”

Dusty barked a laugh that echoed in the cabinet his head was currently buried in. He shuffled a little and looked over the top of it to look at Sunset. “Please! Spooks lives in a two story house with no basement and an attic that he turned into an art studio. Treble’s family is stuck in a shitty two-bedroom apartment-”

“-hey! The apartment isn’t shitty, the tenants are,” Treble protested.

“Tomato tomahto. My house is… out of the question, and Rubble and his mom live in the smallest hole I’ve ever seen two people fit in without being socially questionable. Literally nowhere else we have access to has enough room for four teenage boys with a propensity for breaking shit and taking up whole rooms with books and… questionable paraphernalia,” he added after a moment’s hesitation.

The other people in the room gave him strange looks, most of which deciding they’d rather not know. Then a loud bang rang out from behind the building. “Sorry!” Applejack yelled through a window with no glass. “Tryin’ ta get this shoddy gutter off the side!”

“Jesus, AJ, that was almost my head!” RD snapped.

“I said sorry!” the farmgirl yelled back.

Treble and Dusty exchanged glances. “We sure we need them?”

“Yes,” Spooks said from his desk. Or rather, fold-out table. Without much muscle on him, he’d been delegated to organizing everyone else. A rather large, if less-than-professional, blueprint was spread out on the table before him. “Applejack’s the only one strong enough to move the heavy metal and fallen beams around here, and Rainbow Dash… well, I’m not sure, but I’d rather have the extra hands than the quiet.”

The ceiling above them shook slightly with a loud thump, which caused them all to stop and stare at it in slight alarm. A few moments of silence later, Twilight came down the recently-cleaned stairway in the back with a box of assorted junk. When she saw the group staring at her, she smiled sheepishly. “Um… I guess that filing cabinet fell kinda hard, huh?”

“Ya think?!” Sunset said, a little louder than she intended. Doubling back, she corrected. “You just scared the lot of us, Twi. Please do try and give us some kind of warning next time?”

Twilight brushed a lock of hair out of her face. “Uh… sure, sorry. Well, anyway, I found some stuff we might be able to use. Most of it is just office supplies and filing stuff, which I thought might help with sorting out your grandfather’s notes, Spooky.”

Bones nodded briefly and smiled. “Thanks. We don’t really have a system for it right now. I mean, I don’t think any of us knows how to file.”

Treble, currently arm-deep in a pile of light debris, raised his other hand. “I do.”

The room at large looked at him in disbelief. “Ok, I’ll bite, how?!” Sunset asked.

Treble raised an eyebrow at her. “Uh, my mom’s a lawyer and my dad’s filed more patents than Edison? Really, half our apartment is file cabinets. Well, not really, but I mean, it’s not that hard.”

“And you haven’t said anything until now why?” Dusty demanded, fiddling with a loose screw in the cabinet.

Treble swept a hand over the room. “Oh wow, look at all the filing cabinets and office space we have! Ooh, aah!”

Dusty threw a chunk of drywall at him. (“OW!”) “Don’t be an ass. That’s my job. Especially since Rubble’s not here. Besides, we have filing cabinets upstairs, apparently.”

“To be fair,” Spooks interjected, “We haven’t been able to get upstairs until Applejack cleared out the chunks of cement.”

“Ok, seriously, what even happened here?” Twilight asked, looking back at the stairway with some alarm.

“Nothing major, I don’t think,” Dusty mused. He ducked his head back into the cabinet, and his next few words echoed in the wood. “Most of it was vandalism -not mine- and the natural decay that comes from abandoned buildings. This place hadn’t really been used for several years before we got here, so none of us really knows. I mean, it’s not that big a deal, I don’t think.” He surfaced again, throwing aside a broken piece of wood into a large pile of scrap to be taken out later. “We did some research-”

“Cough, cough,” said Treble.

“...ok, fine. Treble did some research on the place just to make sure we weren’t stepping on anybody’s toes, and as it turns out, the city doesn’t even know who owns the place now. It’s just one of those sad places that gets left to the wayside because whoever actually owns it doesn’t give enough of a shit to say anything. And it’s in that dirty part of town where the city’s basically abandoned it in favor of putting money towards things they could actually fix.” There was a rustle as he dug into the wood fixture, and pulled out a bent nail. “GOD this thing is trash. Why am I fixing it again?”

“Because new cabinets would take up more than all of the money we kept from the Inkwell job,” Spooky explained. “And I’d really like a place to keep our food that isn’t a cooler sitting in the middle of a large room with holes in the wall. At least we could lock a cabinet. Also, this is the best I could think of to keep you away from the piping. Just because you have a wrench doesn’t mean you know what the hell you’re doing.”

“Hey, it worked that one time!” Dusty protested.

Bones didn’t even look up from his table. “And if you can tell me why and how it worked, I will gladly let you fix the plumbing here.”

“...”

“I thought so. Back to it, cabinet boy,” Bones chided.

Sunset and Twilight chuckled as the cabinet muffled some of Dusty’s less favorable language. “I think he’s enjoying this,” Sunset said with a smile. She looked around, and noticed Spooks eye-deep in his planning, Treble digging through a pile of drywall for… something, and Dusty having disappeared completely into his woodwork, she leaned in conspiratorially to her friend. “So, uh, how’s things with you and Spooky Bones?”

Twilight spluttered a response. “Buh-whu-what are you talking about?”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You two are like, nerd-central in both our groups. You couldn’t be better made for each other if you had matching puzzle pieces. I mean, technically you do-”

“SUNSET!” Twilight shrieked. The boys all turned to look at them, and Twilight blushed furiously, dragging Sunset into a far corner. “What is the matter with you?!”

Shimmer chuckled. “Sorry, but you have to admit, you two aren’t terrible together.”

“Neither are Timber and I! You know, my boyfriend?!” Twilight protested. “I’m perfectly happy with my current situation, thanks!”

“Oh please,” Sunset groaned, her eyes taking a round-trip in their sockets. “He’s what… four years older than you?”

“Two and a half, Sunset,” Twilight groaned. “It’s not that big a deal. And it’s not like we’re… doing stuff, or anything.”

“Oh my god, Twilight, it’s called sex! It’s just a word!” Sunset chided.

“And age is just a number.”

Shimmer crossed her arms. “That’s not the same thing and you know it. And besides, that’s not even the biggest problem here. When was the last time you saw him?”

“For your information,” Twilight said crossly, “I saw him only a couple days after that whole haunted house ordeal. We spent the whole day together, and he was a perfect gentleman. Besides, why do you care so much who I’m dating?”

That gave Sunset pause. After a moment’s thought, she said, “Well, it’s less about who you’re dating, and more about… Spooks. Ok, if you tell any of the boys what I’m about to say, I’ll deny it and arrange your entire collection of lab notes in reverse alphabetical order.”

Twilight shivered. “Ok, fine.”

“I… I kind of like them, alright? They’re not quite as bad as I thought. I mean, they did a great job with the dance, and the party was a pretty good time. I admit we didn’t really have much reason to spend time with them last year, so actually seeing them in action is kind of… enlightening. They’re not as bad as I thought they were. So I kind of… fell bad for Spooky. I mean, I know he has really good friends, but he always looks.. alone, kind of.” Sunset glanced over her shoulder back at the boys, who seemed to have disregarded their conversation as the dreaded ‘girl talk’ they’d heard so much about. “I think it would be good for him to have someone… special.”

Twilight’s expression softened. “Sunset, that’s sweet. But that doesn’t mean you get to play matchmaker with people who are already in a relationship. Besides, it’s not like you don’t know a bunch of single cute girls.”

“Yes, but they’re all scared of him to some degree. I mean, he makes Pinkie jump. Pinkie,” Sunset stressed.

“Which I still don’t understand,” Twilight sighed. “I mean, he’s quiet, sure. But it’s not like he sneaks up on people. They just don’t really… notice him. Which is kinda sad, actually. I mean, even his friends get startled when he shows up. I kind of know what it’s like to be that… invisible.”

Sunset thought back to the last school year, and to a certain member of their yearbook committee. “I don’t think you’re the only one. Although it’s almost… supernatural with him. Which wouldn’t surprise me, given these guys. Considering one of them is literally carrying a ghost in his pocket-”

“Which he still won’t let me study,” Twilight grumbled.

“It’s his dad, Twilight. But I mean, I can’t help but empathize with the kid. I just thought maybe he could use some… affection,” Sunset said with a soft sigh.

“I kind of get it,” Twilight agreed quietly.

“You know I can hear you, right?” Spooks called across the room.

“Wha-HOW?!” Sunset yelped, blushing furiously.

Treble pushed aside the last of the pile he was working on, shoving it into the designated discard pile. “It’s a gift,” he said. “Kid can pick out a conversation from the other side of a crowded cafeteria. Hiding in the corner and being the only people in the room saying anything? Not gonna help much.”

“Also, I don’t need a girlfriend,” Spooks said simply.

Dusty and Treble traded glances, and bust out laughing. “Oh my god, that’s what you were being all hush-hush about?!” Treble howled. “Come on, who were you trying to set him up with, anyway?”

“Yeah,” Dusty jumped in. “You got Wednesday Addams on speed dial?”

“Nobody uses speed dial anymore, Dusty,” Spooks groaned. “And no, Sunset seems to think Twilight and I would be a good match.”

Which was Twilight’s cue to turn a few impressive shades of red. “Which is nto happening! I mean, I have a-”

“Boyfriend, yes I know,” Spooks drawled, finally looking up from his table to address Shimmer. “Look, Shimmy, I appreciate it, but really, I’m sixteen going on like, a hundred. I talk to dead people. I fight ghosts and monsters and apparently I’m a walking jump scare. If you could find someone not immediately put off by all of that I would be very impressed.”

Treble tapped his chin. “I dunno. You and Sci-Twi here seem to get on okay. Not that I’m saying you two need to hook up,” he added, cutting off Twilight’s protest. “What I’m saying is, if you two can get along, there might be a girl out thee for you yet.”

Dusty shrugged. “Hey, weirder stuff has happened. I mean, Rubble got himself a girlfriend, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t pop out of the woodwork and scare people,” Treble joked, giving Bones a friendly elbow.

Spooks grinned at his friend. “No, he just openly terrifies anything with a pulse. Which kind of makes sense that he’d hook up with a girl like Indigo. I mean, if the chick can make it through the garbage in the Inkwell house without running scared-”

“To be fair, she didn’t really have a choice there,” Twilight pointed out.

“Eh, details,” Dusty said dismissively. “She stuck it out and even ran with us a little at the end. I mean, if the first conversation you have after you get outside is with your dad about how damaged your van is? You’re running with the right crowd.”

“Honestly I thought he’d end up with someone like Aria or that Gilda chick,” Sunset mused, taking her crowbar to another nail, having finally pulled free the first one.

Treble laughed. “Please. He hates Gilda! You remember the anti-bully tirade he went on a couple years ago?”

Twilight shook her head. “No,” she said.

“...oh, right. You weren’t here for most of that. Well, long story short, Rubble got his rep from picking fights with people like Gilda, and Hoops, and all kinds of unsavory characters,” Sunset explained. “He and I even butted heads. He’s one of the few people I decided not to blackmail or manipulate, lest he come to my house and stuff me in a garbage bag he would then hang from a tree in the woods.”

“I remember that,” came a tomboyish voice, as Rainbow Dash and Applejack walked back into the room, the later carrying a rather impressive piece of metal on her shoulder. “Wasn’t that Blueblood he did that to?”

“WHAT?!” Twilight yelped.

“Nah, Blueblood he jus’ stuffed in a trash can and rolled down the hall. S’where he got the rep for it,” AJ recalled. She put down the new piece of shiny metal on the ground. “Got a new gutter, Spooks. You said you wanted to see it first?”

“Wait, back up, he stuffed a kid in a trashbag, in their own home, and hung it from a tree?!” Twilight shrieked. “How did he not get arrested?!”

Sunset rolled her eyes. “Because A, the cops here are kinda garbage. I mean, with all the crap we deal with, do you see even one cop car? And B, nobody felt bad for the kid. Which, by the way, was Lightning Dust, after she tried to cheat in that one soccer game and broke a girl’s ankle with a bad leg-sweep.”

“Oh yeah,” Rainbow said fondly. “I remember now. Good times. Oh relax, Twilight, he didn’t actually hurt her. I don’t think.”

“Nah,” Dusty added. “He wouldn’t be able to pull it off if he had. You gotta roll them up gently in their sheets, tuck the bag under the roll, and then you can drag them out.” When the group at large gave him a look, he said, “Oh come on. Who do you think he learned it from?!”

Sunset kneaded her brow. “Remind me why I started hanging out with you again.”

“So,” AJ asked, trying to change the subject. “What did you wanna see this gutter for anyways, Spooks?”

“I wanted to test a rite that would turn any water that flowed through it into holy water,” Spooks explained, pulling out a small text with some religious icons on it.

“...of course ya’ did.”

Author's Note

Not even sure where this chapter came from. Just kinda happened.

Interlude 2-3: Closing Time

Interlude 2-3: Closing Time

It had been quite a few weeks since Rubble had been admitted to the hospital after the Inkwell House job. Weeks of rest, physical therapy, and more than one surgery on his leg. Fortunately, between what little insurance he did have, his friend’s generous contributions, and a little help from a certain local wealthy family, his only out-of-pocket was the copious amounts of not-hospital food he kept getting smuggled into his room. His nurses would probably be much more agitated about that if he hadn’t been sharing.

The boys had been visiting constantly in the last few weeks, and the girls even dropped by on occasion. Mostly Indigo, by virtue of them not actually having been able to go on a date yet. Apparently, cafeteria food and the in-house movie didn’t count, which Rubble made sure to file away for later. She’d brought a friend or two with her on occasion, like Sunny Flare or Lemon Zest, who both gave Rubble the distinct impression that they came along mostly because they didn’t like to be left out of anything. That and Zest seemed to get a kick out of Rubble’s many, many monster hunting stories.

Today brought with it a rather large gathering of people, as it was the day Rubble was due to be checked out: just in time, too, as Thanksgiving was only a week away. It was one of Rubble’s favorite holidays, even given his rather small family, as he liked food as much as the next teenage boy. There were a few other, more personal reasons, but mostly it was food. His mom, as busy as she was, had somehow worked it into her schedule in the last few years to become an amazing cook, by teenage boy standards.

The aforementioned crowd consisted of his three closest friends, naturally, Indigo, and a couple of girls from Crystal Prep he’d only met once or twice ever. As indigo ushered her friends into the room, Rubble and the boys all greeted the crowd with an assortment of raised eyebrows welcoming smiles.

“Uh, nice to see you too, Zap, but what’s with the entourage?” Rubble grunted, having been rudely awakened only a few minutes before by an obnoxiously cheerful Double D, and thus had yet to work all of the sleep out of his eyes, or voice. Spooky had just taken a seat by the door and watched, while Treble was currently floating around outside the room, as there wasn’t much space to congregate. It helped that he’d developed a sort of flirty repartee with Nurse Redheart.

Indigo shrugged sheepishly as she took a seat at the foot of the hospital bed. “We actually just came from a… thing. Not really a party? I mean-”

“It was a book signing,” one of the girls answered. The one with pigtails and light blue skin. Oh yeah, Sugarcoat. And the other one is… Sun something. Something something road flare jokes SUNNY Flare! Got it, Rubble remembered. “And the library is only a block away, so we came here to pick you up on the way home,” she explained tersely.

“Really?” Spooks asked brightly.

“JESUS,” Sunny barked, jumping half a foot away. “Where the hell did you come from?!”

Spooks shrugged. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Anyway, who was doing the signing?”

“Just a local author, Title Paige. She writes a murder mystery series I enjoy,” Sugarcoat explained, making some room for herself to sit down on the windowsill amidst the balloons and flowers.

Spooky racked his brain. “Nope, sorry. Can’t say I know her. I read mostly grimoires and history books.”

“Why does that not surprise me,” Zap deadpanned. “So listen, we got the van all fixed up, and there’s plenty of room to stretch out, so you should totally come with us!”

Dusty and Spooks shared glances. “Um, not that we don’t mind pawning his grumpy ass off on someone else, especially since the only car we have between us is his ratty old station wagon,” Dusty started, “But why are you trying to hijack our cripple again?”

Rubble leveled a glare at Dusty that could have reforged a beach into a stained-glass window. “Setting aside the many, many things in that statement that make me angry, he has a point. What gives?”

Indigo shrugged unconvincingly. “Awww, no reason, I just thought-”

“She wants to see the hideout,” Sugarcoat interjected.

“Dude!”

The pigtailed girl raised an eyebrow as Sunny scoffed. “Really? You expected Sugarcoat of all people to not rat you out? Please. Anyway, the nurse said something about letting you out in like, an hour or two-”

“Hour and twenty, he gets out at noon,” Treble offered from the hallway.

“-yeah that, thanks. So while you all are getting chatty I’m gonna go raid the gift shop,” Flare finished, turning on her heel and walking out.

Sugarcoat gave Zap a look. “Are you two gonna get all mushy and weird while we wait?”

Rubble grunted in what he assumed to be a manly style. “I don’t really do mushy.”

“It’s true,” Dusty offered. “He’s kind of the anti-mush. Well, unless he’s turning something gross into something even grosser and dead. Then there’s a lot of mush. But not the good kind, you know? More like-”

“Yeah that’s good I’m leaving now,” Sugar groaned, sitting up quickly and following Sunny out.

A third set of footsteps joined them as Treble called out, “Hey, wait up! I wanna hit the cafeteria.”

Spooks looked around the door frame to watch the three disappear around a corner. “Annnnd, they’re off.”

Rubble groaned as he shifted in the bed. “Alright, y’all can get out. I gotta get dressed.”

“Awww, I’m pretty sure I can hang around for that,” Indigo teased.

Which made RM smile. “Zap, I like ya, but honestly, I don’t think I’m ready for you to see me naked yet.”

Zap blinked a few times. “Um… that’s like, the opposite of what you’re supposed to say.”

“Nah, he’s right,” Dusty chimed in. “I mean, we’ve all got battle scars, some more than others, but Rubble is… well, let’s just say he’s doing you a favor kicking you out.”

“What kind of favor?” she asked hesitantly.

“Ever seen a Hellraiser movie?” Spooks asked, rather seriously.

Zap gave Rubble a concerned look. “Um-”

“This is the part where I tell you it’s perfectly find to be weirded out by the idea,” Rubble offered. His voice was a shade gentler than normal. “Really, you’re not gonna hurt my feelers if you skip out for a bit.”

“Ok, but don’t think this means I don’t wanna get busy with you down the road,” Zap insisted, making for the door. Spooks and Dusty followed.

“Eh, hang out with us long enough and Rubble’s scars will be the most normal thing you’ll see,” Dusty chimed in in what he obviously assumed to be a helpful tone.

“That doesn’t surprise me either.”

Treble was more than happy to saunter off in the company of a couple pretty girls he didn’t know. Which, given their line of work, would most likely get him killed one day, but it was a risk he was willing to take. Which he’d said many, many times. “Ok, so like, are any of your teachers monster hunters, too?” Sunny asked, breaking the silence as they navigated the maze of corridors looking for the elevator. The signs weren’t a great deal of help, as there seemed to be a number of elevators, and not all of them went to every floor, for some stupid reason.

DT shook his head. “Nah. I mean, there’s a couple that’ll stick around and throw a punch or two, but not like, regularly. Closest we got’s the Rainbooms, and our physics teacher, Mr. Atom.”

“What, is he like, a vampire or something?” Sugarcoat asked with no lack of snark.

“No, he’s a loup-garou. Very different,” Treble explained.

“Wha-you’re shitting me,” Sunny asked, stopping in her tracks. “You have a monster on staff? And you haven’t aced him yet?”

“I fail to see the difference. Loup-garou is just french for werewolf,” Sugarcoat said stiffly.

“That’s your complaint?” Sunny hissed.

“Actually, that’s a common misconception. Garou means werewolf. Loup means wolf. So the term loup-garou translates roughly as wolf-werewolf, which is due largely in par to the fact the first of their kind was a wolf-form,” he explained. Seeing the lack of convinced expressions on their faces, he sat in a nearby chair and continued, “Look, a werewolf is someone with an affliction. Lycanthropy is a disease. Magical in nature, yes, but it’s still a sickness. We don’t hunt people with lycanthropy unless they’re killing people. There are plenty of ways to deal with it without going on a murderous rampage. Just some people are more apt to use their problem as an excuse to chomp a few hearts out.”

The girls took seats next to him, which he took as a cue to keep talking. “Loup-garous, on the other hand, are people possessed by animal spirits. It’s actually a newer phenomenon than lycanthropy, which is a disease as old as any. Becoming a loup-garou is actually a choice,, in almost all cases, as you have to let the animal spirit possess you willingly. Animals usually don’t have the kind of spiritual strength or guile to overwhelm or deceive a human into accepting them as a passenger at the best of times. Not to mention the criteria for an animal spirit to remain behind long enough to find a host are exceedingly rare in nature. Most loup-garous actually perform a ritual to become what they are. And any animal can possess a human, under the right circumstances, or with the right spellcasting.”

Sunny rubbed her temples. “Oh god, it’s like being in class. Ok, so putting that all aside, what kind of animal is your Physics teacher possessed by?”

“Red panda,” Treble answered. Seeing the looks on their faces, he added, “No seriously. He had a pet one a few years back and went kind of loopy after it died. So, being the bright and laudible scholar he is, he found a spell to keep the little guy’s spirit around, and let it possess him. Let me remind you, the guy teaches high school science classes now.”

Sugarcoat rolled her eyes. “Wonderful, next you’re gonna tell me ex-Principal Cinch is a vampire,” she scoffed, standing up to continue searching for the elevator.

The other two followed suit. “Actually, we thought that at first, mainly because she’s crazy as shit and super creepy, but it turns out she belongs to that rare breed of subhuman that cryptozoologists refer to as Bitchus Maximus.”

Sunny’s laughter rang through the halls and woke more than one person as they continued on.

Once they’d actually located the gift shop, after a longer span of time than any of them would like to admit, the trio perused for maybe a minute or two before deciding that, even given it’s rather generous selection of novelty items, there wasn’t anything they actually wanted to buy. They sauntered out of the little shop, and began their search for the elevator again. “Who the hell puts the cafeteria and the gift shop on different bloody floors?” Sunny huffed, as they turned another corner.

“There’s probably more than one shop, and they want you to walk by all of them before you leave,” Sugarcoat observed. “Also, the elevator is this way.”

Sunny turned on her heel, having walked down the opposite hallway, and strode after her friend, Treble following right behind. “So who else in town is a monster?” she asked Treble, continuing the conversation they’d left off once they’d run into the crowd at the shop.

“As far as I know?” Treble asked, “Not many. I mean, there’s probably a bunch in the city, near you guys, but the outskirts are actually a worse place for someone to hide out if they’ve got inhuman blood or something else riding shotgun. Smaller communities ae harder to hide in, and with the internet the way it is, even the smallest outcrop could out you to the whole wide world if you screw up.”

“Wouldn’t living in a city be just as hazardous, then?” Sugarcoat mused. “All those camera phones and security cameras?”

“Kind of? It’s a double-edged sword. Sure, there’s more ways to get caught, but people in the city are a lot more self-centered by nature. Most people are too busy staring down their phones or looking at their feet as they walk to notice really anything. It’s the places with tight-knit communities, where everyone knows everyone else, that make it harder to look normal. Also, where the hell is this elevator again?” Treble groaned, having reached an intersection that looked a lot like all the others.

“This way,” Sugarcoat said, pointing to her left.

“Wait a minute. Didn’t we pass a bunch of purple bellflowers on the way?” Sunny asked, looking around at the decorative plants.

Sugarcoat nodded. “Yes, that’s how I know it’s this way. The flowers are right there,” she stated, pointing at a particular pot.

“Um, Sugarcoat, those are green. Why… oh, right. Colorblind,” Sunny added apologetically.

Treble raised an eyebrow. “Really? Like, completely, or-”

“No,” Sugarcoat interjected. “I have tritonamaly. Purples and greens all look dull and similar to me. Also, I know these are the right flowers, cause they’re under that stupid ‘Hang in There’ cat poster.”

Sunny took a closer look. “Hey, that is the same poster.”

“Um, they probably have a bunch of them. It’s not exactly hard to come by,” Treble noted.

Sugarcoat sighed. “True, but those are the same flowers. And they can’t be green, Sunny, the only green bellflower is Bells of Ireland, and those are long stalks with bells in clusters. These are campanula, with individual bells on their own stems. Those are purple.”

Treble’s ear twitched as he took a closer look at the flower. “No, she’s right, Sugar. These are green. Like, warning-label toxic green. And… you’re saying they can’t be green?”

“Yes. So unless you’re screwing with me, they’re probably fake. And given the way you stare at my ass, I doubt you’re trying to be a dick. Unless you’re just that kind of person,” Sugar added thoughtfully.

“Nah, that’s a Dusty thing. Also, am I really that obvious?” he asked, giving the flowers one last, cautious glance.

“No, I was hazarding a guess. Good to know, though.”

Treble’s shoulders slumped. “Goddammit.”

Sunny slugged his arm as they started walking in the direction Sugarcoat insisted the elevator was. “Ah, don’t get all whiny. If she had a problem with it she’d have told you to stop, wouldn’t she?”

Treble raised an eyebrow, not saying anything, but he followed along with a bit of perk in his step.

A minute or so later, they found their target. “See?” Sugar insisted. “I told you it was here.”

Sunny rolled her eyes. “Yeah yeah magical plants lead the way something something. Just hit the button. I’m getting hungry.”

Treble reached past the two bickering girls and hit the call button, then waited a few moments before a *ding* announced the cage’s arrival. The doors slid open, and the trio hopped in, Sugar poking the button for the floor above them. “Huh, that’s weird,” she noted.

Treble’s ear twitched again. “What is?” he said, leaning around her shoulder to look at the panel.

“I could have sworn this elevator went all the way to the sixth floor. But the top button is five. Strange,” Sugarcoat noted, then dismissed it with a shrug.

“Hmmm...” Treble said thoughtfully, leaning on the wall. Another ear twitch. “Wait, weren’t these walls metal? Why’s there wood paneling now?”

“Ha!” Sunny barked. “I knew we got on the wrong elevator!”

Treble’s eyes darted back and forth across the elevator cab cautiously, as he chewed his lip.

Sugarcoat sighed and kneaded her brow with two fingers. “No, we didn’t. This is elevator C. I remember because you made a terrible joke when we found it the first time. ‘I C we found the elevator!’ Remember?”

“Yeah, then explain the walls, Sug- OK what is WITH the ears?” Sunny demanded, turning her attention mid-sentence to Treble.

He waited half a second before responding, seemingly snapping out of a reverie of sorts. “Hmm? Sorry, it does that whenever I get nervous. Something’s… wrong here.”

Sunny was about to ask him what, exactly, was wrong, but was interrupted by the elevator coming to a halt and dinging their arrival. The three stepped out, Treble a bit slower than normal, and stopped a few feet from the door. “Um… Sugarcoat said slowly. “This doesn’t look like our floor.”

In fact, it didn’t look like any floor of the hospital. The walls where pale white instead of taupe, the posters were simple, with block letters and short sentences, and carts and wheelchairs were strewn about at odd intervals. On top of all that, there didn’t seem to be anyone else on the floor except them.

“Ok, no, we’re leaving,” Treble insisted, grabbing the girls by the shoulder and turning them all around to get back on the elevator.

Which was now gone. In its place was a bare white wall with a single framed picture. In block letters, it said, “Hang in There!”

Sugarcoat looked at Treble scathingly. “I don’t know how, but I blame you for this.”

Author's Note

Sorry for the wait.

I've been trying to figure the best way in to the next arc. I'm actually really excited about it.

Essay One: The Biggest of Problems, the Smallest of Men

Essay One: The Biggest of Problems, the Smallest of Men

Of the many, many inconveniences afforded someone who has chosen to hunt monsters for a living, none is quite so troublesome as the sheer volume per capita of horrible nightmares waiting to chomp one’s undercarriage off. Even moreso, the rather unnecessary variety of the things. From simpler, far more straightforward threats as vampires, werewolves, and zombies; to the more biblical creatures like demons, devils, and fallen angels; to the still more esoteric beings such as wraiths, tommyknockers, and even some of the old gods, the universe is more than happy to let you know that it wants you dead in no uncertain terms, and its toy chest is unfairly large.

This has led, naturally, to the development of more blanketed approaches to monster hunting. Spells that dissolve any kind of sentience-driven organic matter, for example (In an assuredly slow and disturbing manner, no doubt). The long-standing practice of summoning something truly awful and destructive in the hopes that it happens to be better at its job than the other truly awful and destructive thing you intend to aim it at. Mother Nature’s toy chest is filled with nasty, murderous things with big locks on them, and mankind has spent an awful lot of time and resources creating the necessary keys.

Now if only someone could put forth the effort into making sure the damn things matched.

“Right, you, monster hunter boy,” Sugarcoat said, in that tone of voice bordering on annoyance for the simple fact it was trying not to sound scared, “On a scale of one to ‘Oh god, make it stop’, how screwed are we?”

Treble, who up to that point had taken a disturbingly keen interest in the paint on the walls, came back to Earth with a start. “What?” he asked, obviously having missed the question.

“She asked how fucked we are you goony,” Sunny groaned. She, too, was putting on a brave face, trying to cover the gnawing beast that was her fear with a mask of irritation and impatience.

“Oh, believe me, I wish I had an answer to that. Truth be told, I have absolutely no idea where we are. And before either of you gives me the snarky, obvious answer of ‘in a hospital, I’d ask you what kind of hospital has no patients, nurses, or medical equipment,” he growled, shaking a nearby supply cart to demonstrate his point. Besides the obvious rattle of the wheels and the shifting of the metal drawers, it sounded completely empty. He threw open a drawer to demonstrate exactly that. “It’s like… we’re in a child’s painting of a hospital. Some empty interpretation of what a hospital is supposed to look like, without any of the substance.”

Sugarcoat took a few steps forward and inspected the supply cart, opening the other drawers to sate her curiosity. Treble sat back and watched, letting her air out the no doubt nagging sense of disbelief still rolling around in her head. One thing he had learned long ago could get him killed. “Ok, so we’re not in the hospital anymore. This place is some kind of fake? Like bait in a trap or something?”

DT thought about that for a second, then shook his head. “I doubt it. Bait would imply we were led by the nose to come here. We kind of stumbled into it. More like… a work in progress, I think? Like somebody’s trying to put their own hospital together, piece by piece? I mean, it’s just a guess. We haven’t done much more than look down a hallway and shake a cart. But it’s not like we don’t have options here.”

“Really?” Sunny said, gripping onto the notion hopefully.

“Sure,” Treble assured them. “Look, we’ve been here maybe ten minutes. Trust me when I tell you that anything that wants to kill us would probably have done so by now. At least in my experience. Besides the atrocious décor, really the only threat here is isolation and starvation. Or, more likely, dying of thirst. Which would take several days by normal world standards, so who knows how long it would take us here?” When the girls gave him less-than-properly-assured glares, he continued, “What I’m saying is we have time to figure this out. Which is a huge advantage. So we can either delve deeper into Canterlot Generic Hospital; turn around and look for a way back while ignoring a perfectly good mystery-slash-possible threat to reality; or panic like tiny lemmings and all go find a shiny new cliff to heave-ho off of.”

There was a brief pause as they all considered their options. Sunny seemed to be deep in thought, Sugarcoat was stoic and considerate, and Treble had the look of one who had long ago made their decision and was simply waiting politely for everyone else to be wrong. After a moment’s silence, however, Treble’s ear twitched again. “I… hmm.”

“Oh god, what is it now?” Sugar protested.

“Possibly? Nothing. There’s just something that doesn’t… feel right,” Treble answered thoughtfully, scrunching his brow in concentration. “I mean, it might just be nerves. This entire place sets me off like fireworks.”

“I would welcome fireworks right now,” Sunny groaned, shuddering. “As much as I like the sound of my own voice, and don’t completely hate yours, I could really do with some background music or something. It’s wayyy too quiet in here.”

“Quiet...” Treble mused aloud. “I think that’s it. It’s super quiet. I mean, besides us talking, I can’t hear anything else. There’s no echo off the walls, or anything.” He clapped his hands a couple times, the sharp staccato slightly muted by the lack of reverb. “I mean, I heard that, but that’s it. It’s like the only sound here is the stuff we make ourselves. Everything else is… gone.”

“That’s not all of it,” Sugar noted. “Considering my heart is pounding like crazy, I should be able to hear a bass line in my ears. I’ve got nothing.”

Treble stood still for a moment, focusing on his internals. He felt his heartbeat, naturally, but the usual rush of blood and rhythmic pulsing in his ears was gone. Considering how quiet the rest of the space was, he should be able to map his own pulse by now. “You’re right. That’s… a new kind of weird. Which is bad.”

“...how bad?” Sunny asked, obviously not wanting an answer.

“New means I don’t have any experience in the matter. This whole place is… different,” he said, pacing back and forth nervously. “I’ve been neck-deep in strange probably longer than is healthy for any one person, let alone four, and this isn’t ringing any bells. No pun intended.”

Sugarcoat crossed her arms and looked pointedly at the floor. Or, more accurately, Treble’s feet. “I don’t think it would if it could. Your feet aren’t making any sound, either.”

Treble paused mid-step, and raised an eyebrow. Looking down at his feet, he stomped the floor, hard. There was a dull, muted thumb from his soft-sole shoes. “Sounds… well, not fine, but it sounds to me, anyway.”

“No, Sugar’s right. When you were pacing you weren’t making any noise,” Sunny argued.

“I think that’s just your paranoia showing. I literally just...” he trailed off as he looked at his feet, as movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. Shifting his gave, he saw Sugarcoat tapping her foot impatiently. Saw, but didn’t hear. “Um, Sugarcoat?”

“Yeah?” she snapped, obviously stressed.

“You know you’re tapping your foot, right?” he asked, pointing down.

Sugar stopped and looked at her feet, then shook the limb in question. “It’s a nervous habit. What’s your point?”

“Do it again.”

“Wha-”

“Just humor me,” Treble insisted.

Sugarcoat rolled her eyes, then looked at her foot and tapped it furiously again. This time there was a rapid, hushed rhythm as her toes beat on the floor. “And?”

“And you weren’t making that sound when you did it the first time. I think -although this might sound absolutely insane- that the only sounds we make here are the ones we make consciously,” DT reasoned.

Sunny looked down at her foot, and stamped it a few times. Dull thuds met their ears, despite the flat linoleum and hard plastic of her heels. “Is that why we can’t hear our heartbeats?”

“I… think so? I mean, it’s not like you do that on purpose, do you?” Treble took a few deep breaths, pausing to listen with each one. “I mean, I didn’t even hear myself breath a moment ago, but I heard that.”

“You know what I think?” Sunny asked, in a slightly defeated tone. “I think there’s a shiny new cliff with our name on it, and it’s calling to me.”

The next hour or so was a test of patience for the three, if nothing else. Treble poked his head into every room they came across, rattled every drawer, picked up every phone (whether it was connected or not), and overall brimmed with nervous, almost fearful energy. The two girls had simply deigned to follow behind, falling into step with the only person in the room who seemed to know what they were doing, or at least looked the part.

It wasn’t until their fifth or sixth identical hallway that someone spoke. Had Treble not been going out of his way to create as much noise as he could in his search, thee might have been a silence for it to break. “Um, Treble?” Sunny asked hesitantly.

Their ‘leader’ spun on his heel, halfway through the door of yet another empty room. “Sup?”

“I found.. something?” she hesitated, pointing at the top of a nurse’s station. “I mean, I think so.”

Sugar leaned over her shoulder to inspect the ‘something’. “It’s… a pen. Good job, Sunny. Found a pen.”

“Really?!” Treble asked with more enthusiasm than a pen should elicit. “That is something.”

Sugarcoat opened her mouth to speak, found no words, and simply watched, amazed, as Treble marched over and picked up the writing implement with renewed curiosity. Eventually, some words came to her. “And why, exactly, is a pen something?”

“Because we haven’t found anything smaller than a crash cart since we’ve gotten here, and even that didn’t have paddles attached,” Treble explained, not taking his eyes off the pen. Indeed, he was holding it at eye level and staring at it with a sense of what one might call reverence. “Pens and things like it are… nicknacks. Tiny things. Almost inconsequential.”

Sunny, torn between her brief moment of being useful and her sheer confusion, raised a hesitant finger and asked, “And why is that important?”

“It’s important,” Treble insisted, turning on his heel again and holding out the pen for them to see, “Because it’s a detail.” Then neither of them seemed to share the same spark of comprehension, he elaborated, “Up to now everything has been basic. Rudimentary. Even the posters for this place are just giant block letters. A pen is an afterthought. It’s not something you consider in the ‘big picture’ of putting together a hospital. Really, it’s not even something you normally think about until you actually need one, or just find it randomly.”

“Which means…?” Sugar pressed, not quite getting the gist of Treble’s rambling.

“It means that this place is… incomplete. We’ve stumbled onto a blank slate. A template, if you will. Someone or something is still filling in the details. Like pens,” he stressed, shaking the pen in his hand.

“Or… sound?” Sunny guessed. “You make it sound like we’re in some kind of… simulation that’s still being built. If that’s true, then maybe whoever is putting it together hasn’t programmed sound in yet?”

He considered this for a moment. “That… is actually a much more plausible explanation than I had rolling around.”

“Which was?” Sugar demanded.

“None at all. NOW,” he exclaimed, making the two girls jump slightly. “We have a theory. What we need is a way to TEST it!” He tossed the pen aside, and it landed soundlessly on the floor.

“What we NEED,” Sugar interjected, mocking Treble’s new found enthusiasm, “Is a way out. Or at least an idea of what could create a space like this out of nothing, piece by piece.”

Treble gave her a hurt puppy look. “Well it’s not like you’ve volunteered any useful insight. I mean, do you even have any idea how much raw power it would take to do this on purpose? Manipulate time and space in such a way as to construct an entirely new environment one piece at a time?”

“”It sounds like some kind of fancy spell, to be honest,” Sugar retorted. “Maybe you guys just pissed off a wizard.”

Treble kneaded his brow in frustration. “Ok, first off, wizards don’t work like that. Secondly, there’s the little detail of the law of Conservation of Energy. Yes, I know, physics and magic don’t really tend to walk hand-in-hand, but this one seems pat. Alchemists call it equivalent exchange. You can’t create or destroy matter or energy in it’s basest form. To create this much matter out of nothing, you’d need an exorbitant amount of energy. I mean igniting the atmosphere large. We’ve been walking around for hours and still haven’t found the point where we started. This place is HUGE!”

“Wait, how do you know we haven’t been walking in circles?” Sunny asked, taking a seat on the nurse’s counter. If she was going to listen to someone explain the laws of magic and physics, she wasn’t doing it on her feet.

“Because I scratched my initials in the paint in the corridor we first arrived in. I’ve been making marks on the wall with my nails every time we hit a new corridor, and I haven’t seen a single mark again afterward,” he explained.

“Maybe this place isn’t being created then,” Sugar argued. “Maybe it’s just being put together piece by piece from existing materials. I mean, you don’t build a house by making the bricks on-site, do you?”

Treble scratched his chin; he needed a shave. “That does sound more likely. It would certainly be a lot less difficult than putting everything together from scratch. It would also explain why everything looks exactly the fucking same.” Seeing his statement met with a pair of raised eyebrows, he explained, “Look, say you want to build a house, like you said. And you have to make the bricks yourself. Doing it by hand, the bricks would be a little different every time, right? Different shape, density, color, slight imperfections every time. Because it’s literally impossible to do it the exact same way by hand every single time. Sure, a few might come out exactly the same, against all odds, but the majority would have brief, subtle differences.”

“Okay...” Sunny asked slowly.

“But this stuff,” he continued, shaking a door in its frame, “Is all exactly the same! Every door, knob, corner, wall, poster, frame, hinge, and screw! The screws are even perfectly aligned with each other!” he insisted. Sugar took a closer look at the hinge and saw that the drive for each flathead screw was at exactly the same angle. Even for the lower hinge, and, as she found in a moment, the door on the other side of the hall. “Which actually lends more credence to your piecemeal theory. It looks like someone is just taking pieces off an assembly line and slotting them together. Machine-manufactured, so that everything is the same as the last piece. Even if there was a scratch on the door we didn’t make ourselves, I have no doubt that scratch woul dbe on every single door in exactly the same place.”

“So that could, or would do that?” Sugarcoat asked, more to herself than anything. “If I may jump back to my programming analogy for a moment, it sounds like they’re putting together an environment based on very limited assets- the uniformity might not even be on purpose. It’s possible that the sheer size of this place isn’t a result of the amount of energy being put into it, rather the uniformity is a result of having limited pieces to fill a vast blank canvas.”

Treble took a seat on the counter next to Sunny. “But that would imply that the space was already here. And I seriously doubt the third floor of the hospital is miles wide,” he reasoned.

Sunny shrugged. “Well, maybe we’re not in the hospital. Maybe we’re between the hospital and someplace… else?” she suggested.

Treble shook his head. “I doubt it. I mean, the only place I can think of big enough to house this kind of environment, let alone be empty enough to allow for someone to turn it into their own construction site is the Void. And there aren’t a lot of things that can work in the void: it’s completely devoid of any matter, energy, or life. There’s not even air or a vacuum. Someone would have had to bring this place in from the outside. But who would build a hospital in the void?”

“Maybe they’re rehearsing for the real thing?” Sugar offered snidely.

“A rehearsal? No, that’s… no. No, no, no. OH no. Fuck me that can’t be right,” Treble ranted, shaking slightly.

Sunny leaned away from him. “Um, are you going to share with the class, or just pee yourself quietly. I mean, I wouldn’t blame you, I haven’t seen a bathroom since we got here, but some warning would be nice.”

Sugarcoat elbowed Sunny, hissing in her ear. “I’d be a little more worried if I were you.”

“Why?” she hushed back, eying Treble carefully as he ranted to himself and tried to steady his body, which was doing a rather admirable impression of a maraca.

“Because the guy just came out of a haunted house that put two people in the hospital, was there when Midnight Sparkle started blasting holes in the universe, and has been walking around this empty hellhole for hours, and this is the first time I’ve seen him afraid of anything,” Sugar insisted.

Sunny’s eyes widened, and she leaned a little closer to Treble. “Treble?” she asked carefully. “What is it?”

There was a moment of quiet, and Sunny wasn’t sure he was even going to answer, until he swallowed largely and said, “It’s a rehearsal space. Something is practicing moving around in this environment.”

“What, a hospital? You get that kind of practice with the flu,” Sunny joked.

Treble shook his head, his large mane of hair jerking rapidly. “Not a hospital. Three-dimensional space. Something is practicing what’s it’s like to be in three dimensions. This… thing. These guys aren’t usually three-dimensional. They come from universes much higher, more complicated, than ours. And this one has enough power to drag matter into the void. This is a transitional space, for something trying to reach our dimension.”

“What do you mean ‘these guys’?” Sugar asked carefully. “You know what this is?”

Treble nodded. “Yeah. It’s a psychonaut.”

Essay Two: Psychonauts, or, How I Learned to Love the Screaming

Essay Two: Psychonauts, or, How I learned to Love the Screaming

Sugarcoat and Sunny Flare were not unintelligent people. The former was a prodigy in civil engineering, quickly working her way towards a degree in the same vein from a college who’s name loosely translates from Greek to “How much money do you fucking have?! She could tell you anything and everything about putting a building together and making sure the bugger stays there for something akin to forever. She also had a great mind for mathematics, computer programming, and motocross.

The latter, Sunny Flare, was for all intents and purposes, what a weather pegasus would look like if they’d bothered to wander through the portal and translate all of their knowledge and skill into a universe who’s own weather patterns do not, in fact, understand the terms “Stay, sit, beg”, and make them do it anyway. While not as skilled with technology as their friend Twilight, she had an even better grasp on the subject than Sugarcoat did, and spend a great deal of her time making them wish they’d spent the last several hours in the loving care of a one mad scientist with the last name Sparkle than hers, as she seemed to have a penchant for technological BDSM. To date, the only thing that seemed to share her almost sexual proclivities towards machines was the device on her arm, which no one was quite sure what it did.

Between the two of them, however, they had absolutely no idea what on God’s green Earth a psychonaut was. “Ok,” Sugarcoat said, with a hint of impatience. “This is the part where you actually tell us what this ‘psychonaut’ thing is, so that we can decide for ourselves whether or not crying in a corner is a logical conclusion.”

Treble, to his credit, had since taken their awkward pause in response to his deceleration as an opportunity to smack himself in the face lightly a few times to regain composure. “Well, start walking. There’s a lot to cover, and I’d rather we not be sitting ducks for whatever this thing is.”

Sunny tilted her head, doing a much worse job of containing her exasperation than her friend. “I thought you just. Said. What this thing is.”

“Like I said, lot to cover. Scooch your booch,” he grumbled, leaping off the counter and shimmying the last of the shakes out of the bottom of his foot with much the same approach one would shake off a particularly friendly small dog. They set off down the maze of identical corridors, taking arbitrary lefts and rights whose only guidance was making sure they didn’t go down any of the previously marked hallways, making new marks as they went. Once they’d gotten a rhythm going, Treble did what he did best: talk.

“Ok, first things first, you guys familiar with the multiverse?” he asked. He would have directed his question over his shoulder, as he had taken point on their little marauding party, but he wasn’t exactly keen to keep his eyes anywhere but directly in front of him.

“You mean multiverse theory?” Sunny asked. “Yeah, anyone who’s even touched a string theory text knows about-”

“Not a theory. Also, ‘string’ theory is total bull. Trust me, if the guys who wrote those books actually knew how it was all connected, they’d cry themselves to death,” Treble groaned.

“Wait… what?” Sugarcoat asked.

“Come on, do I really need to explain this part? You literally watched your friend blow holes in the walls of reality into another world. One which keeps dropping its trash in ours.”

The girls exchanged glances, and decided that, between the two of them, they had no counterpoint to that. “Ok, multiverse, go,” Sugar huffed.

“Right. Well, there’s a few different analogies I could use here. One particularly effective one I’m partial to is the bag of marbles thing, but that wouldn’t properly illustrate how potentially Gungnir-up-the-everything fucked we are right now. So, given that the two of you probably have an IQ north of three hundred between you, I’m going to do my best in my limited intelligence to draw you a picture from scratch,” Treble continued, even as he poked his head around a corner, only to see much of the same. With a sigh, he pressed on. “Now, I’m going to do a lot of talking in what might amount to a very short time, so please only interrupt me if I’ve lost you completely or I’m about to get horribly disfigured. If it seems like both, just scream wildly. Anyway, I know you know about physical dimensions, so let’s push past the first grade shit and move into the scary stuff: there’s a shit ton more than three. Problem is, they don’t exist in this universe. We, funnily enough, have only three dimensions.”

He stepped over a fallen med cart as he talked, and a small part of his rather loud lizard brain asked, with the air of someone watching someone else about to die and pointing out that there is in fact, a do-not-die-here button behind them, ”Now what could have knocked that over?” “Some dimensions only have one. Some have numbers in the thousands or higher. And don’t try imagining how that works, we are literally not programmed to do that. A psychonaut, in all it’s pants-shittingly terribly glory, is a creature from a higher dimension than ours. One with the ability to travel between dimensions. Now, seeing as we have a standing portal in our school’s courtyard that leads to a dimension of talking horse-mages, please don’t ask, and have watched someone literally Spirit Gun their way into that same dimension with little more than some stolen magic and a portable spectrograph, this might not sound particularly impressive.

“And it wouldn’t be, if he bothered to stay in universes with the same number of physical dimensions as his home world. Unfortunately, he’s said ‘fuck all’ to that and decided to come to ours. Now, the reason this is a particularly unfortunate turn of events is that it takes an ungodly, and I mean that in the most literal, biblical sense of the word possible by human tongue, ungodly amount of power to do so.” He paused to take a breath and also investigate an overturned wheelchair in a side room. The girls looked in the room from the doorway, opting to stay behind lest the room decide it wanted teenager for lunch.

“Wait, Twilight told me about something like this a little while back. Didn’t one of those pop into your school earlier this year?” Sunny asked, peeking carefully into the room for anything that might warrant screaming and crying and all sorts of unladylike natural reactions.

Treble sighed. “That’s… kind of similar. Ok, bag of marbles time. Imagine our happy little universe is a tiny marble in a bag filled with all kinds of marbles of all shapes and sizes. The dimension that creepy fucker from the Fall Formal was wrenched out of was from a particularly large marble rubbing up against our own. It’s not hard to break a wall when it’s particularly thin and you’ve got people on both sides working it over. No, that thing was scary for completely different reasons. And yet I’d still rather watch that thing bust down a wall than be here right now. At least then I knew we were screwed. This in-between shit is making my hair stand on end and do a little dance.

“No, psychonauts, the bastards, don’t care how big your marble is. They don’t care how big the bag is. They wander around doing whatever the fuck all they’d like. Even in the space between marbles, which is where we most likely are now. No, one of the many, many reasons I wish one of you was even remotely magically adept is that ‘nauts have this nasty habit of creating staging areas, like this one, to attune themselves with the laws and nature of however few dimensions their target universe is.”

He was interrupted by a polite cough and a hand in the air. “Oh for god’s sake, Sunny, we’re not in school-”

“Quite in the back, Miss Sugarcoat,” Treble said, in a much-too-practiced ‘teacher’ voice. “Miss Flare?”

The girls both blinked a few times before Sunny stuck out a tongue at her friend, then turned back to Treble. “Is that because they’re trying to learn how to live in our universe without… exploding?”

“Unfortunately, no. It’s so they can learn how to manipulate the real thing into whatever shape they want. Like I said, ungodly power,” Treble reiterated.

“Wouldn’t that make them gods in their own right?” Sugar asked.

“No. There’s a very large distinction. While they may be able to do fuck-all they want with the physics of a universe, they can’t manipulate ‘souls’. Don’t get me started. Keeping it simple, they can do whateve they like with the physical world, and if they’re feeling particularly pissy, the mental one, but spiritually, they’re about as dangerous as a Shiba-Inu who’s learned tic-tac-toe and meditation. Doesn’t make them any less awful, though.

“So if it’s so adept at making with the horribleness, why are we allowed to walk around freely?” Sugarcoat asked. She had the temperament of someone who was being forced to buy a lot of bullshit all at once at extortionate prices when all she wanted was a can of soda.

“Because we can walk around freely,” Treble answered. When that got him blank looks, he elaborated, “Let’s fall back on your programming metaphor for a second. We’d been wandering around for an estimated way too many hours before he managed to pop out something as small as a pen. Which means he either has issues with detail, or he wants to make sure he has a perfect understanding of one program before he moves on to the next. Now, I imagine you’ve done some coding in your time?”

Sunny and Sugar exchanged smug glances. “Yeah-huh,” Sunny said.

“Imagine having to program from a rather limited resource a very, very large space. Then add detail,” he said.

Sunny seemed to be keeping up so far. “Ok, sure.”

“Now imagine someone dumped an infinitely more complex, self-contained system somewhere in the middle of your project without telling you where,” Treble continued.

She made a face. “Oogh, okay.”

It was Treble’s turn to look smug. “Now imagine it could get up and walk out of the room.”

Sugarcoat made a face like… well, she raised an eyebrow. Which to her was somewhat expressive. Sunny looked mentally ill for a second. “Oh god, no thank you,” Sunny grumbled. “I suddenly feel much safer walking around. Now get out of that tiny room and keep talking. As horrible as the things you keep saying are, I’d rather that, and some forearmed knowledge, than making this easier on whatever our codemaster has planned.”

“Now you’re learning,” Treble added with a grin, stepping back out into the hallway. He gave Sunny a pat on the shoulder. “Gold star. NOW,” he exclaimed, taking a few large strides forward, finding his pace again. The girls fell back into step. “I think we’re all on board with the multidimensional tinkertoy enthusiast part. Now comes the really awful stuff.”

Sugarcoat glared at Sunny. “You just HAD to say something.”

They rounded a corner, and stopped as Treble saw a familiar mark on a door; one he’d made himself. Looking behind him down the third arm of the t-intersection they’d come across, and seeing no similar marks, he turned on his heel and kept walking. “You might wonder exactly why you haven’t heard of something that powerful trying to screw with our space before. Truth is, they have. Rather unsuccessfully. Humans are kind of pesky that way. I don’t know the details, or I’d be significantly more confident about our position than I am right now, but needless to say their impact on our world has been rather minimal. Minus a few casualties over the millenia. Don’t ask, I couldn’t give you a number in a million years. No one knows how many have tried to breach our walls. The running theory behind why we’re still alive is a tie between human ingenuity and the idea that our universe might have a funny aftertaste. I wish I was being sarcastic.

“Now, the other part of that question is: if they’re so powerful, why aren’t they going around ripping about every universe they can find? That’s actually one of the few cosmic questions we have answers to, because someone in the right place at the right time asked the right questions, and then did us all a favor and took fucking notes. The thing about psychonauts is that there’s only four kinds, or should I say, four motivations. All of them suck,” he added with a grim expression. They’d come to a dead end, and all the hallways branching off the one they’d come across they’d already visited.

They turned around as a group and kept walking, less to explore and more to keep themselves largely in the ‘moving target’ category. “What, exactly, are those motivations, pray tell?” Sugarcoat grumbled. Her head was starting to hurt and her worldview was crying itself into a pint of ice cream on the couch.

Treble flinched. “Ergh. Ok. Number one: They are predators who have eaten everything in the normal dimensions they have access too, and come to other dimensions to eat. I think it’s safe to rule that one out, as they tend to not favor the slow, methodical approach our… I think I like that word you used earlier, ‘Codemaster’. The approach our Codemaster seems to favor. So I’m confident we aren’t about to be chomped into oblivion by a fax machine just yet.

“Number two: they’re scientists, reaching out to explore the multiverse and learn as much as they can about the higher and lower realms through continuous, rigorous experimentation.”

Sunny raised her hand again, only to realize Treble wasn’t looking at her, still being in the front of the pack. “Um, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Maybe we could reason with him.”

Treble glanced over his shoulder with an uncomfortable glare. “Do you listen to your petri dishes?”

She put her hand down solemnly and decided to stop asking questions that would make her whimper quietly. “No.”

“No,” Treble agreed, then continued, “We might be dealing with a scientist here. Given how carefully he’s putting together this space, that’s a very likely scenario. Also a very bad one. They have a tendency to go overboard in their experiments, especially when they have live subjects. We tend to look an awful lot like toys to them. Number three: the hunter. These guys are also a bit meticulous, as time seems to mean different things in different dimensions, and they have a large amount of patience. This is our best option, but also our least likely. Hunters tend to ignore small fry when in pursuit of their prey, but they also know quite a bit about the multiverse, and tend to be very good at shortcuts. We would not exactly be considered a shortcut. The worst case scenario with a hunter is that his prey is somewhere in our dimension already, and there’s going to be some fallout. Again, that’s unlikely, because their prey is usually motivation number four, and we’d have heard about that one by now. Not this stumble-into-the-box thing we’re doing, unless they just got here.”

“And what, exactly, is number four?” Sugarcoat asked. Sunny flinched, as she was about to ask the same question, and her sense of mental self-preservation had stopped her.

Treble sighed, then leaned on a wall. “The psychopath. Someone or something so absolutely crazy and uncontrollable that they were kicked out of their own dimension and locked out as a last resort. Imagine a serial killer so god-damned awful that not only could they not put you down or lock you up, but the only proper way to make sure you weren’t a continued threat to the rest of the universe was to kick you the fuck OUT OF IT. These guys wander the marble bag looking for shiny, easy-to-eat marbles and play wit them until they get bored. They’re exceedingly patient, powerful in the extreme, and impossible to reason with. They’re also the most common.”

The girls looked at each other, shuddered violently, and followed Treble around a corner. “Huh,” he said, stopping in his tracks.

Sugarcoat almost ran into him. “Um, excuse me? Moving targets, right? What’s so interesting you had to stop and almost break my nose on the back of your head?”

Treble jammed a thumb to the end of the corridor they’d just turned into. “Stairs.”

Essay Four: The Art of the Pursuit

Essay Four: The Art of the Pursuit

The claw itself could only really be called such for the sheer fact it certainly didn’t resemble anything else. Three massive, multi-jointed digits ending in precision points swung around the corner and dug themselves into the wall so ferociously as to create what would have been an echoing smash had the laws of acoustics been kind enough to show up for work that day. As it was, the sounds were still muted, but their absence was easily occupied by the sheer volume and malice such an appendage possessed.

Which paled in comparison to the visage that followed. A face, for lack of a better term, pulled itself into the hallway, nearly scraping the ceiling by the top of its form, and yet the jaw was still in danger of dragging the carpet along with it. Massive in scope and malevolence, it held only the barest resemblance to what would have been a face had it any details left. Where one’s eyes would be were shifting depths of blackness, not of a void, but a bubbling, viscous fluid whose borders within the framework of the creature constantly swirled and curved like an oil spill on clean water.

Drops of the putrid oily material fell into the carpet, both warping and mutating it wherever it fell. The floor would sink in like rubber for the split second it took the drop to splash about, then revert back to its normal shape only to sprout some horrible appendage or growth. Dying, vibrant plants with too many teeth and greedy roots; arms and legs warped and abused into horrible figures; almost tendril-like growths that immediately stretched out and sought god knows what. The monster’s path trail was littered with them.

It had no mouth, simply an open space with prison bars of bone and gristle behind which tortured forms and agonized faces pressed themselves as far away from the creature’s core as possible; their pitiful bodies warped and molded by sheer proximity and effort as they made any attempt to escape their godless prison. On second inspection, however, their expressions were not ones of fear, but hatred. Hatred at their imprisonment, resentment for those who would dare flaunt their freedom in front of them. Arms stretched beyond the bars to grasp anything worth grabbing, and do unspeakable things to it, as maddening promises of pain and luxury echoed from their empty mouths.

The frame of the ‘face’ was little more than an expanse of bone and metal sown together like a quilt with razor wire. Flesh and… other things hung from the wire, peeled off the bone, and dangled from sharp edges and warped corners of the metal plates like laundry hung out to dry. They were… dripping.

The face pulled forward into the hall until it was barely a breath away from the wall before it, then turned in its rattly socket to stare down the way Treble had run. Another beastly claw lurched forward behind it, reaching around to grasp the wall opposite and pull the beast in line with the passageway. While it had no eyes, there was no mistaking it had observed the two girls. It went from a grisly stalking pace to slamming its claws on the floor before it in a mad scramble to reach the new things in front of it.

Neither of which were of a mind to find out why. Sunny and Sugarcoat turned heel and ran faster than they thought possible. Adrenaline ran through their veins like a nasty overdose, the primal lizard brain in the back of their minds screaming horrible obscenities and providing a much-unasked-for slide show of possibilities should they stop running. Driven by fear, over-active imaginations, and a rather impressive survival spirit, they’d caught up with Treble in good time, especially considering the almost lethal pause they’d taken as the creature’s horrible appearance rooted them in fear.

“Took you long enough!” Treble shouted, rather unnecessarily. They were both within conversational distance, and keeping pace, and the creature’s mad scrambling was, however terrifying, still muted by the absence of echoes. Were they of a mind to pay attention, they would have noticed the lack of footsteps or the sounds of heavy breathing. Really though, one couldn’t blame them for focusing more on avoiding the cacophony of atrocious threats and dealings pouring from the monster’s prisoners, or the loud, intentional slams of the claws as it drug itself along at impossible speed in pursuit of its prey.

“Excuse us for not having an appropriate reaction to THAT THING!” Sunny bellowed, gesturing wildly behind her.

“I’m pretty sure the only appropriate reaction is DON’T. DIE,” Sugarcoat retorted. She saw an intersection up ahead, and instead of verbalizing a warning, grabbed both her comrades by the collar and pulled them aside, as the creature dashed past in a frenzy.

Treble paused for breath. “Oh… god. Need to do… more yoga.”

“You NEED to stop smoking,” Sunny scolded, eying both the intersection and the corridor ahead of them with shaky eyes.

“Don’t even- OH COME ON!” Treble yelled, grabbing the girls by the arms and dragging them down the hallway. Which only lasted about a second, as they easily fell into pace. The beast had turned around, and found them in their side hall. Well, actually, as it was crawling on the ceiling, it’s idea of ‘turning around’ was more likely ‘turn upside down and crawl backwards’. Which was surprisingly effective.

The passageway they’d chosen seemed to be even longer than the last. It was difficult to judge length in a space where every ten feet looked exactly the same; they’d probably passed that same side table half a dozen times by now.

Treble, having a rare moment of insight in an adrenaline-fueled panic, saw yet another intersection ahead of them. He slowed the girls half a second by tugging on their shirts, then ducked them all into a side corridor as the beast came much closer to reaching them than it had last time. Treble took the extra seconds to choose a ‘hotel’ room at random and drag them all in, shutting the door behind them and bolting the lock.

Leaning his head on the door, his hands still gripping the lock tightly, he sighed. “Next time you try and side-step a monster, make sure you don’t stand around and wait for it to find you again.”

“Ok, in my defense, I didn’t know it would just flip onto the ceiling and turn right around!” Sugarcoat snapped in an uncharacteristically loud tone.

Treble glanced over his shoulder, his eyes obscured by his now frazzled and stringy mane of hair. “Just saying. But really, good job not dying back there.”

“Gee thanks,” Sunny scoffed, throwing herself onto the bed. There was a bed, surprisingly. The entire room was rather well furnished. A large four-poster queen size bed sat almost directly in the middle of the room, save for having been pushed back to stand flush with the wall. On either side were matching nightstands, pieces of a dark brown wood carved into a rather impressive two-level piece that could almost be called a computer desk. Each had a gaudy lamp on the second level, a simple brass stand leading to a bulb housed in an obnoxious green glass shade. A little string of beads dangled from the bulb.

There was a large dresser opposite the bed. Done in a matching dark wood, it was three shelves tall and much wider, and if one was skinny enough and had a rather impractically thin mattress, could double as a second bed. The window, a large bay style opposite the door, sported maroon drapes to match at least one color in the unconscionable carpet. The walls, carpet and ceiling were much like the hallway, with the exception of wooden paneling behind the bed like the color of under ripe plums.

There was another door, as well, most likely lading to a bathroom. Treble didn’t want to think what would come out of the faucets if they thought to turn them on. “You girls thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That if Ru Paul were here his head would explode?” Sunny groaned, staring absently at the ceiling as her breath came back to her.

“Actually, yeah,” Treble mused, taking a seat at the foot of the bed. Sugarcoat followed suit, and soon they’d all stretched out at convenient, if awkward, angles to rest. Nobody even bothered to pull up the covers.

Or pull back the curtains and find out what exactly was behind the window.

The hours passed as they slept. However unintentional, the rest was much-needed. Treble awoke first, stretching like a wildcat until his hand met something soft and fleshy. He rose with a start to look around for the monster, afraid it had somehow fit itself into the room with them, only to see that he’d brushed against Sunny’s thigh. Looking down at the two girls, he lamented their involvement: people shouldn’t have to be dragged face first into the deep end like this. Not like he was.

One job. One job and I can’t even do that right, he scolded himself as he watched his… friends… sleep. Friends might not have been the right word, but he figured they were well past acquaintances now; running from an other-dimensional terror down an impossible hallway in a pocket dimension certainly does that to you. His eyes settled on Sugarcoat. Cute, when she wasn’t beating you with the truth like a grandmother with a wooden spoon. Her pigtails draped over her face in an almost princessly fashion. She shouldn’t be here. I should have turned around as soon as they started arguing about the flowers. Even when I didn’t know what this was I should have known it was bad.

He tore his gaze away guiltily until it rested on Sunny. In stark contrast to Sugarcoat’s curled up, almost adorable sleeping form, Sunny’s spread-eagle approach to claiming as much of the bed ass possible was overshadowed only by her big yap snoring away. No sound came out, of course, something Treble still hadn’t gotten used to, but should have learned to expect by now. If they die here it’s because I didn’t do enough to keep them away. Anyone else would have been better. The rainbooms, certainly. At least they have an idea of what’s going on. But these two are just civvies. I’m not supposed to let them get dragged into this. It’s my job to keep people like them out of it. Not because they aren’t allowed to know, he reminded himself, but because they shouldn’t HAVE to. I mean, who wants this in their life? I certainly didn’t. It’s not like I walked up to those three psychos one day and said ‘Cool club, can I join?’ I just wanted-

A thought that never finished, as the rest of Treble’s exhausted brain caught up with him. Something was different about the room. Something he felt he should have noticed the moment he woke up. He was supposed to be good at the details. Noticing things his friends didn’t, keeping them in the moment. So when he realized the light around him had changed in the time he’d been asleep, he mentally slapped himself and looked around, quick as he could.

The lights had gone out; both lamps were off, as well as the overhead light. They’d cast the kind of suffused, warm glow that you barely notice when you walk into a room, but now it was gone. In its place was a sickly red light, seemingly coming from nowhere. It filled the room, reaching every corner, almost as it it was coming from ever corner. The walls seemed to pulse with it, save for the space where the wood paneling lay. He slowly stood up, approaching the nearest wall: the one the door was set into. A few feet to the left of the entrance, he rested a hand on the wallpaper, and stilled himself.

It was faint, almost nonexistent, but he could swear if he tried hard enough he could convince himself the gentle throbbing under his hand was actually a pulse. The light seemed to pout from the wall, filtered through the awful wallpaper to cast an ugly glow on the surroundings. Whatever was actually casting that light, Treble didn’t want to know. Unfortunately, their entire lives seemed to be about learning things you don’t want to know so that you don’t DIE horribly.

Having taken a lesson from Rubble a long time ago, DT never went anywhere without a knife. Nowhere near as flashy or intimidating as Rubble’s military-grade killsticks, Treble had settled for a simple spring-loaded switchblade. Certainly illegal in some places, highly practical. Pulling it out of his pocket and flicking it to life, he dug a little into the wallpape, cutting a swath away and pulling it back.

Like he’d suspected, the wall itself was glowing; where the paper had peeled away a brighter, pearlescent glow shone through. Not enough to be blinding, but you could certainly find your way in a dark cavern with it. The light wavered slightly, however, at regular intervals. Putting the tips of his fingers to the exposed wall, he was surprised to find they felt much like any plaster wall he’d ever encountered, save for the pulsing and light.

Answering one question with a basket of others, he rubbed the wallpaper back in place and tucked the edge in just a little to try to hold it in place. When it didn’t fall away, he left it at that, and decided he’d much rather artificial light than… unnatural. Finding the light switch was easy, and with a flick the overhead light flared to life and filled the room with it’s welcome, electric glow. The sickly red luminescence was gone, washed away by the saving graces of mass-produced light bulbs. Or, what he really, really hoped was a light bulb.

Then his brain did that thing where it caught up with itself again, bringing him to the present, and a single question popped into his head: Why the fuck is there a window here? He swept across the room with a newly regained sense of false confidence, restored from having actually done something mildly productive that had left him with all his everything attached. Throwing the curtains wide open, however, banished any and all sense of self-assurance he’d acquired in the last few moments, as the face on the other side of the glass smiled at him and raised a wiry arm.

“Hello,” she said.

Essay Five: Rational Discourse in the Face of Fear

Essay Five: Rational Discourse in the Face of Fear

Treble had seen some rather awful things before. In fact, well within the last few hours. He’d seen so many terrible and ungodly things over the course of the last two or three years that there were moments where he was convinced someone was going to rouse him from his coma and he could go about turning all of this into some strange and heinous novel series. So he liked to think very much that he was prepared for anything life, unlife, or otherlife could throw at him, at least insomuch as to be able to turn tale and run when required.

Unfortunately, the truth of the universe is that it is so vast, unknowable, and absolutely dickish that the list of things it has to rattle your cage with is nigh-infinite and full of rather awful words like non-euclidean, extradimensional, and chartreuse (although, given that his own color palette was royal blue over lime green, Treble really didn’t have much leg to stand on). So when he opened the curtains to find a rather matronly woman standing on the other side of the glass, he’d rather set aside most of his survival instincts in favor of a good old fashioned “What he fuck, lady?”

The woman, in that she resembled very much a female of the human species, minus a few key details -namely the flat surfaces of bone where her eyes should be, the too-wide mouth with an impressive collection of teeth sorted in proper rows, the overlong fingers that ended in something akin to either a hypodermic needle or a lock pick, and the rather noticeable fact that her upper half seemed to merge seamlessly with that of an armored spider at the waist- tutted disapprovingly. She tucked a lock of brown hair behind an overly pointy ear. “Now is that any way to speak to a lady?”

Now, Treble had quite a substantial amount of experience in talking, both to civilians and monsters alike. If one gave him enough breathing room he could most likely convince the air around him that it was not, in fact, air, rather a large quantity of sangria, and should settle down in its place rather nicely so he could go about drinking it all. He’d gotten so used to running his mouth at mad beasties and monsters with far too many pointy ends (present company included) that his normal ‘fight or flight’ response had been replaced with something Dusty affectionately referred to as ‘chat or scat’.

Weighing his rather limited options, he opted for the former. “I’m sorry about that, but under normal circumstances I find it’s rather rude to stare in someone’s window as they’re trying to sleep,” he rationalized, gesturing to his two sleeping compatriots. He would have loved to scatter a few more expletives amidst his dialogue, but those fingers were looking less like fingers and more like People’s Exhibit A.

The woman tilted her head politely to get a better view of the two napping girls. “Ah, I see. Yes, I suppose I would be rather cross if someone were to show up unannounced at my bedroom window. Still, though, it begs the question: why are you lot even sleeping here in the first place?”

Treble had to stifle an eye-roll. He settled on a shrug instead. “Well, we’ve been walking around, somewhat hopelessly lost, for what feels like quite some time. That and we were sort of chased in here by… I’m not even sure what it was, but it was big, scary, and… dripping.”

The woman sighed, an exasperated gesture born from having to deal with the same situation time and time again. “Yes, he does have a bad habit of making a mess. I really wish he’d take after his father and learn to clean up after himself.”

Gears turned in Treble’s head as he quietly attempted to make sense of the implications of that statement. “Are you saying… that… he, rather… is your son?”

She waved a hand dismissively. “As it so happens, yes. My kids all seem to have inherited the worst of their parents, as it happens. Would’ve left them all at home if I thought they could go a day without getting eaten.”

Treble very much wanted to steer this conversation away from anything that could eat the thing that chased them around earlier. “If I might be so bold as to ask, where exactly are you going?”

The woman curled her legs under her, in what approximated to sitting down. Treble quickly followed the cue and pulled up a chair. “It seems my husband was sent on an errand by his father, and found himself without a way home. I’m simply trying to find him and bring him back. Which would be much easier without a half dozen little rugrats to corral on the way there, but what can you do? Can’t exactly leave them to their own devices, can I?”

This conversation was both so mundane and laced with so many awful, apocalyptic implications that the cognitive dissonance was giving Treble a migraine. “Half a dozen?” he squeaked. Pausing to clear his throat and adopt a less embarrassing tone of voice, he continued, “And where, exactly, did your husband run off to?”

She raised a curious eyebrow at him. If she’d had proper eyes they might have widened slightly. “Oh?yo Looking to help an old woman find her missing hubby? You’re sweet. But I’d highly suggest against it. He has a bit of an… appetite for your kind. Gets it from his father, I suppose.”

All this talk of ‘fathers’ was ringing some major alarm bells in DT’s head, but he couldn’t exactly pin down their source. “Well, that’s rather kind of you, Mrs...” he trailed off, leaving the question in the air.

She blinked a few times, a rather unnerving sight. “OH! Yes, look at us! Having a rife old conversation about my family, and we haven’t even introduced ourselves! I’m… oh, but I guess you couldn’t pronounce that with only one mouth, could you? Well… just call me Mrs. Last, I suppose.”

“Deep Treble, ma’am,” he offered politely. In fact, he had almost reached out a hand to shake hers, stopping when he remembered both the window glass and the rather unfortunate ends of her fingers. “So, would it be safe to assume that your other, um, children, are also here? Wherever here is?”

“It would, in fact. Although I daresay you’ve met the worst of them. That boy has no respect for decorum or a proper introduction. Not like you,” she said in a dangerously familiar tone. “It’s rare to find someone so small with such good manners. Normally you all seem to just run screaming or throw things at us.”

Something in Treble’s head clicked, and his next question came out in a waver. “Your husband wouldn’t happen to be maybe, a foot taller than I am? Kind of a lot of mouths? Maybe got himself dragged into a different dimension by some overzealous humans?”

“Oh you HAVE met him!” she crooned, clapping her hands happily.

“Yeah, he may have… um… visited my high school? I’ll admit our encounter wasn’t quite so… polite?” he offered in what he hoped was an apologetic tone.

She raised an eyebrow at him again. He didn’t think he would get used to the range of expressions her face seemed capable of if they sat here and talked for a hundred years. Then she sighed wearily. “Let me guess. He ate some people and you all threw things at him?”

“That… is a distinct possibility. He may also have bitten off a sizable chunk of my friend’s leg.”

She shook her head, tutting disapprovingly. “Well, I can’t really blame you, survival instincts being what they are. I don’t suppose he mentioned where he was going, after what I assume to be an unnecessary amount of bloodshed?”

Treble smiled weakly. “Well, in all fairness I don’t think anyone actually died. Most seemed to get… eaten alive? Then they kind of got spat back out. It’s a long story. But no, all he said was he had a message from his father and that he and his army were coming to kill us all something something apocalypse,” he found himself talking in weary tones. At some point he would need to seriously consider what kind of life choices would lead one to become passe’ about the myriad of promised Armageddons at their doorstep, but he had more pressing matters to attend to. Namely, convincing this… lady that his manners were such as to not deserve getting slaughtered.

His lack of enthusiasm didn’t go unnoticed. “You seem to have a rather… dismissive attitude of the end of your world,” she noted.

“It gets kind of old after the fourth or fifth. I can honestly say I’m more afraid of the things that don’t tout their own apocalyptic schemes to a group of teenagers in the middle of a fight,” Treble explained. He adjusted his seat under him and crossed one leg over the other. “I mean, if you really have some infallible plan to destroy all life as we know it, why do you need to advertise? It’s not like there’s going to be anyone around after the fact to go, ‘You know, we really should have seen all of this coming. He did put up flyers, after all,’” he groaned.

She seemed to find some amusement in that, if her rattling laugh was any indication. There was an unhealthy undercurrent of screaming and dark whispers in it, which he pointedly ignored. “Yes, my husband has always been one to… toot his own horn. It’s no wonder people don’t take him seriously. Although given how many mouths he has it’s no wonder he talks so much. Well, as much as I’d love to continue this surprisingly pleasant conversation, I do have a lot of work to do, you know. Crossing dimensions all by yourself is quite a bit of work, you know. Not all of us have a misguided cult opening doors for us left and right. Unless you would be so kind as to...” she trailed off, her implications obvious.

“Not even if I knew how,” Treble admitted. “My friends would be somewhat cross if I started trafficking other-dimensional entities through our hometown.”

She shrugged her impressive shoulders. “Well, it was worth a shot. Now, if you don’t mind, I really must get back to finding my kids and putting together a way across. It’s really rather tiring, if only one of my… precocious kids would raise an appendage to help. I daresay you’re likely to run into most, if not all of them, before we’ve put enough of this place together to get anyone anywhere. I daresay I’m not even sure how you got here in the first place.”

“If I knew I wouldn’t still be here,” Treble groaned. She stood, and he stood with her.

Another light chuckle. Something screamed. “Well, it was a pleasure talking to you. Hopefully the next time we meet I’ll have a more… approachable form to greet you with. And you’ll have all your appendages in tact. I’ll put in a good word with my kids for you, but they aren’t exactly prone to listening. Goodbye, Treble. Do your best not to die before we meet again.”

“Um, thank you? Goodbye,” he waived politely. She left with a small wave, turning into the darkness behind the glass and fading out of sight.

He decided it would be good manners to wait half a minute before he started panicking.

Sugarcoat woke abruptly to being shaken and yelled at, simultaneously. “What?!” she barked, sitting up with a start. The first thing she was was Sunny Flare rubbing the sleep from her eyes and looking around the room in confusion. It took Sugar a moment to remember where they were, herself.

The second thing she saw was Treble pacing back and forth across the room ranting like a lunatic in rather uncharacteristic panic. “Oh my god oh my god there’s six of these things we’re so god-awfully fucked what even?!”

Sunny and Sugar exchanged alarmed glances before the former coughed loudly. For a second it seemed Treble hadn’t heard her, but he paused for a second, mid-sentence, and smacked the sides of his face with his palms. “Ok. Ok. Yes?” he asked, his eyes still a little wild, as he turned his attention to the two girls on the bed. Normally a sentence he would be boasting to a room full of guys, not panicking over in a pocket dimension of unfound nightmares. One can’t be choosy, however, given the circumstances.

Sunny cleared the grog from her throat as she looked for an appropriate sentence. “Ok, could you kindly back up and explain what it is you seem to be freaking out about?”

Treble spared a glance at the window, half-hoping, half-afraid that ‘Mother’ was going to show up again and offer her own explanations. All he saw, however, was his reflection in the glass against the inky blackness beyond, and he seemed to be a bit unwound. Which was not his modus operandi. He ran his hands through his hair, took a few deep breaths, and straightened his collar.

The girls were slightly jealous how quickly he could go from panicked lunatic to roughly attractive teen. “Right, yes. Long story short? That… thing that chased us in here has a… mother. And siblings. All of which are apparently skittering around this hellhole like it’s their own personal playground.”

Sugarcoat blinked a few times, trying to sort out those words in that order in her head and not run screaming. She was doing a rather amicable job. Sunny seemed to have settled on self-preserving disbelief. “A mom? You saw it’s mother?!”

“Had a rather nice conversation with, actually. I guess having half a litter of otherworldy monstrosities and a war-mongering interdimensional tyrant for a father-in-law teaches one no end of patience,” he mused.

“Thee are so many things wrong with that sentence that I don’t know what to start screaming at first<” Sugar said plainly.

Treble gave her a deadpanned stare. “Join the club. Look, She said she was going to talk to her kids about not killing us, but somehow I don’t think these… whatever-they-ares respond well to a time-out. Now, as it turns out, they’re trying to track down their wayward dad, someone I’m actually rather familiar with,” he spat, “And god knows what they plan to do after that. Under normal circumstances, our best bet would be to track him down ourselves and hand him over on a silver platter, before they need to tunnel their way into our dimension and turn it into a feeding ground. But that only works if we can, you know, find the guy.”

“Which isn’t going to happen when we’re stuck in a Cube movie,” Sugar grumbled.

“I’m both impressed by the reference and put-out that I didn’t think of it first,” Treble mused. “But that aside, I have the distinctly dreadful feeling that we can’t afford to just hide out here and wait for them to do… whatever they want. I think our best bet is to find a way out, and go from there.”

Sunny rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, let’s just go right for the exit, please. Not like we didn’t spend half a day looking for the damn thing!”

“Well,” Treble mused, somewhat sheepishly. “Apparently there’s some way in and out of here, that these… creatures don’t know about. ‘Mother’ asked me how we all got here in the first place, which of course I had no honest idea, but it left me with the distinct impression that just maybe there’s a… hole in the framework, so to speak? We managed to slip through once, so I’m guessing we should be able to slip through again.”

Sugar glared at him. “This is the part where you tell us we need to leave the room and go wandering around this deathtrap, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely.”

Essay Six: The Logic Knot

Essay Six: The Logic Knot

Treble wasn’t sure if it was ‘Mother’ being true to her word, or their predator having a terrible sense of direction, but the trio had encountered little to no resistance in their excursion outside of the hotel room so far. This wasn’t a sentiment he’d wanted to say out loud, as his particular pastime was more than want to remind him that jinxes were, indeed, ‘a thing’, and would gladly bat you about the head and neck for your hubris. If you had one left.

The ‘little to no’ part of things was mainly due to the weird growths on the floor they kept finding, which was a great way to determine whether or not their big-faced fiend had been here recently. The latest hallway they’d found was actually a bit worse for wear than some of the others, so much so that Treble stopped for a second to investigate.

Which neither of the girls rightly appreciated. “Any particular reason you’ve decided to, you know, sit still like a good little prey animal?” Sunny growled.

Treble, who had squatted down to look at the floor, didn’t bother looking over his shoulder. Instead he opted to heave a mighty sigh and stare blankly at the wall ahead of them. “You know, for a scientist and an engineer, you two seem to forgo the scientific method rather quickly. If you haven’t- noticed-” he grunted, tugging at something growing out of the carpet. After a moment, it gave with a snap, and he stumbled back a step. Turning around to show the girls his catch, he continued, “The trail our friend leaves behind seems to have a shelf life. I don’t know how long it takes for this stuff to die off, but it can’t be more than a few hours. This entire hallway looks like a dying flesh garden.”

Sugarcoat eyed the withering plant-like tendril in Treble’s hand carefully. “Yes, we’d noticed. One of the many reasons we aren’t fond of stopping here.”

Treble’s shoulders slumped in exasperation. “Look, we’re not going to find an exit door, or an elevator, or the stairs again if we keep walking blindly. At least, not in any kind of decent time frame. So our best bet as I see it is to map out what we have and use that to explore the places we haven’t. I don’t know if you noticed but my sharpie isn’t exactly easy to spot from a distance on this god-awful wallpaper, and I’d really rather appreciate being able to ignore a hallway we’ve already been down before I’m halfway into it. Thankfully, that fuckin’ monster of a… whatever they are leaves a time-lapse trail. Now, they aren’t looking for a way out like we are, they’re waiting for their dear Mother to make one. Which gives us a slight advantage, knowing that one already exists. But that means we need to find it before they do. So literally any information I can get from this… stuff is welcome to the party.”

Sugar and Sunny exchanged a glance that said something along the lines of ‘Just let him have it’. “You sure like to talk, don’t you?” Sugarcoat asked bluntly.

Treble dropped the tendril, seeing his words have little to no effect, and turned on his heel. “It’s the only thing I seem to be good for lately,” he grumbled, and stalked off down a rather clean-looking corridor.

The girls traded looks again, this time saying something completely different, and sighed. “Maybe we should-” Sunny started.

“You coming or not?!” Treble barked, once he saw he was halfway down a hallway and the girls hadn’t moved.

“Or not,” grumbled Sunny, as the two jogged to catch up with him.

They’d been stomping around for what might have been an hour, might have been half a day, when Treble tuned a corner and sighed in relief. The girls peeked their heads around and saw exactly what he was looking at: stairs. In fact, it looked very much like the stairway they’d taken to get here. At least the door did. Not wanting to draw attention to much of anyone or anything, they casually approached the door, and, when seeing they hadn’t been followed or approached by… something, all three quickly dashed through the doorway into a familiarly desiccated stairwell. Taking the opportunity to revel in the fact they didn’t have to peek around every corner for a face full of faces and demon tar, they all took a seat on the landing and paused to breathe.

“Right, fearless leader, where to next? Please do say the park, I’m dying to go outside somewhere,” Sunny quipped.

Sugar rolled her shoulders as she tried to get comfortable against the stone walls. “Pass. I’d rather not find out what these monsters consider ‘outside’.” Sunny thought about that for a moment. The shudder she gave was all the response Sugar needed. “She has a point though, Treble. Where the hell do we go from here?”

This was a valid question, and one he really wished he wasn’t responsible for answering. “Well, Logically speaking, we should go back up,” Treble said quietly, thinking out loud. “If we slipped in through a hole in the framework they haven’t found, our best bet to find it is to find the floor we came in on.” The girls looked at him exasperatedly, quietly hoping they weren’t about to climb that many stairs. “But I have no idea which floor that is, and climbing that high just to go floor by floor on the chance they aren’t shuffling this place like a deck of cards is a great way to wear ourselves out far too quickly. And the likelihood of finding one floor in the dozens we passed is ridiculous. No, our best bet is down.” Sunny sighed in relief as Sugar’s expression leveled itself out. “But how far down? We can’t just keep walking till we hit bottom, we’d be here possibly forever. It’s like this place doesn’t actually end. It just keeps going, around and around and in on itself.”

“Like a fractal,” Sugar mused.

Treble blinked. Then he sat up. Then he blinked some more. “A fractal. Jesus, the entire thing… it’s a fractal pattern. That’s why we keep passing the same three hallways on every floor. They aren’t copy-pasting the same five rooms in a straight line, they’re putting a data set into a fractal pattern. It’s the fastest way to create an infinite space in a finite resource. Why build up when you can build in?” he reasoned, getting more and more excited as he talked.

“Are you… sure about that? Seems like a bit of a reach,” Sunny observed.

Treble shook his head. “Not entirely,” he grumbled, running a hand through his shaggy mane of blue hair. “But the more I think about it the more sense it makes. I mean, some hallways are longer than others, sure, but that’s because fractals compress the farther towards the center you get. Do you remember that hallway we first showed up in?”

Sugar nodded. “The one where we figured out that sound here works on a voluntary basis?”

“Yeah. It was what… fifty feet long? And how long was the hallway that took us to the stairs?” he asked.

Sunny shrugged. “I dunno, I stopped keeping track of things like that.”

“Well, it wasn’t fifty freakin feet, that’s for sure. I think, and let me repeat that, I think, that the stairwell is the outside of the fractal. It’s the edge of the structure, somehow. But this entry-exit point is in the middle,” he mused. “Like the center of the vortex, or something.”

“So… what? We hit the next floor and keep walking till the hallways get so short we can’t turn around?” Sunny suggested, only half-joking.

“No… I don’t think so. I mean, ‘Mother’ met us on the hotel floor, and she had no idea how we got there. I think if she was on the same floor as such a glaring design flaw she’d have found it by now. Creatures from a higher plane of existence tend to be able to see more than we can. Look in more directions. And if she couldn’t find it I doubt we can. Besides, I really would rather not run into Skeletor back there again,” Treble said with a shudder.

“So… what?” Sugar asked. “You seem to have something rattling around in that shaggy head of yours. Out with it.”

“Well,” Treble said slowly. “If this place is a fractal -which I’m more sure of than I think I should be, by the way, gonna touch on THAT later- then it makes sense that the floors are repeating, too. Ok, sit with me on this one, cause I’m about to get really wordy and I might get lost.” The girls raised eyebrows at him, and gestured for him to keep talking. “If we stick to the idea that the staircase is the outside of the fractal, that means, on some level, it also spirals to the middle. And the closer you get to the middle of the fractal, the smaller the set, right? Eventually we’re gonna get to sets so small we can’t even fit in the door. I think this is where the structure is weakest. But what if we don’t have to go all the way to the middle?”

Sunny nodded, seemingly following the logic. “Right. The smaller the set, the more fragile it is, right? If we find some of the smaller sets, the weaker ones, we might be able to poke holes in it.”

Sugar looked back and forth between the two. “Do I want to know where you’re getting all of this? I mean, we are literally dealing with extra-dimensional monsters whose laws of physics are, in no uncertain terms, radically different then ours.”

Sunny and Treble exchanged glances. “I’m not… sure, actually,” Treble said slowly. “But I’m way more sure than I think I should be. It’s like I’ve heard all of this before, somewhere.”

Sugar rolled her eyes. “Yeah, they cover it in geometry class.”

Sunny gave her a sarcastic grin. “Not that, smartass. This whole theory feels really… familiar. Like it’s been in my head the whole time and I just had to wait for someone to say something. Kinda like that feeling you get when someone sings a line from a song you’ve been trying to remember all day.”

“Sounds a lot like memeticism, honestly,” Treble mused. When the girls gave him blank looks, he explained, “It’s a type of psychic or magical influence. There’s a few different variants, but it basically comes down to mind control or possession. It’s like a song that gets stuck in your head and keeps playing on a loop until it’s literally all you can think about, and singing or humming it gets it stuck in someone else’s head.”

“A psychological contagion, basically,” Sugar nodded, “Memetics is common in psychology and social media engineering.”

“Yeah, but not like this. Someone somewhere in history got it into their heads, no pun intended, that you could turn the memetic properties of a statement or idea and turn it into a psychovirus. But I’ve never heard of a variant that sits in your head until it’s triggered. Usually just thinking about a thing will trigger it. It’s more like… a post-hypnotic suggestion. Like someone planted the idea sometime since we got here and just sat back until our… investigation set it off. But I can’t think of when-”

“When we were asleep,” Sunny said with a start. “When we were all passed out in that room, and this… ‘Mother’ you keep talking about showed up. Maybe she planted something in our heads while we were asleep? Gave us the information she thought we’d need so we could find the door for her?”

Treble felt no lack of unease at that point. “If that’s true, then she’s following us right now, waiting for us to find the door. Which leaves us in a hell of a bind.”

“Why?” Sugar snorted derisively. “If she’s gonna help us get out then good for her.”

“Yes, but I’d really rather not lead an entire family of extradimensional monsters to a shortcut into our dimension. The other side of that is, if we don’t do anything, she might just decide we’re not worth the trouble, and kill us all. Then she’s free to find the exit all on her own. And we’d have no way to give our friends the kind of warning they need to fight back. Or at least, evacuate,” Treble reasoned.

Sunny leaned back on the stairway and stared up at the ceiling. “So what? Either we do nothing and die, or we lead a bunch of monsters back to our petri dish to chomp the whole thing?”

Sugar tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Well, you said they were all looking for their father, right? Is there some way we could track him down and get him back before they get to the exit? I mean, we should at least have a little time after we find the exit while she goes and collects her wayward kids for their little family vacation.”

Treble shook his head again. His neck was getting sore from all the disagreeing. “I don’t know if that would work. Like I said, time works differently in different places. We might get back to find we’ve only been gone for two seconds, and it could take less than that for ‘Mother’ to gather all of her kids and meet us at the door.”

Sugarcoat wasn’t done, however. “Well, if she was following us around, wouldn’t she have heard our theories by now and done something about it? We’ve been chatting for a while and I don’t see anything awful coming to kill us because we’re redundant. Maybe they need us to do more than find the door? Maybe they need us to open it?”

“Possibly,” Treble reasoned. “If that’s true, we might have a bargaining chip. Problem is, we still have to find the damn door before any of this means anything.”

Sunny groaned. “So we have to play right into their hands right up to the point they play into ours?”

At that point, Treble grinned, which worried the two girls more than a little. “In fact, Sunny, I think that’s exactly what we’ll get to do.”

Essay Seven: How Not to Judge People and Instead Duck for Cover

Essay Seven: How Not to Judge People and Instead Duck for Cover

“You’re smiling. Why are you smiling?” Sugarcoat demanded.

Treble shrugged the question off -literally- with relative ease. “If we’re going to pl them playing us, eventually we’ll need to negotiate, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Sunny conceded.

Treble knocked on the door -they’d stopped on a lower level about ten floors down and decided to have a look- and waited for an answer. When none came, he pushed on the door slowly, letting the hinges creak their announcement down the hallway. “Well, the first rule of negotiation is to do so from a position of power. Which means we’re going to need to find one of two things- something they want, or something they want to avoid. Now, we know what they want, and we can’t exactly get it from here. So we need to find something they -or at least, ‘Mother’- will want to avoid. Which, in the short term, gives us a finite goal outside of ‘What’s behind door number three thousand?’. And I think I have an idea of what that is. Don’t ask- you don’t want to know, and I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Now about this door.”

The girls regarded him warily as he pushed the door open all the way, but were quickly distracted as the distinct sounds, sights, and smells of outside reached their senses. The door didn’t so much scrape across the floor as it dig dig into it slightly, the ‘floor’ being fresh earth and grass. Well, ‘grass’ in the sense that it grew out of the ground in small blades. The distinct, sickly purple color was all the evidence they needed that they had not, in fact, found their way home. Stepping into what they now saw was a large clearing, slightly uneven with hills and thick rocks, and surrounded on all sides by what looked from here to be woods and ruins, crumbling walls of stone and steel, the last whispers of what might have once been civilization.

The sky was tinged a similar shade of purple, looking more natural in its resemblance to a dusky sky, painted with quick brushes of rolling clouds both above them and far into the horizon. The grass itself had a dusky hue to it, with vestiges of a rotted red color at its base. Treble kicked a nearby rock and found it solid. No strange spongy consistency (which he was really getting quite tired of getting used to), no creepy crawlies underneath, just the gravely rumble as it rolled down a slope into a pile of smaller rocks. The place even smelled kind of woodsy. An earthy, natural scent permeated the air in light waves as if carried on a breeze they couldn’t feel- no, wait, there it was. The lightest of airs grazed Treble’s skin as he considered the landscape before him.

It was almost peaceful.

“Ok, now I’m worried,” Sunny declared.

Sugarcoat considered her thoughtfully. “You weren’t before?”

“No. Well, yes, I mean of course. But that was the kind of perfectly rational worried you get from being chased by monsters and teleporting to another dimension. This is just… weird,” Sunny explained. She sounded more like she was thinking aloud. “Didn’t you say that detail like this meant they were getting better at it? Stronger?”

Their ‘fearless leader’ raised an eyebrow. “I did, in fact. Which is odd, because I don’t really feel any… malice… here. That first floor just felt very… empty. Like a prototype. I figured the second floor we hit was either them getting better, or at least more creative, with what they had. Although I was a bit too distracted by giant monsters and rotting plantlife in the carpet to really consider the implications of that. This… is different. And not just in the obvious ‘whoosh we’re outside’ kind of way. By the way, could one of you kindly check to see if the door’s still-”

“It’s gone,” Sugarcoat answered, waving her arm through the space their entryway had once been.

“Wonderful. At least they’re consistent. But like I was saying, this feels too, natural, pardon the pun, for what we’ve seen so far. It’s almost like whoever put this together has ‘been’ here before. Or at least, someplace like it. That first floor looked like an educated guess. This looks like a memory,” Treble mused.

“…if we ever survive this you might want to consider writing a book,” Sunny offered.

“No thanks, I hate copyright lawyers,” he said. “Now, either they’ve been somewhere on Earth before that looks something like this, which is a terrifying thought in a few ways, or this is their-”

“-home,” said a simple, pleasant voice.

The three teens spun round on their heels to find the source, locating it quickly. Where their door once was, now stood what looked to be another human. Or, it would, if not for some certain details.

It, (or she, Treble guessed, by the sound of her voice), stood like a human, with the right number of arms, legs, and head. Most of her was obscured by a collection of well-folded cloths draped over her shoulders, around her torso and waist, and hung around her legs like a long skirt. She wouldn’t have looked out of place in the desert. Or here, rather, as she looked very much like what one might consider a native of a grass-rich ruins to do. Her ‘clothes’ were various shades of brown faded into a dark blue, a variety of gradients that wove themselves across her attire like haphazard paint.

Her face was mostly obscured by the rags, save for her eyes, which shone with an unnatural silver sheen, almost a light, in a large, almost fantasy-like iris around a white pupil. Her eyes were much wider than a humans,, yet somehow didn’t look out of place on her head. She wore what could almost insultingly be called a turban, more a scarf layered over and over on top of her head, tufts of brown hair sticking out. That was actually the most normal looking part of her-the hair. It draped over her shoulders in long tresses of an earthy brown, almost blending in with her clothes.

The least human part of her, however, were the claws. Shaped somewhat like human hands, in that they had four fingers and a thumb, the wrist started slim and widened dramatically into what looked almost like the back of a lobster’s claw; a large chitinous plate covered the back while the palm was an almost silky white, the same color as the base of the unnaturally long and slender fingers. Each of the four fingers ended in a light-blue claw, almost sky-blue, tipped with what might have been black. The thumb, for lack of a better term, was little more than a large, jointed hook that sat too close to the base of the palm and curled in like a claw machine.

“Is this the part whee we run?” Treble asked almost politely. “Sometimes I’m just not sure. I mean, that big Skeletron dude upstairs was kinda obvious with it, but if you’re gonna start chasing us I’d at least like to know now.”

The newcomer regarded Treble for a second, and turned her attention to the girls. “Does he always talk this much?”

“You. Have NO IDEA,” Sunny exclaimed, sighing heavily. “If you’re here to kill us all, can you start with him? I’d at least like the courtesy of a peaceful death.”

“Words hurt Sunny,” Treble whined, mockingly pained.

“If that were true I’d be bleeding internally by now,” Flare countered.

“Right. So, miss...” Treble left off, hoping the new arrival with finish the sentence for him with an introduction. When none was forthcoming, he pressed on. “Yes, hm. Well, given that we’re all still standing here, I’m guessing there’s a reason for that. While you suss out what that is, allow me to introduce our motley crew here. I’m Deep Treble, the one with the snark is Sunny Flare, and the ‘quiet one’ is Sugarcoat.”

“...your names are weird,” she said. Her voice was whispy and light, like the breeze they almost couldn’t detect, and rang like chimes in a hunter’s den: beautiful, and full of warning.

Now, Treble had spoken to a great many things that wanted to kill him. And quite a few that didn’t. He prided himself on talking circles around most of them and the rest into a corner. Yet somewhere, eventually, he was bound to meet someone who not only was unimpressed with the ease in which he spoke and the rather dangerous things that came out of his mouth when he did, but had something of their own to say that would completely throw him for a loop.

He usually called this person Pinkie Pie. “I’m sorry, what?”

The newcomer regarded DT for a moment. “Treble. A measure of pitch in the mid-high range in reference to music, most commonly singing. By nature it is anything but deep. You are a contradiction in terms.” She turned to Sugar. “Sugarcoat. Either to make a distasteful or uncomfortable statement less so by saying it in a polite, helpful, or optimistic way. Also, literally to coat with sugar. You appear to lack optimism, and I doubt you come with a hard candy shell. Although you do have the coloration for it.” Lastly, she turned her attention to Sunny. “Sunny Flare. Most likely referring to a solar flare, a celestial event in which the brightness of the surface of a star is increased visibly, if only for a short time, usually accompanied by an ejection of the coronal mass. You possess neither the intensity, heat, or brightness for such an event. Sunny mas also refer to a ‘sunny’ disposition, accentuated by the modifier ‘Flare’, in which you have bright bursts of positive emotional energy, usually cheer or happiness. This also does not appear to suit you. Although your temperament could largely be attributed to your circumstances, in which case my analysis would be tainted by environmental factors. Also, it is very strange to name your children after nouns and adjectives.”

“Ok then, what is your name?” Sugar demanded, slightly put-off. Treble was still dealing with the fact that there was someone who could talk through him.

“Iskilia, Daughter of the Plains of Iskilith. We are named for the place and circumstances we are born. I rather hope that is not the case for you, as I do not believe I would enjoy a world where solar flares and candy coating are commonalities, let alone contributing factors in the birthing process,” the newcomer, explained.

Treble cracked a smile, more at his friend’s expense than anything else. Also, he’d found something to talk about. “Actually, children in our world are usually named either after the nature of their family’s business, or as a prediction of what their parents believe they might accomplish when they reach maturity. Deep Treble is actually a play on the term ‘deep trouble’, as my parents hadn’t planned on having a kid, and they were under the assumption my being born would bring them nothing but. Although it’s somewhat of a taboo to include words like ‘trouble’ and ‘danger’ in your child’s name, considered a bad omen, so they got what they no doubt thought was creative.”

“My parents are psychologists and painstaking optimists,” Sugar added.

“My parents are astronomers,” Sunny finished.

Iskilia considered this. “Yes, that does make more sense. It is also a relief. Now, to address your earlier statement, you are correct.”

When she didn’t follow up, Sunny asked, “Who is?”

“Treble. You said this place was built from a memory. That is correct. This is as accurate a reconstruction of my home as my mother could create for me, to let me run free while she worked. I understand you have met her,” the alien girl said, tilting her head.

Treble nodded. “Yes, she was quite polite.”

“”Mother has always had good manners. I wished to learn them to some extent, until I found that most prey doesn’t make for good conversation. I am a huntress, you see. Wild game and monsters, both to protect my siblings and feed them. Mother hunts, too, but she is always so busy. I… do what I can, to help,” she said, almost sadly. Suddenly, her ears perked up. “Oh. I see one of m brothers has arrived. I should be going. Try not to die.” With that, she leapt into the air, straight up, until they couldn’t see her anymore.

The girls stared after her, Sunny raising an eyebrow. “Nice girl. Hope her brother’s that polite,” she said quietly.

Treble surveyed the landscape. “I… don’t think so. Come on. I’d rather not sit still for this new guy.”

They’d only been walking about ten minutes when Sugarcoat raised what she considered a very valid point. “Is it really a good idea to smoke when you might be about to fight something? Or better yet, run from it?”

Treble tapped the lit cigarette in his mouth lightly. “Yes.”

Sunny shrugged, while Sugarcoat pressed the matter. “And why, pray tell, is diminishing your lung capacity the first thing that comes to mind when you think you’re about to get in a fight?”

Treble glanced over his shoulder, arming himself with a snappy comeback. Seeing the look on Sugar’s face, however, he sighed heavily. “Alright. Alright, I’ll tell you, but you gotta keep it a secret. I mean, the boys know, but I seriously doubt my teachers would approve.”

“Of you smoking? I hope not,” Sunny declared.

“Ok, you’re not wrong, but you’re wrong.”

“...you wanna shoot that bullet again, Tex?” Sunny demanded.

“I don’t smoke cigarettes. At least, not normal ones. See this?” he pulled out his pack of smokes, and waved it in their faces.

Sugar was the first one to notice. “There’s no brand name on that.”

“That’s right. It’s a case, not a pack. I carry it everywhere. Make my smokes at home, too. And I don’t use tobacco,” Treble explained.

“Oh god you’re high. That explains… quite a lot, actually. Why are you smoking pot right now?” Sunny demanded.

Treble barked a laugh. “Please. Pot wishes it was this good. No, I smoke mana leaves. Ground up with different roots and herbs. Think of it like a potion you inhale. The paper is a special kind of papyrus woven out of the same kind of material used in certain disposable scrolls. The kind of stuff you use for one-shot spells or self-destructive evidence. Besides, not everything in this pack is a smoke.”

Sugar raised an eyebrow. Then the other one. If she’d had a third, it would join them. “So… you smoke… spells?”

“Not quite. Like I said, they’re more like potions. The mana leaves improve my personal energy reserves, cut with some special… perks. One of the things that keeps me sane in the face of the really rather awful stuff we face. There are spells in here, of course, but I don’t smoke those.”

Sunny tapped her chin. “So… they’re not bad for you?”

“Oh god, yes. Mana leaf smoke is like overclocking your CPU. It expands your ki paths temporarily. The other stuff I cut into them makes the effects basically permanent. But that kind of… enhancement comes with its downsides. The human soul is basically a limitless well of power, but the body isn’t designed to channel that much energy at a time. It only really hits home when I actually use magic, but I’m basically burning myself from the inside out,” he explained, his tone rather uncharacteristically serious.

“Is that why you don’t use it that often?” Sugarcoat asked.

“Please. If I was worried about my lifespan I wouldn’t be doing shit like this. No, my biggest problem seems to be much more mundane- No Smoking signs,” said Treble, almost wistfully.

“...how are you still alive?” Sunny sighed.

“Usually, I have someone else to hide behind. Speaking of which, you girls might want to get behind me,” he added with a sense of urgency.

The girls looked to each other, and paused only for a moment. Something in his voice told them he wasn’t joking. Or maybe it was the shaking earth under their feet. That might have done it. They ducked behind him as he stepped forward to face the oncoming noise.

There wasn’t much of a wait for them to figure out what was bearing down on them. It leapt over a broken stone wall and landed on all fours only a hundred feet away. It walked much like a dog, but with significantly more bulk. Large plates of shell rolled on its back with the impressive muscles, the fore-and hind legs stomping with great purpose. It was very much a creature of function- every muscle perfectly in place, built for speed as well as power, armored in all the proper places, obviously an evolutionary byproduct of being both a predator and prey. Hard to kill and good at killing, with a mouth of waves of teeth that ground together and lined up nicely to chew pretty much anything, even the piece of rock that had lodged in its jaw when it laned in a plume of dust and pebbles.

The rock disappeared into a puff of dust as its mouth closed menacingly. The girls took a step back. Treble, however, took out another stick out of his pack, and lit it. “Oh good. A field demonstration.” He flicked the smoke with practice, and it flew as if pitched, in a straight line for the creature. The beast opened its mouth as if to eat it.

“Brjóta!” Treble shouted.

Then the cigarette exploded.

Author's Note

FIGHT TIME NAO.

Essay Eight: The Practical Application of Impractical Situations

Essay Eight: The Practical Application of Impractical Situations

With a word, the cigarette burst apart, incinerating the paper and letting fly the contents; the fine strands of shredded mana leaf, now arrow-rigid and needle sharp. A cloud of small, brilliant needles showered the oncoming beast and stuck themselves in really rather rude places along its carapace and all the fleshy bits. Which, of course, only served to anger the creature, as it rampaged forward.

Until Treble gave the second command. “Dáð!” he yelped, almost in panic. Almost. He dove rather ungracefully out of the way of his opponent as the needles surged with energy and gave the beast what appeared to be a miniature seizure. It skidded onto one side and slid forward with a great deal of momentum, almost clipping Treble as it slid past and into -or rather, through- a rock behind it. Making a valiant effort to stand up, the beast howled in rage as its limbs decided ‘no, today was not the day to do that, and I’d really rather have a nap right here thank you’. Trying a few more times to right itself, it found that whatever that surge had been had done some unfortunate things to its motor functions, as the creature stumbled over itself time and time again.

Sugarcoat stared at the fallen creature from a generous distance. “What did you do?”

Climbing to his feet (with no help from the girls, he noticed), he explained, “Basically short-circuited it. It’s like the tremors you get after a bad electric shock. Not exactly what happened, but he’ll be stumbling over himself for a little while. Which is why we should probably start moving now rather than later, before-”

As if to demonstrate, the ground shook slightly, dust and leaves shuddering and falling to the ground from wherever they lay. The next impact shook the pebbles at their feet, and the next made them stumble slightly. The sound of footsteps could be heard on the trail of the smaller creature twitching on the ground before them. “Before whatever the hell that is, you mean?” Sunny asked, panicked.

“Yes. Very much yes. I suggest we leave in case they’re related,” DT suggested.

“I second the notion,” Sugar added immediately. So off they went.

The open plains offered little in the way of hiding spaces, in contrast to the ruins some distance away. On the other hand, they’d all considered on some level the possibility that, should they use the crumbling walls and dilapidated towers as a hiding spot, that they might not be the only things sneaking about among the stonework. A thought quickly overridden by the oncoming footfalls, as Treble hissed, “This way!” and led them into the broken maze of ancient stone.

They scrambled over walls and decayed wood as the ruins became more and more dense, the half-standing stones giving way to more intact structures with proper doors and windows. The doors themselves were on their way to being well-rotted, and the wooden frames had long since given up hope, but some of the walls and even towers had held on long enough to be considered in fair condition. Nobody volunteered going inside, however. There was something… off about the stones. How they sat on top of each other. The angles didn’t make sense, and continued to do so after long visual inspection. The doors, what little of them were left, met their frames in disturbing, subtle ways, and the windows didn’t appear to lead to anything. Anything they wanted to see, anyways.

The farther they went into the maze, the more… wrong things became. The walls became more organic, giving the appearance of having grown in place rather than being built, and the structures more visually abusive. Treble had taken to looking either at the ground or sky as he moved, and encouraged the girls to do the same. Looking around them gave them headaches, and more than once they’d gotten the distinct impression that they would have seen someone in the ruins with them, someone or something, if they’d just turned their heads a little bit faster.

“Really starting to miss the hospital,” Sunny shuddered, staring defiantly at the ground as she stepped over a crumbled portion of wall. She kicked over a rock as she did so, and lots of tiny somethings crawled out, moving in unnatural patterns and disappearing into the grass.

“The real one or the fake one?” Treble chided, carefully staring at a passing cloud as he vehemently ignored a doorway to his left that he wasn’t sure was there a moment ago, and was very sure wouldn’t be there after he walked through it.

“Yes.”

Sugarcoat shook with nerves. “I hate it here. Nothing makes sense. I’d rather be stuck in a labyrinth of right angles than whatever this mess is. I feel like I’m being watched. Out of the back of my own head.”

“Treble mused on that for the exact amount of time it took him to decide he didn’t want to anymore. “That’s a wonderful image, thanks for that. Now if we could just get through the stonework-”

“What?” Sunny demanded. “IF we get through these ruins, what next?! More plains? More giant creatures to run from? More floors? I’m running out of give, here, Treble, and Sugar’s not doing so hot either. If you have anything resembling a plan, now would be the time to tell us!”

“Well forgive me if I don’t! I’m not exactly the intrepid adventurer or knowledgeable guide, here. I’m flying by the seat of my pants just as much as you are!” he growled, turning on his heel.

Sugar glowered at him. “I thought you knew what you were doing,” she snapped.

“Really? Really?! What part of any of this looks like I know where the hell we are or what to do about it?! Everything up to now has just been guesswork, thank you very much, and some blind luck! In fact, I’m pretty sure the only reason we’re still alive is because we’re useful to… someone, somewhere. So if the two of you geniuses want to start doing some of the mental heavy lifting, I’m all ears!” he spat back.

“Then what was that bunk about psychonauts and fractal patterns, then? It’s not like we have any experience here! I thought you guys had a handle on this shit!” Sunny accused.

“Well I’m sorry you got stuck with the stupid one, then!” Treble shouted, spinning around and pushing through a large swath of brush.

The girls traded uneasy glances, chasing after him. The brush, a heavy thing of unhealthy colors, too many leaves on a branch, and a really bad smell, fought them back slightly as they forced their way through, and they came out the other side to find Treble skulking forward, away from the ruins and into a dense wood. His hunched shoulders and lowered head suggested they might have hit a nerve.

Even after they caught up to him, no one said anything for a while. Besides a few snippets like “Watch your step” and the like, it was quiet as the ruins slowly faded into a forest of pale purple trees with violently indigo leaves. The bark was unnaturally smooth and solid, much like the stones, and the leaves looked a little too rigid, and sharp. It wasn’t until they reached a clearing with no definable paths that Sugarcoat spoke up.

“You, uh, want to explain that little outburst back there?” she said, not unkindly. Although, given her typical demeanor, it wasn’t exactly kind, either.

“Not especially.”

Sunny elbowed her friend and stepped forward. “I think she means that, if you, you know, want to talk, we’re here. I mean, you’re kind of stuck with us.”

Treble had busied himself with inspecting a tree, taking his pocket knife out of his pocket and digging slightly at the bark. It did little more than scratch the blade, and the leaves weren’t much better. He gave the trunk a few kicks for good measure, and sighed. “Look, of all the people you could have gotten stuck with in here, you probably got the shortest end of the stick. I don’t know this stuff like they do. I mean, Rubble’s not much better, but between the fighting and the ghost hitchhiking in his head he could at least offer some kind of protection. Yes, even with a cane. Kid’s crazy. Dusty’s almost worse. I mean, there’s fighting, and then there’s whatever Dusty does. And he has a good head for spellwork. The only thing I’ve got is this,” he shook the cigarette case, “And even then I have to read and re-read the instructions whenever I make a new pack. Can’t keep a thought in my head. To be honest, your best bet would have been to walk in here with Spooky at your back. You’d probably be out already. Sometimes I don’t think that guy realizes how crazy some of the stuff he does is. I try to make myself useful, you know. Putting on all the confidence I can scrape up and leading people into the great unknown so that they don’t have to argue about who goes first. It’s a lot easier to do the job with someone loud and stupid standing between you and the thing with the teeth.”

The girls were thoughtful for a moment. Then Sunny stepped forward and patted Treble on the shoulder. “Well, if it’s any consolation, we’re all still alive.”

“I know,” Treble said weakly. “I just wish I didn’t have to do this alone.”

“At least you’re here, doing something,” Sugar pointed out. “Lord knows what the other guys are up to.”

“You’re sure it’s this elevator?”Rubble demanded, glaring at Spooks. He shifted his wait off his cane slightly and leaned against the wall. “How reliable is that stick, anyway?”

Spooky rolled his eyes, not turning around. “It’s called a divination rod, and it’s how I found your ass when you were buried in that gremlin cave last summer.”

Dusty threw his crippled friend a knowing smirk, and Rubble had the decency to look slightly abashed. “Ok, fine. So what, they took the elevator and it fell into another dimension or something?”

“Or something,” Spooks grunted. “Dusty, give me a hand with this door.”

Double D stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles in one smooth motion, then dug his fingers into the space between the doors. The two boys pulled, straining against the heavy metal, until it gave an inch, then a few more, then finally crashed open all at once.

Zap chose this moment to reappear behind them, taking the corner at speed. “Ok, I got a bunch of people out, and you’re lucky this isn’t an intensive care ward or something. They’re all on the other side of the building now.”

“Really?” Spooks asked, somewhat impressed. “That was rather fast.”

“Well, when the paintings start screaming at you, you tend to reach the nearest exit at speed,” Indigo explained. “Near as I can tell this is the only ward with freaky shit going on. And can someone please do something about these flowers? They’re freaking me out,” she added, nodding her head in the direction of a potted plant that had since grown teeth, or something like teeth, and was currently chewing on the pot it grew in.

“Well, whatever is causing shit here to turn Cronenberg on us is probably a lot worse wherever our friends are,” Rubble grunted, tugging on Indigo’s sleeve and leading her away from the gnawing plant, which seemed close to realizing there were better things to chew on nearby than ceramics. “So the sooner we find the other end of this elevator ride, the better.”

“No joke,” Indigo groaned. “I mean, the only thing standing between my friends and a whole world of nasty not-niceness is Treble. I mean, what’s he gonna do, talk at the monsters till they go away?”

Dusty shrugged. “Hey, he’s done it before. He even had a vampire nest drop us off in the desert because they didn’t want to listen to him explain the word ‘quantum’ again.”

“Not that he was even remotely close,” Spooks groaned, waving the divining rod halfway into the elevator shaft. He pulled back once he got a good look at the cables, and realized they looked less like giant woven bands of metal and more like veins. “God, why is it always fleshy? Gross.” He heaved a sigh and tucked the rod somewhere into his pocket. “At least we’re in a hospital. Even he wouldn’t take those damn cigarettes with him here.”

“...actually...” Rubble said uneasily.

Spooks rounded on him and gave him the mother of all disapproving stares. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“Well, after the dance and the Inkwell House he said he felt distinctly unprepared. So he maybe might have started carrying around a spare pack wherever he goes,” Rubble explained, in what would have been a sheepish tone on anyone else. Rubble didn’t do sheepish.

Spooks rolled his eyes and threw his hands up. “What part of It’s going to burn out your neural pathways from the inside out doesn’t he understand?!”

Essay Nine: I Told You That Story to Tell You This Story

Author's Note

Long overdue next chapter

Essay Nine: I Told You That Story to Tell You This Story

Essay Nine: I Told You That Story to Tell You This Story

Rubble had just gotten the last of his clothes on when another knock on the door made him turn around. He recognized it instantly as Spooky, even before he saw him. The kid was so diminished some days even the sounds he made were hollow. “What’s up, Bones?”

“I wanted to talk to you about, well, your dad,” Spooky said hesitantly, looking around for their new tagalong.

“Yeah?” Rubble grunted. “What about him?”

Spooky sighed. He knew some conversations just weren’t destined to go anywhere good. He’d had plenty of discussions like this both with friends and clients alike, and it was almost always a bad time all around. “Look, you know the rules. Possession? Intelligent hauntings? It never ends well.”

RM rolled his eyes. “You think I don’t know that? I’m not quite as stupid as you all seem to think I am. But how am I supposed to just shove him off? He’s my dad, Spooky. If you recall, that’s kind of a big deal.”

Bones slumped into a chair and sighed. “Yes, I’m aware. Look, I’m not saying we have to kick him out like, right now. But sooner or later he’s going to need a cleansing, before it turns into an exorcism. I just want you to be ready for that. The living and dead don’t mingle, Rubble. Not for long. And when they do it’s a ticking time bomb at best.”

“Wow,” Rubble groaned, throwing open a closet and packing his stuff in his duffel bag. “You really know how to throw a party, you know that?”

“Hey, if you wanted a bunch of snowy, feel-good bullshit with sprinkles on top I could have sent Treble in to have this conversation with you,” Bones grunted, his face a stoic mask.

They traded glances, not unkindly, and fell silent for a few moments before Rubble went back to packing and Spooks pulled out a book to read. There was a stiff yet companionable silence between the two, as if they both understood the other, but were too stubborn to say anything else.

It was a few moments before anyone said anything, and it was Dusty leading Indigo back to the room. “See, I told you we should have taken a right back there at the giant teddy bear!” Zap exclaimed, peeking around the open door and seeing she finally had the right room. “Finally!” She threw her hands in the air in exasperation and let them fall around Rubble’s shoulders. “Hey, what’s up? You’re all tense.”

Dusty stumbled in immediately after, rolling his eyes. “Ok, yes, I was wrong, we’re here now, whatever. God, this is why I hate public service buildings. Everything looks the freakin’ same.” Seeing the tension in the room, he raised an eyebrow at Spooks. “You had the Ghost Talk with him, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did,” Spooks said defensively. “Everyone needs to hear the Ghost Talk.”

“Eh,” Dusty said with a shrug. “Your call. I mean, we kind of did vote you in.”

Rubble chuckled a little, and Indigo smiled slightly as she felt some of the stress leave his body. “Yeah, I remember that. There was a lot of kicking and screaming.”

“I did not kick and/or scream anything,” Spooky insisted, turning slightly red.

“You did kinda yell ‘for fuck’s sake’ in a loud and carrying voice. And we still can’t open that file cabinet all the way,” Dusty said with a snide grin.

“You and I both know that’s because Rubble side-tackled it when he thought it was still haunted.”

Rubble threw his bag over his shoulder and gave Indigo’s shoulders a squeeze with his other arm, partially to keep himself steady on his bad leg. “Well if someone had been kind enough to hold off on the exorcism until I got there-”

“Yadda yadda you miss all the fun,” Dusty whined mockingly, throwing Rubble’s cane at him. Between the bag in one hand and the girl on the other, Rubble had difficulty catching it with anything other than his face. Indigo, however, still had two free hands, and nabbed it herself before yet another injury put her boyfriend back in the hospital bed.

“Anyone tell you your friends are total dicks?” she asked.

“Literally all the time,” the three boys chorused.

Indigo just sighed.

“Ok, I am TELLING YOU that this giant fucking rabbit was not here half an hour ago,” Dusty argued, pointing at a people-sized stuffed bunny with a price tag around it’s neck. It sat in a little nook right outside the gift shop, around which the four had gathered as they looked for their friends to leave.

“And I’m telling you there’s only one gift shop on this whole damn floor, and this is it!” Indigo barked back.

Rubble was torn between backing her up, which he had no grounds to do as he neither remembered nor gave a shit about giant stuffed animals, and letting her argue with Dusty. He opted for the distinctly more amusing option, instead turning his attention to Spooky, who was taking a vested interest in the giant rabbit up for debate. “You, uh, got a thing for bunny wabbits, Spooks?”

Bones did little more to acknowledge his friend than cast a middle finger over his shoulder, as he poked the stuffed animal with his other hand. He turned the sign over, rolled the bunny on its side, and did pretty much everything short of giving it a physical before putting it back, at which point Rubble was somewhat concerned about his friend.

“No seriously what’s with the rabbit?” Rubble asked again.

“Dunno. But Dusty is right, this wasn’t here earlier. Strange,” Spooks noted.

Dusty looked triumphant. “HA!”

Until Rubble rolled his eyes. “Seriously? Did it occur to none of you that maybe they just sold the damn bear and brought out a rabbit later?”

Spooks and Dusty traded glances. “Um...” Dusty trailed off sheepishly.

“No, no that did not occur to us,” Spooks admitted. Rubble felt like smacking one or both of them with his hospital cane, but opted to bank it for when he had a proper stick to hit them with.

“Oh my god,” Rubble grunted, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Ok, they’re not here. Which means they probably went to the cafeteria. Or the other gift shop. So can we get away from the giant rabbit now?”

Indigo stuck her tongue out at Dusty and lopped her arm through Rubble’s, striding along smugly as they made their way to the elevator. After a few right turns and a left, they found it. As well as the large ‘OUT OF ORDER’ sign on a pole in front of it. “Oh well that’s just wonderful,” Indigo grunted. “No wonder they’ve been gone so long, the stairs are like five miles away.”

“Well, we better get walking,” Spooky said, and turned on his heel to lead them away.

They walked in companionable silence until Indigo piped up. “Hey, so I’ve been meaning to ask, but do you guys have like, a club name or something?”

Dusty shrugged. “Not really. We tried a few names at first, when we were starting out and actually getting into the groove of things, but nothing stuck, really. I mean, it’s not like we make business cards or whatever. Mostly we just call each other when weird shit happens we can’t take care of on our own.”

“Which is pretty much all the time,” Spooks added. “No offense, Dusty, but there’s rarely a supernatural problem in this town that could be comfortably called a one-man job. Especially since none of us are exactly men, yet.”

“Eh, give it time,” Indigo said encouragingly. “I’m sure you’ll get into all kinds of manly and horrible shenanigans in college. Speaking of men, where’s your dad?” she added, looking up at Rubble.

“I… you know, that’s a good question. I haven’t seen, heard, or felt him all day. I mean, that’s not exactly weird, he does get bored easily, but you’d think he’d stick around for his kid getting out of the hospital,” he said, only a little indignant.

“Yeah. And where’s your mom, on that note?” Indigo continued.

“Oh, she’s at work,” Rubble replied easily.

“I thought she worked the night shift? She isn’t working two jobs again, is she?” Dusty asked, with some concern.

“Actually, no. She got promoted to day shift manager,” Rubble said with a hint of a smile.

“Good for her,” Spooks said amicably. “Remind me to tell her congrats in person as soon as we find the fucking stairs,” he growled, looking around with a rather cross expression.

Dusty raised an eyebrow and looked around himself. Up to that point he’d just been walking where everyone else was walking. “Yeah, shouldn’t we have hit the stairs by now?”

Rubble rolled his eyes and tapped a passing nurse on the shoulder. “Hey, dude. Where’s the stairs?”

The male nurse pointed over his shoulder. “You’re almost there. Go to the end of the hall, take a left, and it’s at the end of that hall.”

“Thank you.”

Spooky and Dusty traded sheepish glances again. “Ok yes we should have thought of that, too. Happy?” Spooks sighed.

“Indubitably,” Rubble replied in an awful English accent.

“Please never do that again,” Indigo groaned, elbowing him slightly.

“Where. The FUCK. Are the STAIRS?!” Rubble barked. He was staring at the end of a rather long hallway, which just seemed to… stop. No doors, no tables, not even a decorative poster. Just a wall where, presumably, the stairs should have been. He gave the wall a kick with his good leg for measure, only to find it very very solid. “OW.”

“I swear to god if you break your other leg before we even get out of this hospital I’m writing you off as a bad accident,” Indigo groaned.

Spooks shooed Rubble out of the way as he approached the wall. Giving it a few firm taps, then patting it down, he sighed. “Yup. It’s a wall.”

“...there aren’t enough ‘No shits’ in the world for this,” Dusty grunted.

“I mean as opposed to a tactile illusion or something, you ass,” Spooks elaborated. “Hell, it feels like a load-bearing wall, almost. Solid as shit.”

Rubble sat in a nearby chair and rubbed his foot. “Yes, we established that. Get to the point.”

“My point is that,” Spooks snapped, pointing a little farther down the hall at the big sign that said ‘STAIRS’ in block letters with an arrow pointing in their direction.

Rubble looked at the sign, then at the wall. “Ok, so either the wall is brand freakin’ new or the sign is really really old. Frankly I’m kind of hoping for the latter.”

“Even if the sign was old as dirt they wouldn’t have moved an entire stairwell,” Indigo reasoned. “Besides the fact that this hospital hasn’t had any major restructuring renovations in the last twenty years, they’re all built to code. Stairs are kind of a big deal when designing a six-story building. No way they’d just up and move it. Not to mention you’d think a guy who we met literally five minutes ago would know not to point us at a stairwell that doesn’t exist anymore.”

Rubble sighed. “Ok, so the wall is new. What does that mean?” he demanded, looking stubbornly at the affronting plaster.

“Fuck if I know,” Indigo replied with a shrug.

“Well it’s not like we’re getting anywhere staring at it,” Dusty said. “Might as well turn around and-”

“HEY!” said a loud female voice behind them. The group turned as one to see Nurse Redheart tearing down the hallway at them. When she caught up, she stopped for breath, leaning over and panting.

The boys all traded glances that said, rather clearly, ‘Thank god Treble’s not here right now.’ “What can we do for you?” Spooks asked calmly.

“Do you… do you boys… still do… that monster… fighting… thing?” she panted, catching her breath between words.

Ruble and Dusty sighed in exasperation as Spooky fought the urge to do the same. “Yes. Yes we do. What seems to be the-”

“Giant… rabbit… tried to… eat a guy… painting… screaming… oh god I’m gonna pass out,” she groaned. Then she did.

Spooky rolled his eyes at Redheart’s unconscious form. “Wonderful. Indigo, be a friend and get her somewhere safe. Boys? Let’s go kill a giant rabbit.”

Indigo groaned as she picked up the sleeping nurse, tucking her into the chair Zap herself was occupying a second ago, and traded glances with Rubble. “Oh, go kick some ass. If anything happens I’ll just scream really loudly. Or hit it with a chair.”

Rubble gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Attagirl.”

The boys reached the gift shop in time to see that the giant rabbit had, in fact, been trying to eat a guy. Rather ineffectually, as a matter of fact, as its newfound sentience hadn’t come with a pair of teeth, so it was just smacking its adorable fluffy face on some dude’s head. Which would have been the cutest thing ever if it wasn’t for the deep growls coming from its throat and the blood running down the gentleman’s front as the repeated smacks had broken his nose and knocked him unconscious.

“Ok, that’s a new one,” Rubble noted, and the other boys nodded their agreement.

“Do we, uh… kill it?” Spooks wondered.

“How?” Dusty argued.

“Well, I think you guys should start by maybe getting it off the guy it’s beating to death,” Rubble offered helpfully, pushing Dusty forward with his cane.

Again the two traded glances. “This is not our day,” Spooky observed, then stepped forward with his friend to try and tug the giant bunny off its victim.

Which went about as well as the bunny’s attempt to devour something without teeth. The massive rabbit threw them off with an impressively solid arm, and they landed on their backsides a few feet away. “Did… did we just get tossed by Peter fucking Rabbit?” Dusty groaned.

Rubble rolled his eyes. “Oh my god,” he groaned. He stumbled forward with his cane, snapped the cheap aluminum bar in half with his hands, and ran the ragged pole through the rabbit’s head. There was a disturbing lack of fluff and a surprising amount of resistance as the improvised weapon ran itself through what should have been a giant plastic eye, only to find the eye was, in fact, an eye, backed up by gray matter and, eventually, skull. “Huh. Ok. That’s… different.”

Dusty got to his feet and pulled the unconscious rabbit victim into a doorway, sitting him up against the frame and checking his pulse. “Well, he’s alive. Good thing he’s in a hospital.”

Spooky tapped him on the shoulder and pointed down the hallway. “Yeah, that doesn’t really mean a lot right now.”

The boys followed his gaze, down the hall, into the waiting room, where apparently all hell had broken loose.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rubble groaned.

Essay Ten: A Spiritualist’s Guide to Something Not Right

Essay Ten: A Spiritualist’s Guide to Something Not Right

The waiting room was nothing short of panic. Crying children, screaming adults, and a bunch of very worried, very powerless medical staff. Paintings all along the walls had started devolving into something grotesque, and some were getting ambitious about how many physical dimensions they could occupy. There was a large fishtank in the middle who’s waters had turned an icy black, obscuring forms that seemed much large than the glass cage they were in. Every once in a while someone would run past the glass, and something would thud against it from the other side, pushing intently as it tried to reach what it no doubt considered prey. The glass was holding, although it had a little more give than seemed physically possible.

“See, the next time someone asks us why we keep that snarky chatterbox herb-addicted narcissist around, we point them at stuff like this,” Dusty groaned. The other two just nodded. “Spooks, do you mind?”

Bones nodded, and reached into his pocket, pulling out a worn-looking piece of paper. Rubble and Dusty slapped their hands over their ears and opened their mouths wide, waiting patiently. A few panicky passerby gave them weird looks, but otherwise ignored them. Then Spooky put the slip of paper between his thumb and middle finger, and snapped them. The effect was immediate and deafening. Literally. There was a loud pop, and a short ringing sound, and everyone in the room who wasn’t covering their ears or casting the spell found that all sound had just dropped out of the world.

Except Spooky’s voice. “Alright, ladies and gentleman, if you could kindly stop what you’re doing, or not doing, pull your fingers out of your ears, yes the ringing is normal, and listen up. I don’t have the time, patience, or crayons to explain what I just did, but don’t worry, your hearing will come back when I’m done. Sir, please put the chair down. If you knock me unconscious you’ll be deaf literally forever. Yes that’s rather rude of me, but still. Alright!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands together and giving the group as pleasant a smile as he could manage. A few people flinched. Rubble just rolled his eyes and limped off. “Panicking isn’t going to get you anywhere, and if you’d be kind enough to notice, you all seem in good health. Ok, bad choice of words. No worse off than when you got here, let’s go with that. In the hallway behind us, you’ll find a girl in a Crystal Prep jacket with Nurse Redheart, who will happily evacuate you to somewhere on this floor without screaming artwork. They’re still checking the other floors,” he lied, “In a sweep of the building. Please stay calm and stick together. We’re the closest thing to professionals you’re going to get.” He put the paper back between his fingers, and snapped again.

Once the audience had their hearing back, the yelling began again. Now all of it seemed to be directed at Spooky, who took it in stride. Many people demanding that he do something about the paintings, or wanting to know how he took almost all of their hearing away. There was a bunch of shouting and pushing, until a loud thud drew their attention, as Rubble sauntered back with a new walking stick, dropping a large dead stuffed rabbit in front of them. They all went as quiet as if Spooky had cast the spell again. “I killed that. With a walking stick. Yes, me, the crippled guy. Yes, that’s flesh and blood under there. If you wander off behind us you will find the orderly or whatever that this rabbit beat unconscious with his face. Now, if one little gimpy kid can do that, and another can literally deafen a room with a snap of his fingers, do you really want to sit here and argue about who’s better qualified to handle this situation, or would you like to wait around and see what the third guy can do with a can of spray paint?”

Dusty glanced at him sideways. “I don’t have a can of spray paint,” he argued. Rubble just raised an eyebrow at him. Dusty held his gaze for a few seconds, then sighed, pulling out a couple of miniature aerosol cans out of somewhere, and shaking them vigorously. “Ok, fine. Maybe one or two.”

“How’d you get those in here?!” one nurse demanded.

“...really? That’s your question?”

“...”

“Thought so,” Dusty grunted. “Alright, everyone, kindly make like lemmings and march into the hallway behind us. Ignore the blood, most of it is the rabbit’s. Look for the blue-haired chick with goggles and the nurse, they’ll find you somewhere not… well, not here.”

The crowd seemed to have settled some, mostly due to the giant rabbit corpse they were doing their best to skirt around, and followed directions as Spooky gently ushered them away from the waiting room. When the last of the stragglers had sauntered off, Spooky sighed. “And people wonder why we need a PR guy.”

It was an hour or so later, and pretty much everyone had cleared out of their little section of the hospital. The boys had taken a moment to sit down, finding a somewhat-undisturbed sitting room where the paintings had only just started wriggling, so they could brainstorm. “Right, so we can assume that Treble and the girls are off… somewhere not good,” Rubble reasoned. “Things are ugly in some places, not so much in others, which means there’s probably a ground zero somewhere.”

“Which, knowing our illustrious talking head, is exactly where he and the girls are right now,” Dusty groaned. “Indigo still working on evac?”

Rubble nodded. “She texted me a little after we cleared out the waiting room, wanting to know where the hell to bring everyone. I told her somewhere untainted and easily defensible. Last I heard she was talking to Redheart about holing up in the cafeteria. Thank god this isn’t a surgical ward or something. What the hell section are we in, anyway?”

Spooks eyed a nearby sign, then smirked slightly, giving Rubble a sideways glance. “Rehabilitation.”

“Oh FUCK you,” Rubble growled, as Dusty laughed loudly at him.

“Hey, I’m not the one who built this place,” Spooky shrugged. “Look, back on track. Let’s bullet-point this. Point One: Weird shit is happening in remote parts of the hospital. Point Two: One of our team is AWOL with two civilians. Point Three: we have reason to believe this phenomena has an epicenter, which we suspect is where Treble and the other girls have disappeared to. Either they’re trapped in a room somewhere with something really awful, or something really big is going on somewhere else and it’s just stretching out to here.”

Rubble sighed and stared at the ceiling. “Man, it feels like the Fall Formal all over again. Weird shit in the walls, hallways that don’t go anywhere. You think that nasty fucker what took half my foot off came back?”

“Well, we never did find out where he fucked off to,” Dusty considered. “But why would he walk off with three underpowered people? Of all of us he showed the most interest in Spooks, even after he bit a hole in your leg.”

“Agreed,” said Spooky. “If something like that was going to come back for me it would just walk in a straight line till it found me. Considering all the sitting in one place I’ve been doing, he should have found me by now if they were looking for me. What we need is information.” He considered Rubble carefully. “Any chance you could get your dad to scout out the place?”

“Dude I haven’t felt him all day,” Rubble lamented. “Either he went home and… fell asleep, or something? Do ghosts nap? Either he fucked off for a few hours and has no idea what’s going on, or something is keeping him out. I mean, this isn’t much of a place for the living right now, I can only imagine what it’s doing on other planes of existence.”

Spooky’s eyes widened in a familiar, unfortunate expression, and he sighed wearily. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” he groaned, digging through his coat again. He pulled out a long metal pole bent in an L-shape, with some weird carvings on it.

“The fuck is that?” Dusty asked. “And why are you all grumpy-pants now?”

“What Rubble said. Other planes of existence? Do you not remember the long-ass lecture on psychonauts I gave you guys?” Spooks groaned.

“Um…” RM said slowly. “Which one was that? You kind of give us a lot of weird science-magic lectures and we aren’t exactly the smartest of men.”

Spooky tapped the stick a few times, until it started humming slightly as it resonated. “THIS,” he said, waving the metal thing, “Is a divining rod. It resonates with dimensional disturbances. It’s like an EMF meter for other-dimensional shenanigans, hence why it’s humming right now. The psychonaut lecture basically boils down to nasty things from other universes who like to hop around the marble bag and fuck other people’s days.”

Rubble nodded as realization dawned on his face. “Ok, yeah, I remember that one. The… hunter, the scientist, the predator, and the… what was the last one?”

Dusty looked uneasy, bordering on ill. “The psychopath. Weren’t you saying that they were the most common?”

Spooks looked wearily at his divining rod. “Yes. Yes they are. Ok, this means one of three things. One, our friends have been eaten. I find that somewhat unlikely, as I would have gotten some kind of sense of Treble dying. Don’t ask, it comes with the whole ‘talks to dead people’ thing. Number two, the psychonaut, if that’s what this is, has some kind of pocket-universe where it’s road-testing the rules of our universe, and Treble and the girls fell face-first into it. Three, the others are actually doing just fine and on another floor, where they’re cut off from us and we’re the only ones in any danger.”

Rubble rolled his eyes. “And how likely is that third one, if at all?”

Spooky thought about that for a second, then stood up. “We better get moving before they start getting, I don’t know, digested or something.”

“Lovely,” Rubble groaned. He shook his bad leg as he stood up.

“Sefask,” Treble said in a hushed voice, quietly tossing a cigarette at another beast. The latest one they’d encountered hadn’t seen them yet, giving Treble the opportunity to sneak up on it. The cig bounced harmlessly off it’s hide, barely getting its attention, before it burst into a cloud of gentle white smoke, enveloping the creature. When it cleared, the beast was left swaying back and forth on its hooves slightly, before slumping onto the ground with a stupid grin on its face.

Treble motioned for the girls to come out of hiding and follow him, as he walked around the beast, approaching from a broad angle so as not to startle it. The creature regarded him lazily, then rested its head on its hooves.

It would have been cute if not for all the bone. Almost boar-like, it had a flatter face and longer, thinner tusks that stuck out at a wide angle. It’s back was similarly plated to the first creature they’d met, but done properly this time. Overlapping, similarly shaped plates of bone rolled gnetly on its back, held in place by flexing tendons. The creature seemed to be a giant mass of muscle with a bone shell. It gave Treble a lazy look as the boy slowly waked towards it, eventually stopping only a foot or so away. He knelt down and reached a hand out, letting the creature sniff it. The almost-boar gave his hand a few snorts, then leaned his head in to be petted. Treble obliged.

“Ok, since when are you Beastmaster?” Sunny grunted, crawling unceremoniously through some side brush she’d hidden behind at Treble’s behest.

“It’s a pacification spell. Doesn’t work if the thing’s already decided to kill you, mind, which is why I wanted to sneak up on it. And where’s Sugar?” he demanded, poking his head up and looking around.

He found Sugarcoat quietly sitting on a ‘tree’ stump a few yards away, waiting patiently. “I’m just going to hang out here until you leave your friend behind.”

Treble nodded, stood up slowly, and left the beast alone. “Right, so the woods are horrible. The ruins are filled with god-knows what that wants to eat us. And we haven’t seen creepy chick for hours-”

“My name is Iskilia,” said a voice nearby, and Treble turned sharply on his heel to see their huntress friend leaning peacefully on the now-sleeping monster, petting its head. “And I must say I am impressed by your resourcefulness and your tenacity. Your tactics could use some work, although I imagine such limited resources as you find yourselves with lend not to greeting every opponent with open conflict. Needs must, I suppose. Incidentally, it seems you have already met my brother,” she added, patting the sleeping creature’s head.

“...that is your brother,” Sugarcoat said slowly. “Of course it is. Are the other beasts we’ve run afoul of also your brothers?”

“Yes and no. They are all my brother. Or, parts of him. He simply sends out bits and pieces. The whole of him is rather large, you see, and so moving about is rather cumbersome,” Iskilia explained. “He considers you, if not worthy, then at least entertaining opponents. Although my mother did tell him that you all needed to be alive to find the way out of here, she failed to make the distinction that ‘alive’ and ‘healthy’ are two different things. You might run into a few more extensions before you reach the center of this plane.”

Treble sighed, slumping onto his butt on the ground. The ‘boar’ stirred in its sleep. “Of course, why not. Any chance you could just like, get us off this floor and back into that stairwell thingy? We’re-” he stopped at a loud cough from Sunny, “-ok, I’m fairly confident the door we’re looking for isn’t on this floor. Or plane. Or whatever.”

If Iskilia had eyebrow, she would have raised them. “Of course. Right this way,” she answered, standing up and walking away.

“...seriously?! Sunny demanded. “You couldn’t have mentioned this earlier?!”

“You did not ask,” Iskilia said quietly, with a hint of humor.

Treble decided he kind of liked this chick.

Level One: Daily Life

Level One: Daily Life

Broken plaster. Cracking foundation. Busted-out windows and an assortment of ratty furniture taken from sidewalks and empty lots all over town. A surprisingly well-built bookshelf, and a few fold-out tables turned into a makeshift kitchen with the addition of a hot plate, a rice cooker, an electric griddle, and a mini-fridge. A generator with more power strips plugged into it than was probably safe.

A room on the bottom floor of an abandoned building in the outskirts of Canterlot, which, to be fair, was only a room by virtue of four walls, a door, and a ceiling, strewn about with debris that looked like someone had tried to clear it, and a bunch of support pillars somehow standing the tests of time and abuse.

This was the, for lack of a better term, “headquarters” of a group of delinquents from Canterlot High School who had made it their home away from home. If one looked hard enough, there was even another corner of the hollowed-out office building floor with a bunch of mattresses, and a ratty-ass wardrobe with the corners of a few sheets and blankets sticking out. Usually, one would expect such a derelict mess to be empty, quiet, some remnant of a life past or the impromptu set of a horror movie.

Yet today, like most days, it was full of a surprising amount of activity, and life. A trio of boys from seemingly all walks of life had casually strewn themselves about the old furniture, chatting amicably while their fourth puttered about in the “kitchen”.

“Ey, Dusty, what’s the holdup? Whatever happened to ‘thirty minutes or less’?” called one boy from the couch.

Dust Devil, or ‘Dusty’ to basically everyone, raised a silent middle finger, not bothering to remove the cheap cigarette from his mouth while his other hand dug at a quesadilla whose cheese had well melted to the griddle. He had dirt-brown hair and straw-gold skin, and despite his name, he was a clean and well-kept sort, if a bit skinny. Sporting a simple t-shirt and jeans combo with no special designs or snappy catch phrases to speak of, the standouts of his attire were the shoulder and kneepads he wore, seemingly without cause. Of course, if one were to take a look at his shoes (which usually only happened for a brief moment at high velocity should he become angry with you), they would notice skate wheels folded into the bottom and sides. The kind of sneakers that, with a click, became roller skates.

The youth on the couch returned the middle finger, and went back to reading the shabby remains of an old novel in his lap, turning the page with a moss-green hand. His hair was an even darker shade of green, though cut short and mostly hidden beneath an old army cadet hat his father had left him. Stretched out and taking up as much room on the couch against the far wall as he damn well pleased, Rubble Maker divided his attention between the beaten-up old book, the smell of food from across the room, and the other occupants. Rubble’s attire, day in and day out, consisted mainly of hand-me-down or salvage store dark green military fatigues, a-shirts, combat boots a size too big, and the aforementioned hat. He was obviously the muscle-y one of the group, but his build was less like a gym rat’s and more like someone who just liked fighting.

A couple of barely-stifled laughs emanated from the space between couch and kitchen, where the last two boys were simply watching the exchange, amused. A magazine spread out between them, half on one lap and half on the other, though they were barely glancing at it. “A good ol’ ‘Fuck You’, huh? Tell me, Dusty, is that in the quesadilla or the sodas?” Quipped the taller of the two; a long-haired boy in a white hoodie and torn jeans named Deep Treble. Small silver hoops dangled from his ears, and shook as he laughed. He had a wide, easy smile, and boy-band good looks that were more for getting into trouble than anything else. Sporting a great mane of shaggy dark-blue hair (which he’d developed the unconscious habit of tucking behind his ear every few minutes) over lime-green skin, Treble would have stood out the most from the group, if not for the boy sitting next to him.

Spooky Bones was the smallest of the group, yet somehow the scariest. Not because he was mean, or violent. On the contrary, he tried relatively hard to be a social kid. No, it was his ragged, gaunt looks and strange choice of attire that kept people away (and his hobbies, but that was another matter entirely). He had sunken eyes, mostly from lack of sleep, though one could easily confuse his frail appearance for one of an abused kid. Not that he was. He was a relatively happy kid with a decent home life. He just had a tendency not to take care of himself, which his friends had taken upon themselves to rectify. His clothes were something out of a period piece, a surprisingly new-looking newsie hat and vest over a button down shirt and slacks. He even wore proper shoes. Unfortunately, given his pale gray hair, and his black-and-white patterned skin, his outfit made him look less like a newsboy out of the twenties and more like a ghost.

“I hope it’s in the soda,” Bones remarked, his voice slightly gaunt and hollow to match his wraith-like appearance. “I’m not in the mood for a Fuckadilla.”

There was a beat of silence as the other three looked at him, then burst out laughing. Even Dusty, usually a calm and collect sort, had trouble holding his spatula. “Oh, oh my god. We need like a menu board or something so I can write that down. We’d make a fucking fortune selling Fuckadillas.”

There was a ‘plop’ as Rubble’s book hit the floor. “Dude, I’ll take three! No, wait, wait, can you make mine with extra fuck? I’m super in the mood for some fuck right now!”

The magazine in Treble’s lap crinkled as he gripped in tight, laughing to hard to notice. “Oh, so… so you want… some fuck?” he gasped out between laughing and trying to breathe.

This only made the whole group laugh even harder, Treble and Bones falling to the floor like idiots while Rubble kicked his legs against the arm of the couch. Which, truth be told, probably could have done without.

Dusty was holding himself up with one hand on the table, trying to get the food off the griddle before it burned. “Dude, you’re gonna make me burn lunch!”

“Oh no,” giggled Bones, his laugh much quieter, though no less genuine, than his friends’. “Don’t burn the fucks, we only have so many to give!” His voice rose in pitch as he laughed at his own joke.

Soon the only sounds from the room were the laughing of idiot boys, and food being dropped unceremoniously on paper plates. After a few moments, the raucous howling died down, and Dusty cleared his throat. “Alright, assholes, food’s ready. You know where the sodas are. And no, Rubble, I’m not bringing you your food, you can put on your big girl panties and walk ten feet.”

“But moooooooooooooooooooooooom,” whined Rubble. He rolled himself off the couch, despite his protests, and trudged over to the kitchen in mock defeat. As if to rub it in, Dusty took Treble and Bones their food, and even brought them sodas. Of course, they hadn’t quite picked themselves off the ground yet.

Treble sat up and leaned against the front of the recliner he’d been sitting on (a chair, basically, since it didn’t recline anymore. Rubble was working on it.). Pulling his plate into his lap with one hand, and cracking the soda open with the other, he turned to Rubble, who had just sat down with his meal. “So hoss, what’s the book?”

The green brute picked up the almost-forgotten novel off the ground, looking at the cover to remind himself of the title. “The Portrait of Dorian Grey,” he answered. “Bones wanted me to read it.”

“How you likin’ it?” Bones asked, his mouth half full of food.

“It’s alright. Main character’s kind of a dick.” Rubble tossed the book to the other half of the couch, where it sat for half a second before Dusty picked it up to make room for himself.

“Yeah, we had to read that in English last year. I don’t remember a lot of it,” mused Dusty, taking a sip of something from a can. He wasn’t paying attention to what he grabbed, and thus, spat it back out almost instantly. “Oh, god, cream soda. Why?!” He offered his can up to Rubble, who traded him an unopened cola.

“Hey, I like cream soda,” grumbled Treble.

“Good for you, you’re stupid.”

“Speaking of class,” Bones interrupted, as Treble opened his mouth to retort. “Anything happen today?”

The boys looked between each other, knowing full well what ‘anything’ their friend was talking about. The group had taken it upon themselves to be Canterlot’s first line of defense against ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties, with mixed results. “Not really, actually,” Rubble mused. “No. I mean, besides the girls using those superpowers of theirs to do pretty much everything, class today was actually normal.”

Dusty rolled his eyes. “Oh, yes, completely ignoring the fact that we almost get run down by that loudmouthed rainbow speed demon between every class, life is peachy-keen.”

“Well, keep an eye out,” Spooky warned. “It’s almost the Fall Formal again, and I’m willing to bet dollars to Fuckadillas someone’s gonna lose their shit again. And I really don’t want to spend my afternoons filling in a crater all November, like last year.”

Treble raised an eyebrow, the remnants of his meal halfway to his mouth. “What makes you think something’s gonna happen this year? I mean, just cause it did at last year’s Fall Formal-”

“-and the Battle of the Bands,” Rubble groaned, “and the Friendship Games, and at summer camp, and at the Spring Fling-”

“That was an accident!” Dusty barked. “How the hell was I supposed to know a fuckin’ drama club mask would turn the poor schmuck who wore it into some kinda over-acted vigilante?!”

Bones rolled his eyes. “How about the part where I told you it was magic we had no idea what it did, so you should probably not. Put it. On?!”

Dusty scoffed. “Psh. Whatever. Nobody got hurt, right?”

Rubble elbowed him. “Yeah, I only broke my leg trying to climb back down from that scaffolding, you ass.”

Dusty grinned, giving his friend the side-eye. “Like I said, nobody important got hurt, right?” Rubble grabbed a couch cushion and smacked Dusty in the stomach. The boy dropped his soda with a loud “Oof,” cola making a small puddle on the concrete floor. He turned and dove at Rubble.

Treble rolled his eyes and stood up, walking to the kitchen. He dropped his paper plate in a nearby trash can, and started rummaging through a nightstand they used for kitchen storage. Digging out a lone kitchen towel, he barked, “Ey! Who’s turn is it to do laundry? This is the last clean towel!”

“Bones,” Dusty and Rubble chorused, not looking up from their spat.

“Wait, wasn’t it...” Spooky trailed off, then did some mental math. “Dammit. Alright, where’s the bag?”

Treble gestured to a white trash bag full of towels and other linen near the door, as he dirtied the last towel cleaning up the spilled soda. “We should probably also get some tv trays or something.”

“We tried that,” said Rubble, sitting on Dusty’s back, holding his face into the couch with one hand. “I may or may not have broken it over the head of some guy trying to steal our mini-fridge.”

“Smm wwww grt r bnsh,” Dusty grumbled, his face mooshed into the dirty furniture.

Rubble raised an eyebrow at his captor, then relinquished him, moving into Dusty’s old seat. “What?”

Dusty coughed. “So we get a bunch. That’s what we did with the folding tables, and we still have a few.”

Treble shrugged, walking the filthy rag to the laundry. He then tied up the bag, picked it up, and heaved it at Bones, who caught it with a grunt. “I’ll swing by Samaritan’s on Saturday, I get payed tomorrow,” Treble remarked.

“Shouldn’t Rubble buy them this time?” Bones asked, tossing the bag out of his lap. “He did break the last one.”

“Oh, sure. And we still have a fridge because of it,” Rubble grunted.

“Yes, and Treble paid for that, too.”

“OK, OK.”

==========================

The bell at CHS was the sound of mixed emotions. Sometimes it signaled the glorious end of the day, sometimes it was just a reminder that you were late to class. No, though, it was the signal to go to lunch. Rubble grunted hiw way through stuffing his Chemistry books into his bag, his lab partner giving him maybe a few more inches of space than was necessary. While not completely undeserved, Rubble’s reputation as a ‘fighty’ kid was a bit exaggerated. Well, at least when it came to other students. He did plenty of fighting when it came to bumping back the things that went bump in the night. Or day. Or whenever was most likely to be inconvenient for him. The last few weeks had been relatively quiet, however, which in Rubble’s mind led more credence to Spooky’s prophecy that something was gonna go down at the Formal. If only to balance their karmic scales.

This didn’t stop the military enthusiast from looking around corners while he walked, ready to spring on anything inhuman with much gusto and fists a-flyin’. It greatly distressed him when he couldn’t actually punch the monsters, though.

However, he made it to the cafeteria without incident, though not without a few distressed glances and some scampering of kids giving him room to walk. There was a booth in the corner of the cafeteria that he and his group frequented, and, like most days, it was empty today, Rubble being the first one there. He unceremoniously tossed his bag (a dark green duffel, natch) under the table, and sat down hard on the cheap leather seat. He had only gotten halfway through unzipping his bag to fish out his lunch when a familiar voice called to him from above the table.

“Sup loser, how’s tricks?” Dusty said through his smirk, setting his much lighter backpack on the seat opposite his friend’s, his butt soon following.

Rubble gave his trademark grunt, digging out an old metal lunchbox and dropping it with a clang on the table. “Nothin’ doin’. Chemistry was boring as usual, since we’re just doing textbook work till our regular teacher comes back. I think the sub is scared we’ll blow something up. At least Micro Chip is halfway decent at the schoolwork thing, though I’m pretty sure he can’t tell the difference between me asking him a question or threatening his dog.”

“There’s a difference?” Dusty quipped, his question punctuated by the sound of his own bag unzipping. He pulled out a plastic grocery bag full of food, a little less careful with it than Rubble had been with his meal, which was saying something. “Anyway, Treble’s not coming to lunch today, he’s staying late in music class again.”

Rubble nodded. “S’good to have a hobby that doesn’t involve swinging metal sticks at freakies. Speakin’ of freakies, where’s-” The cushion sunk in as Bones sat down, his appearance taking both of the boys by surprise. “JESUS,” Rubble barked. “We gotta get you a bell or something!”

“I have a bell,” Bones said simply. “It’s an old Shinto tool for driving away spirits.”

“I mean for your neck!”

The ghastly boy chuckled, pulling a single sandwich out of his vest. It was darker than yesterday’s, though whether from wear, or actually being a different vest, his friends weren’t sure. He unwrapped it and took a bite, chewing quietly, then swallowed. Then his expression turned serious. “Alright, listen. Remember how I said something stupid was probably gonna happen at the Fall Formal this year?”

Dusty leaned back in his chair, already not liking where this was going. “Yeessss?” Bones dropped a big old leather book on the table. “...where did you even pull that from?”

Bones’ only answer was a raised eyebrow. “I did some reading last night, cause there was something weird about the dates this year. Turns out I was right.”

The other boys groaned. “Oh wonderful. What horrible monstrosity is gonna try to eat our face this time?” Rubble grumbled.

Bones gave him a side-eye glance, then returned his attention to the book. With a practiced hand, he flipped it open to a marked page, and poked a picture in the book with an angry finger. “THAT.”

Dusty and Rubble cautiously glanced at the tome, then reeled back with upset expressions. “I do NOT want to fight that,” Dusty groaned, turning pale.

The book slammed closed as Bones tucked it away. “Unfortunately, unless I, or we, can figure out how to stop this nasty from jumping cosmic bail, we might have to.”

The seat shifted strangely as Rubble moved around, uncomfortable. “Why does it have so many arms?!”

Level Seven: When Your Fan Asks You What That Smell Is, Run

Level Seven: When Your Fan Asks You What That Smell Is, Run

“So, THAT was ugly,” Treble groaned, jabbing a thumb in the general direction of the golem’s remains. He’d taken up his usual spot on the couch, while Spooks had almost immediately dived back into his books, which nearly buried the frail kid in the large chair. With Rubble taking a very shaken Twilight home, and Dusty both cleaning up the mess (with much protest on his behalf) and repairing the sigil on the side of the building, it was down to the two of them to parse what information they had.

Or, it would be, if Bones would actually join the conversation. The horror wizard had said something about the creature looking ‘familiar’, and then hadn’t spoken a word since. The only sound he made was the prolific shuffling of papers and the thuds of books opening, closing, and hitting the floor in frustration.

Thus, Treble was left to his own devices. Which at this hour would usually mean a nap, but now he was all over adrenaline. Being the only one not actually being productive also made him feel bad, at least a little, so he looked around the room for something to do. He settled on cleaning.

The building that they had made their home away from home apparently used to be a financial building of some kind. Treble wasn’t sure exactly what they got up to, here, as exploring more than the first floor had proven difficult; there was a substantial amount of debris blocking the only stairwell up, and the elevator of course didn’t work any more. There were still some rooms on this floor with most of the walls left standing, but they’d found no real use for most of them. Their kitchen, sitting room, and ‘bedroom’ were all technically part of what used to be a lobby, though with all the desks, decorations, and wallpaper gone it looked more like a low-budget horror movie.

Which is probably why Spooks spent so much time here.

Of course, they hadn’t gotten around to cleaning the entire floor, as of yet. The living room had come first, mainly as a place to put some old couches they’d found (One of which had been thrown out after they’d impaled a zombie on it. Some smells you just can’t get out.). After a few months of cleaning and making it clear to the one or two cops who actually patrolled the area that they weren’t turning it into a crack den, they’d made room for the kitchen. Which again they had to explain wasn’t a crack den. The bedroom had been their summer project, as they’d all wanted a place to crash away from home, for one reason or another.

Rubble still saw the ghost of his father whenever he walked into his house, Bones’ parents never seemed to stop fighting, and Dusty never really explained why he preferred to be anywhere else except ‘home’. For Treble, it was less about running away from something and more like running to it. His parents were encouraging enough, treated him well, and they weren’t hurting for money or food. He even got along with his little sister just fine.

In truth, Treble’s problem was that he’d never really found anything to be good at. He loved music, and spent as much time as he could practicing. He’d even gotten a part-time job at an old recording studio that now gave vocal coaching and singing lessons. Yet he hadn’t really mastered the art of creating music of his own. He could sing well enough, if not great. His guitar saw plenty of use through practice, though he’d never bring it here (Rubble had a tendency to grab the biggest heaviest metal thing he could to hit monsters with). The biggest problem seemed to be that he wasn’t making any real progress.

This, however, [i[this he was good at. Fighting monsters. Protecting his friends. Running headfirst into dangerous situations, even if only to serve as a distraction. This was a life he was getting better at, every day. This was one thing he could be proud of, on a list that could generously be called short. Really, Treble just wanted a place he could go where his presence meant something. At school he was just seen as a hopeless flirt who hung around kids with anger issues. True or not, he didn’t want to live a life you could condense down to a single sentence.

He wanted to be a whole damn library.

“Did you have to light the damn thing on fire?!” a loud shout followed by the all-too-common slam of a metal security door made Treble jump and lose his grip on the large wooden beam he was trying to push to the side. Jumping out of the way before it fell on his… well, everything, his heel caught yet more debris, and he fell backwards.

Only to be caught by Dusty. “Jesus, you alright? Don’t go dying in this shithole.” the bigger kid groaned, helping him to his feet.

“Thanks,” DT grumbled, shaking himself off. A layer of drywall dust shook loose from his hoodie as he patted himself down to check for mortal wounds. Finding none, he reoriented himself and went back to work. That beam wasn’t gonna move itself.

Devil watched him work for a second, then dropped himself onto the ratty couch as close to Bones as he could get. “No seriously. Fire? Really?! Do you have any idea how hard that was to clean?”

Bones slammed his book with a frustrated glare in DD’s direction, and growled, “Yes. Yes I did. As a matter of fact, that’s the only thing that killed it. Knocking it’s head off, while mildly effective, wouldn’t have stopped it completely. It doesn’t have a brain,” he elaborated, as Dusty raised a hand to argue. When he put it back down, Spooks continued, “Look, that thing was basically spare parts. No, you don’t want to know where the parts are coming from. It’s really kind of disgusting, even for us. The actual golems, according to gramps, are much more efficient. And better constructed. They’re faster, stronger, and apparently look like flesh mannequins.”

Dusty flinched. “Ooh, Rubble’s not gonna like that. He hated mannequins.”

Bones rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes he does. Now, there’s good news and bad news. Again. The bad news is that yes, the real golems are going to be harder to fight, even though we know how to kill them. The good news is, we don’t have to fight a hundred and fifty of the fucking things.”

“OH THANK GOD,” Treble groaned, heaving a sheet of broken drywall out a busted window. The ‘backyard’ of the building basically served as a dumping ground for debris at this point.

“We just have to kill enough of them that they can’t gather a hundred and fifty. I don’t know how many there’s actually going to be,” Bones continued.

Dusty stared at him, mouth agape. “So what, we just have to find wherever this stupid ritual is, and keep killing golems until some arbitrary clock runs out?”

The ghastly kid sighed. “Yes, apparently. I actually found the ritual, thanks to that sideshow failure out there, and the basic gist of it is that they need to gather enough raw material to create the three giants. If even one of them fails to rise, they all do. They keep each other alive, it seems.”

Treble groaned with hard-earned effort, and flopped into the bean bag chair, not wanting to walk the extra five feet to the couch. “So I know I’m going to egret asking this, and I’m telling you right now to use small words, but why exactly is this a time-sensitive issue?”

A few piles of books got shuffled around as Bones made room in the chair for the granddaddy of old-ass books: his grandfather’s grimoire, the accumulation of all the general knowledge he’d gathered over the years. Lacking many of the finer points and specific details the smaller journals had, this book primarily acted as a reference, and The Idiot’s Guide to Everything Terrible. Which is what they usually called it. Spooks flicked through the pages with practice, landing on a specific entry. “Well, explaining that also answers that question earlier that I said you didn’t want to know the answer to. Good thing Twilight’s gone home. So here goes: you know how All Hallow’s Eve is the one night of the year where the barrier between the world of the living and the dead is the thinnest?”

Neither of the other two boys liked where this was going. “Yeah….” Dusty said hesitantly.

“Well, it’s just one of many, many ‘Barrier Days’ throughout the year. Our universe is basically a big-ass marble in a whole bag of the things, and we’re constantly brushing up against other marbles. Some are bigger than others, some are so tiny you don’t even notice them, and some… well… some eat other marbles,” Spooks explained with no lack of trepidation. His metaphor was met with uneasy looks. “This is where things get really really gross really quick, and we get an extra history lesson. There’s a reason the hecatonchieres overthrew the Titans so well. They’re apparently not actually storm giants. That’s why I was having so much trouble finding any information on them. I was looking in all the wrong places.”

Treble gulped audibly. “So, uh, what are they?”

Spooks turned the big-ass book around, showing them a picture they’d really rather have not seen, of a massive creature of flesh and bone who’s construction and anatomy not only made no sense, but was actively painful to look at. “They’re Beasts. From the Outer Rings.”

Rubble sighed into his cell phone as Spooks finished a very long, vey disturbing, and entirely unasked-for explanation of the real threat. Then followed up with several kicks to his car tire and some choice cursing. His outburst was met with more than a few worried looks, as he felt the eyes of a few girls behind him.

Twilight had asked not to be driven home, instead opting to go to Sunset’s house, calling her friends on the way. They’d all met so that Twilight could recount her… experience, much to the dismay and varying degrees of disgust of her friends. Apparently Twilight had a wonderful eye for detail. Which would explain the need to stop two more times on the way here to vomit some more.

Rubble had been just about to leave when his phone had rung, and he stood outside his car to have the conversation. It wasn’t exactly a newer model, so setting it on speakerphone and driving while he talked was a… suboptimal situation. Now he wished he hadn’t answered the thing, and just drove home to go to sleep.

“Um, do I… do I want to know what that call was about?” Sunset asked. She, Twilight (not the princess, that one went home) and Applejack had come outside to see what the fuss was about the first time he’d started swearing. Something about 'mannequins'.

Rubble looked up with an expression that wasn’t so much ‘dissatisfied’ as it was ‘life is meaningless and someone just explained why in great detail, fuck off’. “No, no you don’t. Alright, back in the house.”

Twilight and Applejack exchanged worried glances as Sunset raised her eyebrows. “Um, why?” Sparkle asked.

“Because I’m going to explain it anyway.”

Once they’d all settled into Sunset’s living room, which was a bit smaller than the one at the boys’ hideout, if much more comfortable, Rubble took a seat against a wall near a window. One, because all the actual seating was taken, and two, so he could bounce his skull against the drywall a couple of times when he got mad. Sunset had put a pillow behind his head when he’d explained this, as she wasn’t confident in her wall’s ability to be more stubborn than Rubble’s skull.

“Ok, look. I’m going to explain this as best as I can, so for those intellectuals among you who might want more detail, god help you if you do, ask Spooky. Now, you all know about Halloween being like, the day where the veil is thinnest, right?” Rubble asked.

His question was met with various levels of nodding and verbal agreement. He went on to explain the marble metaphor that Spooks had told him, bless the kid’s heart, and they seemed to follow that okay.

“Right, here’s where things get God-Awful fucking scary,” Rubble continued. “There are some marbles in the bag that are just… wrong. Other worlds where literally everything you know about reality is not only actively wrong, it’s a joke. Places with more spacial dimensions than we’re capable of understanding. And yes, I know I’m using a lot of big words here, but Spooks has explained this bit to me more than a few times. Whether I like it or not. Now, some of these places are referred to in certain communities as the ‘Outer Rings’. Dimensions so far apart from ours that just brushing up against them creates all kinds of havoc. Like the Hundred-handed ones. They weren’t, and never have been, storm giants. They’re Beasts. Which is a nice way of saying they’re unholy indescribably monstrosities whose very presence in our dimension would start to break down the walls of reality.” He paused for a second to gauge their reactions.

Rainbow Dash raised a hand. “I understood exactly none of that.”

There was a soft thud as Rubble’s head met pillow met drywall. “Ok. You know how when you have a nightmare, like about some really horrible monster, you can’t remember what it looks like?”

The athlete nodded. “Yeah?”

“Imagine that in the real world. A creature so malformed, so horrible, that you can’t remember it when you look away because your brain literally can’t retain the information. Twilight, all that vomiting you did? That’s like step one in a twelve-step program for recovering from an encounter,” he added, directing his attention to the purple girl, who was growing paler by the second. Unfortunately, she was more than smart enough to understand what Rubble was saying. Even more so, she knew he was reaching to try and explain things the best he could, which meant it was actually worse than it sounded, because Rubble wasn’t exactly the most academic person. She nodded slowly, not saying anything.

“Wait,” Sunset interjected. “If Twilight threw up just by looking at the flesh golem, how come you didn’t?”

Rubble groaned. “The body and mind build a tolerance. No, we’ve never fought a Beast before, not even close, but we’ve seen some horrible stuff. It… changes you. Slowly. Your mind little by little gets an idea of what’s out there, and adjusts itself accordingly. Also, that wasn’t an other-dimensional creature. That was just spare parts.”

Twilight passed out.

“Oh good, she’s asleep. She’s probably not going to want to hear this next part,” Rubble mused. A statement that was met with varying degrees of alarm. “So, to get to current events, the Hundred-Handed ones, not storm giants. Evil Beasts from beyond our time and space. And their dimension just happens to make a pit stop right next to ours over the next few weeks. The peak of which is apparently a week from now, which is when some idiot is going to try and do this ritual thing.”

“So what is the ritual?” Rarity asked after a moment, because it didn’t seem like anyone else wanted to.

“Mostly? It’s a cash grab,” Rubble answered. “Some dumbass who thinks they can take advantage of the weak spot in the dimensional walls and either make a deal with, or try to control, the things on the other side. This whole ‘collecting golems’ thing is just a physical metaphor for the Beast accumulating enough of itself on this side of the wall to manifest entirely. The good news here is that if it’s missing even a little bit of the power it needs, it can’t stabilize, and the whole mess falls apart and gets sucked back into its own dimension.”

“Is that where the ‘hundred and fifty’ part comes from?” Sunset asked, being one of the two people in the room around for the original explanation. The other being passed out on the couch.

“Yeah. This thing creates, or, more accurately, shows up, as a bunch of weird human-like flesh monsters that all try to gather together into some giant monstrosity,” Rubble sighed. “That’s the good news. We just gotta keep knocking them down until there’s not enough for the Beast to get a foothold.”

“So...” Applejack asked slowly, hesitant to even join the conversation. “What part about this did you say Twilight wouldn’t want to hear?”

Rubble groaned in distaste, his expression one of almost amused disgust. “Cause you gotta set the things on fire, and the smell is fuckin’ atrocious.”

Act Five: Places, People

Act Five: Places, People

There are a variety of reactions to stress, depending on the type, source, and individual. Of course there are numerous other factors in each case, but they come and go as quickly as this sentence. You can tell a great deal about a person by how they react to stress. In many cases, people can make snap decisions based on a few seconds’ observation. However, in the rare case that everyone involved is introduced to the exact same stressors at the exact same time, the wildly different responses involved speak volumes about both the individual and the group dynamic. In the field of paranormal investigations, those who have been researching for a length of time will most likely encounter one of a few archetypes when something unexplainable and malevolent occurs. They can be broken down as such:

The Veteran. This person has, in fact, seen such phenomena before. In many cases, even repeated exposure doesn’t do much to quell the surprise, but coming down from the shock is much easier, and the standard human response of trying to apply logic to an illogical situation occurs rather rapidly. If the Veteran has indeed opened their mind to the possibility of supernatural phenomena, their version of rationality most likely wavers towards the most obvious causes, as was the case with Spooky Bones and, to a lesser degree, Rubble Maker. While the other boys had, indeed, been repeatedly exposed to such phenomena, their reactions varied fundamentally.

Spooks’ particular method of coping was to immediately search through his ancestor’s notes for repeated mentions of the phenomena he’d just experienced. With little more than a few words to explain to the less-experienced exactly what, in his journeyman opinion, had just occurred, he immediately quieted himself and immersed his attention in the litany of frantic scribblings before him.

Rubble had seen this response enough times to know that this was simply what his friend did. He himself had a similar outlook, although his immediate physical reaction steered away from the academic and toward the martial. Given his current condition, his typical gung-ho attitude in searching for something to take out his remaining adrenaline on had taken a backseat, and he settled for standing himself up and approaching the people in the room who had given in to the ‘flight’ aspect of their fight-or-flight response.

Which brings us to the second archetype, The Runner. The Runner is not necessarily a coward. In many cases, their aforementioned fight-or-flight response is simply so overwhelmed with stimuli, and having no prior experience with such phenomena, have no rational reactions to fall back on, direct the entirety of the body’s resources towards flight. Sometimes they actually haven’t given in to their flight response, but have prioritized their options and immediately take off for whatever they consider of greatest concern. Mothers and caregivers typically fall into this category, with the obvious concern of their child or ward taking priority over any other reaction.

Indigo Zap had no such priorities, and was currently using all of her not inconsiderable strength, and rather generous supply of adrenaline, to try to tear the impressively sturdy double doors off of their hinges. This was going exactly as well as it sounded, up until the moment Rubble Maker came into the foyer on his bad leg, wincing from pain and giving her a sympathetic look. She said something incoherent, to which he merely responded by taking a few more steps, until he could put a hand on her shoulder.

“Trust me, I know it’s scary. But this isn’t exactly the DefCon Five of ghostly stuff. Locked doors and flashing lights are rather typical in an intelligent haunting, especially with a malevolent presence. But they’re basically scare tactics. Like someone flexing their muscles on the field. It’s just for show. There’s still rules they have to follow, even if we don’t know them all. You’re never in as much danger as you think you are, unless you don’t think there’s anything to worry about. Hang onto this fear, but don’t let it control you. It’s like panicking mid-game, the only person it helps is the other team. Unless you learn to direct it.” Indigo had slumped against the door, barely holding herself up. Her breath had become less ragged, however, as Rubble talked. “Adrenaline is a weapon. A haunting is a fight. But it’s a double-edged sword. Learn how to swing it.”

Zap took a few more deep breaths, and slowly stood up again, shaking. “Yeah, ok. Thanks. Was it this bad when you came across your first ghost?”

Rubble smiled mirthlessly. “I believe, if memory serves, that I pissed myself. And the only reason I’m telling you is that literally every guy in that room,” he gestured to the sitting room where his friends were just out of sight around a corner, “Will tell you in great detail the exact same thing if I lie.”

He leaned on a crutch while Zap laughed loudly, leaning against the locked door for support yet again. Whether a combination of schadenfreude and genuine humor, or just working of the last of her nervous energy, she was out of breath in less than a minute, and silently shaking for a few more. When she had composed herself, Rubble raised an amused eyebrow at her. “You done?”

Indigo stood up. “Laughing? Yes. Making fun of you? Not in a million years. Hoo boy. I needed that. Ok. Haunted house. Locked in. Can’t call out. Parents probably gonna kill me. Let’s see what else is new,” she chided, leading RM back into the sitting room.

The first thing they noticed was the mad scramble Twilight Sparkle was doing around her instruments. Between the clacking of keys, the flipping of switches, and the rather unfriendly smacking of hardware, it was a rather musical experience. Twilight Sparkle was a solid example of the next archetype, the Investigator. In fact, both Treble and Twilight fell into this category, on far ends of the spectrum. Twilight’s obvious fallback was her instruments, seeing if they had recorded any viable data throughout the experience, with less-than-encouraging results. That is, if her constant baby swears were anything to go by.

Treble, however, fit the more classical definition. The Investigator is never quite sure exactly what happened, but knows, deep down, that there are answers somewhere. Finding them becomes their priority, and in their eyes, the best use of their time and energy immediately after the fact. Treble had started by inspecting the windows, cursory tests of their strength and sturdiness, seemingly reinforced by whatever invisible force spirits seemed to possess. Knowing secondhand that the same could be said for the doors, he instead had spent a small amount of time hovering around Twilight before the combination of higher sciences and grumpy teenage girl scared him off more than the phone call could have. He was currently checking the rest of the room with passing interest, digging through cabinets and the like.

Which left the last two in the room, and the last archetype. The Calm Ones aren’t always as relaxed as they appear. Most of the time they are either so overwhelmed with their situation that their best response is simply to accept their present situation and press on, or sit still and process for however long it takes. Extreme examples include those who go into unresponsive shock, while milder cases, such as Miss Inkwell, simply opt to find a chair to sit in and try to stay ahead of the monster of a headache they’re sure to get in just a second and could someone please get her an aspirin, thank you.

Dusty was more than happy to oblige, falling into the restless subtype of Calm One, not showing any great outward response, but not sure what to do with himself, either by sheer lack of a solid target or inexperience in the situation. Given that he had never quite encountered a ghost as… vocal as this one, he was carefully towing the line between the two.

Fortunately for them all, the many cases they had brought in were not just tech. There were medical supplies and clothes, as well. Some pain relief medicine was par for the course, after all. After handing her a few pills from a well-marked bottle (a precaution they’d made sure to take after one of them had confused cold medicine for a muscle relaxer after a particularly violent altercation with a ghoul, and spent the afternoon sniffing loudly at squirrels), Dusty decided he needed to be doing something useful. “Right, Spooks, you said you wanted us doing some treasure hunting? That still on the agenda?”

He wasn’t surprised when Spooks didn’t look up, but still responded. “Yes. An intelligent haunting makes time a sensitive issue. Find what you can, don’t walk around alone. Not even on the other side of a closed door. Or an open one. No less than three people in a group. Start from bottom, work outwards, check in regularly. You still got your cell?”

Dusty patted his pocket, to which Raven asked, “What good does that do you? There’s no cell reception.”

On cue, the phone in Double D’s pocket chirped, and he pulled it out, squeezing the button on the side. “Check.”

“Check one,” came Rubble’s voice, both from the phone and the doorway. He let go of his button. “Walkie-talkie features. Not our first reception blackout. Everyone else?” Spooks absentmindedly pulled the phone out of his vest as Treble checked the one in his coat. After an all clear, Spooks finally looked up.

“Look, we’re just fact-finding for now. We may be here for over a day, but that’s still a limited resource. If it looks relevant, don’t waste time proofreading. Take a bag with you. Stash anything that looks important, and bring it back here where we can go through it together. Also look for batteries, candles, and other emergency supplies,” he added, pocketing his phone again and returning his attention to the book.

“Why?” Twilight asked. “We have power, and our own supplies.”

Dusty grabbed the duffel he’d sorted out for the headache medicine, emptying the rest onto a chair. “Because one of the first things any ghost likes to do to isolate you is turn the power out. If his game is locking us in, and down, we probably won’t have electricity through the night. Treble, with me. Miss Inkwell?”

She looked up from the floor, her expression that of a teacher who just realized how long she’s been reading the same passage over and over. “Yes?”

“We could use a guide.”

Indigo Zap was not good at not doing things. She was a very active girl, an athlete, a cheerleader, and a spirited individual. Sitting on her haunches did not suit her. As it turns out, neither did stalking the poorly lit halls of an unfamiliar and vast mansion in the middle of the woods with an honest-to-god-what-is-that-smell ghost. “So… where exactly are we headed? I know you said ‘library’, but, like, is there only one?”

Miss Inkwell felt a pang of sympathy for the poor girl. She hadn’t asked to be part of this, and was doing her best to put on the bravest face she knew how. Being around someone with confidence in their abilities most likely helped, except those someones happened to be two teenage delinquents who’s ghost-hunting resume read more like evidence submitted by the prosecution. “There are a few well-shelved studies in this house, but only one actual library. It’s a rather… grandiose affair, if I might say so. Our family starts and ends with the written words, you see. From newspapers to publishing to digital media, if there’s words on it we have our fingers in it, to some extent. I myself am more than content with a simple filing system and a cheesy mystery novel, but as you’ll soon see, this is a sentiment my predecessors would generously call ‘disappointingly underwhelming’. Through here,” she added, gesturing down a side hallway. Even given the manor’s box-like structure, and supposedly easy-to-navigate floorplan, there was plenty of room for surprises. The hallway in question, for instance, was less of a corridor and more of a showroom with great columns supporting what looked from underneath to be a balcony. Overlooking what, they could only guess from here. Just past the columns, great marble things the likes of which the Greeks would have fancied, lay another set of double doors. Not quite so grandiose as the main entrance, yet somehow more intimidating. There was little light cast on them, even with the power on, as if you were made to cow before them.

Something absolutely none of them did, as Treble marched right up to the doors, and knocked loudly. “Oi! I understand this is private property, but seeing as how we have a standing invitation, I’d appreciate it if this particular set of double doors actually opened, lest I make a well-practiced nuisance of myself! I’m told I’m a terrible singer!”

Dusty stifled a laugh as the girls exchanged the kind of exasperated glances that are learned through repeated exposure to the opposite sex. Raven stepped forward, gave the doorknob a try, and, finding no resistance, swung the door open. “Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Treble chirped, taking large strides into the room.

Strides that stopped short as the full view of the library loomed over him. Raven had not been underselling the place: the library was built to occupy all four stories, with winding staircases, a multitude of shelves, and several distinctly non-book-like items in glass cases, set and carefully measured distances. It looked less like a library and more like a museum.

Dusty whistled appreciatively. “Hey lady, you might want to forgo cutting our friend Spooks a check. He might be satisfied with weekly visits to this place once we clean it out.”

Inkwell smiled. “I’ll consider it. Now, most of this is fiction, or something like it. If you’re looking for our family’s personal files, the best place to start is going to be back here, in the History Wing.”

“History Wing?” Indigo asked.

“Yes. Dry Inkwell considered his own family’s doings to be the greatest story history would ever tell. Or, at least, the only one people who came here would want to read. Everything we’ve ever done is cataloged somewhere, somehow, in this section,” she explained, leading them through a maze-like series of twists and turns, until they reached a large open reading area, surrounded by newspaper stacks, shelves of books, and a few microfilm readers. “Have at.” They nodded, and set about, Dusty dropping the open duffel on a table for them to shovel materials into.

Treble, having been suitably silenced by the impressive surroundings, had decided he was impressed enough for one day, and began sniffing about the bookshelves. Old ledgers, textbooks ranging from family history to anything that might even mention the Inkwell name in a paragraph somewhere, and a few assorted reads littered the shelves, carefully tended. Of course, there was a distinct layer of dust about everything, as the last person who had cared enough to clean the room had passed months ago.

With the rest of their motley crew scattered about the seats, reading whatever they could get their hands on, Treble thumbed through a few choice titles, shoving one or two in the bag. Then he came across a rather peculiar book, with a very interesting title. “Dusty,” he breathed. After no response, he said again, a bit louder than he intended, “Dusty!”

“Jesus, what?!” came the reply.

“Look at this,” Treble said, holding out the large, leather-bound text to the other boy.

Dusty took the book and, turning it over in his hands, held it up to better lighting. Then he read the title. “Oh, you are SHITTING me.”

The Encyclopaedia Unnatura by Buried Bones

Act Nineteen: Ghost Lights

Act Nineteen: Ghost Lights

For the thousandth time that night, Rubble cursed his invalidity. A whole series of bad decisions led him to sitting helplessly in a chair while someone screamed for help only feet away. Of course, they’d yet to figure out how to open the bloody door, but that was beside the point. He blamed himself for not being able to go in the room in her stead, leaving their new ‘boss’ to do all the work.

His callous and poorly thought-out attack against the Beast had cost him. Not only was his leg a pile of dead weight what with the missing chunk, but he’d lost his job. His uncle had told him it was too much of a safety hazard and liability issue to allow someone with such a major disability to do anything more than directing traffic, and they were up to their elbows in flaggers. The insurance company wouldn’t pay a dime for his bills, because he couldn’t tell them what had caused the injury. Not to mention the look on his mother’s face when she met him at the hospital.

His mother. Rubble’s mom had always been a worrier. Not without reason, as of late, given his extracurricular activities. Even before then, however, when his father was deployed over sees. When he didn’t come home. When the only thing they sent back was an army jacket with a single hole in the back and a hat to match. When he’d started picking fights with anyone who looked like they could take a hit.

Shuffling uncomfortably in the wheelchair while Zap tried, rather cleverly, to use a fire stoker to pry the door open with her free hand, he reached around and scratched the itch on his back where the hole was. Loose, melted threads poked into his back now and then whenever he wore it. It was a size too big, the buttons were frayed and didn’t hold right, and the pocket was so worn out the inside had a hole that led to the lining. Technically the entire thing was one big pocket. Not to mention, in moments like this, it weighed a ton.

A loud click roused him from his thoughts, and he looked up to see the wall slowly opening. Then it all but blasted the rest of the way open as Indigo kicked the door in. “Raven! You alive?!” she bellowed.

There was an uncomfortable silence, followed by some grunting, retching noises, and scurrying across wood floors. Like the soundtrack to a B-movie possession scene. “Yes!” came the reply, eventually, as Inkwell stumbled out of the room. She patted herself down, as if trying to shake off a whole host of spiderwebs, and shivered. “Well, we’ve found the bodies.”

The loud squeaking of the wheelchair set Raven’s teeth on edge as she stepped aside to make room for Rubble, who wheeled himself into the doorway. “Holy FUCK ME that’s a lot of dead kids. That’s just sick, I mean, please.” he quickly reversed and starting searching himself for anything incendiary.

Indigo took one look in the room, and quickly made for the sink. The sight in the wine closet was deplorable: a stack at least half a dozen high and wide of young, leathered bodies, in an array of period clothes. Some almost ancient, others so recent it was almost insulting. Children, killed and kept like trophies, stashed above a pantry and wine closet as if they were little more than kitchen ingredients. She dry heaved a few times, and when nothing came out, she settled for leaning on the stainless steel and groaning self-indulgently. “Can we please start burning these… the kids so we can move on? I mean, I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but-”

“-we don’t exactly have time for last rites. Yeah, I feel ya,” Rubble finished for her. Having a task at hand helped him set aside his self-pity, at least for now. “I mean, I’m still kind of stuck on how we got the door open, but gift horses and all that.”

Inkwell, having taken a few moments to compose herself, and most likely needing several dozen more when they finally left this god-awful place, worked her way to the back of the kitchen. “Well, let’s get started. I hope this rather boorish-looking wood stove is big enough, because I’m not about to light a bonfire in a room full of pressurized bottles of alcohol.”

“That may be the sanest thing I’ve heard all night, somehow,” Rubble agreed. Taking a gander over his shoulder, he nodded. “Looks like. Maybe three feet wide, probably five deep. Cast iron. Could roast a small hog in there. Probably did, at one point. Check the bottom for an ash pan before we start, I don’t want to clog the works and breathe ash for an hour. Really shitty way to die.”

His employer gave him the latest in a long line of curious looks, to which he just shrugged and answered, “My uncle works construction. I’ve helped install a few in some of the older houses that wanted that touch of authenticity. Also there’s a big one in an abandoned house near our hideout that we use from time to time. No, you don’t want to know what for.”

Resolutely shaking off the mental image her curiosity had conjured, Raven followed his advice and dug around for a handle or lower drawer. Finding both in one, she pulled out a shallow, wide pan with a heavy grate on it, lots of ash, and what looked like an unfortunate pile of bones. “Oh goddammit,” she groaned, more put out by her own blasé response than the actual presence of dead… whatever.

Indigo tromped over, looking into the pan curiously. “Oh, joy. Hold on,” she said, taking a loose bone and knocking it on the counter. “Nah, not human. Sounds too ceramic. Probably a sheep.” When she noticed the look Raven was now directing at her, she answered, “My dad likes hunting and my mom’s a good cook. I thought one time they’d killed the neighbor kid and burned him in a pit in the backyard, but they were cooking lamb. The cop who responded to my poor, 9-year-old 911 call taught me how to tell the difference between human and animal bones.” She took another look in the pan. “Looks like pig, too. The ribcage is really similar, but smaller. See how it looks like an adult’s ribs, but smaller? If it were a person that small there’s be fissures and stuff cause the bones are still fusing.”

Rubble nodded approvingly. “You and Treble would get along well. He has a head for weird, morbid facts, too.”

“I’m just saying, if we were going to find any corpses down here, either the room would open up, or we’d be going topside,” Treble commented. “You can’t realistically store a body underground like this and expect it to keep like the poor girl upstairs. It’s too dark, damp, and cold. Decomp 101.”

“And I’m just saying I’d like something nicer to talk about while we’re traipsing around in this creepy secret passage,” Twilight requested impatiently. “There’s got to be at least an entire floor’s worth of hidden space between the first floor and the ‘basement.’ There’s no way we’re at basement level right now. This whole underground floorplan makes no sense to me.”

“Yeah,” groaned Dusty, who had grown weary of the bickering behind him. “It’s almost like some self-indulgent billionaire made a big, fancy, impractical house because he could, then had to build a whole bunch of extra shit in after the fact to hide a bunch of family secrets while keeping the additions off the books and out of the hands of the local authorities. I WONDER,” he growled, which reverberated shortly in the narrow passage.

Twilight opened her mouth to respond, then didn’t. “Well, we’ve been walking for a while. Either this comes out on the far side of the house or on the grounds far behind the building.”

“Or maybe the entire hallway has a gentle curve to it to give it the illusion of length when in reality it might not even go past the boundaries of the house,” Bones groaned. Treble raised an eyebrow at him. “You’ve been tugging me slightly to the left the whole time.”

Twilight stopped walking for a second, mentally berating herself for not noticing such a simple trick. “Right. Ok. Even so, we should be coming up on a-”

“Door,” Dusty butted in.

“Right, a door, sometime soon,” she finished.

“No,” Dusty added, then knocked on a nearby wall. It sounded hollow and wooden. “Door.”

“Oh thank god,” Treble groaned. After a moment, he added, “Well? Open it, maybe?”

Dusty looked over his shoulder. “Can’t find a handle.”

Spooks rolled his eyes, and shook himself free of his friend. Nudging past Double D, he ran a hand along the door, then pushed on one side. The door swung open slowly, with a deal of weight behind it. Dusty looked back sheepishly, then added his own weight to the effort, and the door swung open properly. “Welp.”

As the quartet emerged from the passage, they found themselves unearthing beneath a stairwell in the main hall. Spooky immediately flopped into a nearby ornate chair, and no sooner had Dusty closed the door behind them all had he fallen asleep again. Treble gave him a sad look. “Kid’s gonna be worn out for days. I mean, he doesn’t sleep well normally, and that barrier must’ve trashed him.”

Twilight raised a hand out of habit. “Is it really that taxing?”

Dusty took his own seat on the floor next to Bones, and shrugged. “It depends. Just putting it up? Kind of. Holding a barrier like that burns your natural batteries twice as fast. Most people are awake what, fourteen, fifteen hours a day? More? Holding that barrier up from wake to set you’d get maybe seven or eight hours. And that’s without anything pushing on it. With all that extra stress, and the fact that he’s been awake since like, 8 A.M.? It’s like sleep deprivation. These power naps are all that’s keeping him on his feet. So to speak,” he chuckled, closing his eyes.

“And how are you two not passing out?” she demanded, giving them both curious looks.

Treble groaned and stretched in response. “Adrenaline, mostly. I’ve been crashing for the last twenty minutes. Which is like, eighty percent of the reason I was so annoyingly chatty back there. Gotta keep myself awake somehow.”

“Yeah, and the other twenty was keeping me on my toes,” Dusty groaned, not opening his eyes. “Idle chatter is a great way to stay awake. But he’s right. If we don’t get some voluntary sleep soon we’re going to pass out where we stand.”

Her next question was cut off as a wave of exhaustion passed over her, and Twilight slumped against the wall opposite. “That, uh… that sounds about right.” As her butt reached the floor, and her vision dimmed, she felt Treble take a seat next to her.

Then Spooky’s bad habit of saying horrible things at horrible times popped up. “Does anyone else smell smoke?”

The trio looked grimly on as the first body burned in the stove. It had been an adventure getting it in there, but they’d managed. Lighting it was easier; there’s been fuel and flint nearby, left over from the previous tenants. Although, given the flint, it could have come with the house. The body was so dry and brittle, and the clothes so threadbare and dusty, that the lot had caught flame almost laughably easy.

The problem was making room for all the other bodies, and managing to keep themselves alive in the meantime. If the scream from the first body they’d burnt was any indication, they were about to meet some heavy resistance. A thought that almost scared them all out of their skin as the door to the kitchen flung open.

“What?!” Indigo yelped, grabbing a nearby pan and facing the entryway. Rubble had almost fallen out of his chair in the excitement, and Raven had opted to hid behind both of them.

Which all proved unnecessary as Treble marched into the room with an air of over-confidence, undermined by the obvious exhaustion he was feeling, and came to a halt at the counter. “Oh, good, you’re all alive. Now, why are you burning…. WHAT are you burning?!” he redirected, when the thought occurred to him.

Dusty and Twilight traipsed in behind him, carrying a nearly unconscious Bones who fell into a booth and returned to sleep with his arms and head on the counter. He looked much like he’d fallen asleep in class. His two escorts threw themselves wordlessly into the booths on either side, letting Treble handle all the talking they were far too tired to do.

Rubble finally got himself turned around, and looked worriedly at Spooks. “The hell happened to him?”

Treble settled for slumping against the counter and sliding to the floor again. “Barrier spell,” he explained, then detailed their grand adventure through the library, the secret room, and the passage that led them to the lobby. “Now, again, WHAT are you burning?”

Rubble offered his own detailed report of burning the first body, hearing the mighty roar throughout the house, and the logic and blind luck that led them to the repository of dead bodies above the wine closet. “So we decided to burn them all. Even if it’s not what gave him the willies in the first place, I’d be satisfied knowing we don’t have to deal with another puppet show like that again.”

Dusty looked up from his slumped pose on the counter. “Oh. See, and here I thought that big rumble was because we found this book thing here,” he offered, digging in his bag and pulling out the strange tome they’d found in the secret collection.

As if on cue, there came a rumble from the wine closet. The group turned in a mixture of morbid curiosity, fear, and exasperation as the door swung open again. The sound of dull thudding echoed through the opening, followed by another, and another, in a slowly increasing staccato. Then the first arm reached out of the dark, and drug with it the rest of the body it was attached to. Another arm reached around the door frame, and it’s owner lurched forward into the room. One by one, the rest of the bodies shuffled and shook their way into the kitchen, as the living in attendance all scurried to the other side of the room. Except Spooks, who was still asleep.

Rubble glared ad Dusty. “I’m gonna fucking kill you one of these days.”

Essay Three: A Lecture in Extradimensional Architecture

Essay Three: A Lecture in Extradimensional Architecture

The door to the stairwell was surprisingly heavy. Treble wasn’t entirely sure if that was due to the nature of the door itself, a typically sturdy metal storm door, or the fact that all the doors up to now had been… lighter, somehow, than they should. They still felt like doors, even as he took a moment to test a nearby one, but for some reason it wasn’t as hefty as he’d imagined it would be. Hospital doors are usually rather thick wood, not the cheap plywood-esque bedroom door crap he was swinging on its hinges.

Not that the stairwell door was locked. He’d been able to open it relatively easy, despite being somewhat surprised by its weight. It looked much like he’d figured a stairwell door in this place might: bulky, obstinate, and almost devoid of color. He looked to his fellow ‘marauders’, who gave rather noncommittal gestures.

“If you’re expecting me to volunteer to go first we’re going to get eaten before you get an answer,” Sunny said.

Sugarcoat nodded her agreement. “If anyone’s going first it’s the guy who seems to have some idea of what he’s getting into.”

Treble shrugged. “So much for ladies first,” he sighed, then opened the door.

“Not so sure about that,” Sunny said in a stage whisper. Sugarcoat gave a sardonic grin.

“Now that’s not nice. How are you going to feel if I get eaten?” Treble complained, leaning on the doorframe.

“Probably not much. We’ll most likely all get eaten at the same time unless we do something universally stupid and split up,” Sugarcoat pointed out.

“Fair enough,” Treble conceded, and threw open the door, taking his first real steps into the stairwell.

His immediate reaction was to turn the hell around and frog-march his way to the other side of whatever pocket dimension they’d landed in. The stairwell itself was vastly different than the sterile, bland environment they’d been traversing for the last few hours. On one side of the door was clean, shiny white walls, smooth in texture and completely nondescript besides. On the other, cold gray steel, slightly warped with age and covered in a thick layer of dust. The platform beneath their feet was cold stone rather than simple linoleum, and the banister was a set of three metal bars held in place by more metal fixtures and bent to match the curve and descent (and ascent, Treble noted) of the stairs themselves.

The metal plating on the wall was worn and rusted, though not quite the autumn red you’d see on the bars of a neglected bike. More the sickly green of rust that’d been there forever and run out of moisture to finish the job. If not for the darkened gray of heavy metals and the lack of lighting casting distorted shadows at every edge and surface, it might have been the first thing Treble noticed, for the simple reason that it was the first real color he’d seen since they’d… arrived.

He turned to the girls, as they walked through the stairwell door and greeted the sight much like he had: completely gobsmacked, with a side order of confused. Sugarcoat recovered first, turning her disapproving stare on their leader. “Do I need to point out how many of your theories just got shot to hell?”

Treble tapped his chin. “Ok, three possibilities. One, I’m completely and totally wrong and this isn’t a psychonaut, which means we’re absolutely fucked because I don’t know anything else powerful enough to create a space like this without being a Beast or some seriously long-term spellwork, neither of which I’ve seen signs for. Two, the psychonaut’s learning curve just got a whole lot fucking faster, which means we’re going to start seeing weird shit in minutes rather than hours. Also bad. Three, this is another template, taken from a different source, and the other floors are going to make the entirety of the structure look like a jigsaw puzzle taken from five different boxes. I’m really hoping it’s three.”

Sunny, not taking her eyes off the top of the stairwell, nodded. “I’d really like to think that, too. But if that’s the case, I don’t think it’s just five puzzles.”

“Oh?” Treble asked curiously. He noticed Sunny pointing straight up, and followed her gaze. His jaw dropped.

“No, more like a hundred,” Sunny said in that simple tone of voice that indicated either shell shock or emotional deflation. Either would have been appropriate. The stairwell went on forever, and from what they could see, there was another landing, potentially with another floor, evey ten or twelve feet. They looked down, out of morbid curiosity moreso than anything else, and saw much of the same. They couldn’t even see a floor or ceiling, just more rust, dust, and steel.

Treble immediately fished around in his pocket. How he wished he’d thought to wear his suit to this, but it was still being carefully reconstructed by a rather meticulous tailor uptown. Wherever uptown happened to be from here. He still found what he was looking for, a quarter from the year 1973, which in any other circumstance would have been nigh inconsequential. He held it up to the two girls. “Can you do me a favor and read the year on this for me?”

“Why, are you gonna do a magic trick?” Sunny groaned, seemingly coming to from the shock of the enormity of the stairwell.

“I really hope not.”

That took Sunny back a bit, so she played along, not having a good retort. “Uh… it’s 1973. Savvy?”

“Savvy,” Treble agreed, then bit into it as hard as he could and bent it slightly. He leaned over the side and dropped the quarter in as straight a line as he could, then held perfectly still and motioned for the girls to do the same. Everything was eerily quiet for a while. Then another while. After a full minute of not hearing the quarter hit bottom, Treble leaned back. “Welp, looks like we’re not jumping any time soon. Might as well get moving,” he said, marching confidently downstairs.

“Um, where the hell are you going?” Sugarcoat demanded, before he’d made it even a couple of steps.

“Look, we’ve pretty much scoured the floor we came from. So unless you want to walk UP hundreds of flights of stairs, I suggest we do our damnedest to find the ground floor, and maybe something… different? Useful? Hell if I know. I just know it’s easier on the legs to go down rather than up and I’d really like to stick to my moving target theory,” Treble explained.

Sunny shrugged. “I mean, it’s better than nothing. At least it ‘sounds’ like a plan. We should probably poke our head into the other floors, too. Maybe someone else got dragged in from… somewhere else? Landed on a different floor?”

Treble muddled over that thought for a second. “It’s possible, but given the sheer size of the thing, even if they did I have no idea how we’d find them, if at all. Remember, we only found the stairwell by systematically eliminating every hallway on that floor. Considering the average human is about as intelligent as the stains on their t-shirts, how likely is it anyone else trapped in here would think to do the same thing? I mean, there is always sheer dumb luck, but in this line of work it’s not always ‘good’ luck.”

Sugarcoat rolled her eyes and started following him down the stairs, closely followed by Sunny. “You don’t like people, do you?” Sugarcoat grunted.

“It’s not so much liking them as trusting them," he mused. "I mean, I can get along with pretty much anyone. Doesn’t mean they’re not either dumb as shit or some backstabbing sociopath. Given all the terrifying fuckery I’ve dealt with over the last few years, you learn pretty quick that there’s really only three kinds of people in the world in a pinch: idiots like the ones who always go into the basement in horror movies, backstabbing douchecanoes who either summoned the terrible thing in the first place or start picking up strangers and throwing them into the mouth of the beast to buy themselves more time, or the complete psychos like myself and my merry gang of monster hunters who think, ‘Hey, that thing is terrifying and defies all logic! Imma hit it with a stick!’”

“What about the halfway decent people who dive in front of the monster or try to save the children first, that kind of thing?” Sunny asked hesitantly.

“Not as common as you’d like, more common than I thought, admittedly. So I guess I should say four. But most of the people I know who are genuinely good and try to help in times of crisis are either that way all of the time or at least a little bit crazy to begin with,” he admitted.

“So what are we?” Sugar demanded.

“Still here. Which means you’re either decent people or as crazy as I am.”

Sunny grinned a little. “What, you’re not a decent person?”

“HA! FUCK no.”

The stairwell showed no signs of ending. They’d made their way past more floors than they could count, and even given the relatively easier task of going down stairs instead of up, they were still getting exhausted. Treble, of course, didn’t want to admit how tired he was, but when he saw the two girls having to work to breathe steady, he called a break. “Alright, alright. We’re not getting anywhere. Might as well start checking floors. First, though. Five minutes.” Neither girl protested, instead slumping against each other and the stairwell door until they hit the ground. Treble himself landed on a stair and leaned back to take a deep breath. “Holy shit. If we keep this up much longer we’re gonna be in better shape than Rubble and Indigo when we get out.”

“Speaking of which,” Sunny said slowly, around gasps for air. “Where… the hell… are our friends... in all this?”

Treble rolled a hand in the air. “Oh, there’s a dozen reasons we haven’t seen them yet. Either the elevator’s broken and they think we’re trapped on it, or time doesn’t move the same here as it does at home and we’ve only been gone like 5 minutes, or they got stuck somewhere trying to find our asses and we’re all fucked. It’s really best not to think about it. I have enough of a headache as it is.”

Sugarcoat opened a single eye and rolled it at him. “You really aren’t very encouraging, are you?”

“Lady, if you wanted encouragement you should have taken one of those damn cat posters with you. God I could use a smoke right now. Holy shit,” he groaned, pulling out a lighter and a pack. He tapped out a single fag, pulled it out of the pack with his mouth, and lit it. Taking a deep breath of smoke, he sighed contentedly. “Jesus yes that’s so much better.” He tilted his head forward to see the two girls giving him scathing looks. “What?”

“Smoking? Really? What are you, sixteen?” Sunny scolded.

“What are you, my grandmother? Besides, I’m almost eighteen. And considering what I’m doing with my free time I’m more likely to be horribly disfigured and my psyche scattered across the cosmos than I am to die of fucking lung cancer. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve done just as much walking as you, so don’t give me that crap about ‘lung capacity’ and ‘out of shape’. I do my cardio,” he grunted.

Sugar just shook her head. “I’m more annoyed that you didn’t let us know you had a lighter on you.”

“And when would that have helped? Besides, I’ve got a lot more than that on me. Always do. Problem is it isn’t always useful,” he conceded. “I mean, I haven’t found anything I particularly feel like setting fire too, especially since I’ve seen even fewer things I could use to put it out. And it’s not like we’re cold or anything.”

“Fair point, fine. Well, break time’s over. Let’s keep moving,” Sugar said pointedly, climbing to her feet. She pulled Sunny up off the floor, and Treble followed suit. “More stairs?”

Treble shook his head, wisps of smoke curling into slightly wavy patterns as he did so. “Nah, let’s start checking floors. I doubt we’re gonna find the bottom of the stairs by brute forcing it. Something tells me this place doesn’t work on just three dimensions anymore. Although I’m really hoping I’m wrong.”

The girls gave him concerned looks, but didn’t ask him to elaborate. Instead, they moved aside as Treble opened the stairwell door. “Y’all are really set on me getting eaten first, aintcha?” he chided.

“If you keep using words like ‘y’all’ and ‘aintcha’ I’ll feed you to the thing myself,” Sugarcoat grumbled.

Treble’s shoulders shook with a chuckle as he pulled the door open, and stepped into the new floor. He made it exactly one step before he realized something was very off.

Peeking over his shoulder, Sunny noted. “Well. THAT doesn’t look like a hospital.”

Indeed, where they had been expecting sterile white walls and simplistic designs, wheelchairs and carts, they were instead met with some of the gaudiest, moodiest hotel décor they could have asked for. As long as Spooky wasn’t around. The walls were done up in a floral pattern that reached shades or red ranging from light pink to the unsavory parts of a crime scene. The floor was a dark golden-brown diamond pattern with brown accents, meeting an almost oak-brown molding at the corners. Th same molding marked the place where the wall met the ceiling, which was done up in an almost mirror-like shine of glass over some distortedly yellow paint. The ceilings themselves were somewhat high, for a hallway, to make room for small chandeliers every ten or twenty feet. The awful patterns and slightly narrow dimensions made perspective a bitch.

There were doors, of course. A seemingly rich mahogany with room numbers nailed to the doors in big brass lettering, matched by brass doorknobs. They could see an intersection from here, a corner where a tiny side table sat with a paisley white doily laid on top and a mildly tasteful flower arrangement in a light blue vase. It clashed horribly with the walls. “God, I think I preferred the hospital.”

Sugarcoat, staring in over his other shoulder, tapped her foot impatiently. “So… about these theories of yours.”

“Lady, if you want to start postulating about interdimensional monstrosities and their modus operandi I will happily let you take the lead on this one,” he barked, stomping forward and taking slightly deeper puffs from his cigarette than normal.

Sunny raised a disapproving eyebrow at Sugar. “Really? He’s kind of our best bet to, you know, not die.”

Sugarcoat returned her look, then sighed, her expression collapsing. “I know. I would just really like things to start making sense around here.” They took a few steps into the hallway, then noticed a slight rush of air. Actually, more of a change in air pressure. Sunny turned around, while Sugar just stared directly forward with the most unamused expression she could manage. “Let me guess. Stairwell’s gone?”

“Yeah-huh.”

“Big blank wall.”

“Actually no. More hallway.”

“Wonderful,” Sugarcoat sighed, watching Treble disappear around a corner. “Let’s go catch up with him before we all get split up-”

The tail end of her sentence was cut off as Treble tore around the corner, skidding into a ninety-degree turn with impressive reflexes. He almost bounced off the wall as he corrected himself and started sprinting towards the girls. “Move move move move move move move muuuuuh-WOOOOOOOOOVE!” he bellowed, tearing past them down the ‘new’ hallway behind them.

The girls exchanged terrified glances, looking back where he’d came from. They immediately took his advice and took off after him as the first claw reached around the corner and hit the wall with a loud BANG.