Sleeping Fire

by dooder's nin

Fantastic tales of enchanted mixes to dazzle with fire in war and potions to curse damsels collide in a potentially lethal concoction as mad science and magic create a predicament for all inside the walls of the school. Reliance on others and resilience in times when appearances seem disheartening remain crucial to the friends as they endeavor to keep themselves and each other safe

The school year still had months to go before it was summer break and so the girls and their guys attempted to go about their business as usual. Given that their business often involved anything but the usual, the unexpected should have been the expected. With a trip that led to more adventure than they had planned on still fresh in the minds of several of these friends, settling back into school routine had been something of a relief. But once back into the routine, they found that Frankie's claim to push for more information to be taught about normies in health class too was not an idle threat. With some of her usual persistence and enthusiasm, especially since she had a certain boy in mind to motivate her actions, they were all facing the next health/anatomy class dealing with a brief overview, and generalization, of normie health. But, they reasoned that this was only a compromise to please their well-meaning friend, since it was going to be set up as a kind of special sort of class outside the curriculum. This meant that they wouldn't be forced to remember everything for a test, having instead to sit through an old movie that would take up the whole period.

"Isn't this great? Headmistress Bloodgood actually agreed that it would be a good idea just to get a little background on normies. I had to argue that since we were learning about so many kinds of monsters, that it only made sense to try and understand a little more about the normies – y'know, since we interact with them more now and everything…." Frankie said as they were getting their things from their lockers.

"Yes, yes, we know exactly how much more you're interacting with a normie now Frankie." Clawdeen said as she ran a brush through her hair quickly to maintain its volume. Frankie blushed at the mention of her increased involvement with Jackson since their trip over the week of spring break. So she had wanted to be able to know what it meant when he said or did something she hadn't experienced with her monster bloodies or their boyfriends.

"At least it's not going to be a part of any upcoming test. Ghoulia won't have to take notes for me." Cleo said dismissively as she grabbed a notebook out of her locker for at least the pretense of intending to do work for the next period. Dracularua gave her a look and said, "She happily shares her notes with all of us Cleo – but they aren't your notes."

"Yes. I know, and she has my appreciation for her efforts." Cleo said, deeper meaning behind what many others might consider a derisive tone to her friends. "But I bet she's having a good time at that science thing she's at – isn't Jackson there too?" she said, turning to ask Frankie.

"Oh yeah, that's why she hasn't been hangin' around lately." Lagoona said as she walked over to the group from her locker down the hall. "She must be havin' a blast surrounded by all that technical stuff."

Clawdeen laughed, closing up her locker. "She might be disappointed to have to return to regular classes with us slower folk." Frankie smiled at their fond gossiping about their clever friend.

"Yeah, Cleo. She and Jackson have been spending the regular school days at that 'science thing' in the gymnasium. But it was only for yesterday and today anyway" Frankie answered her friend, who had by this time only half-listened to her response as her boyfriend walked past talking with Clawd. She could only pick up on a part of their conversation as the two waved over to them, something about Heath and Manny having gotten into some trouble during their gym class. Nothing too different than the usual for those two, she thought.

"I suppose we should be getting going too, if the boys are going to be in class before even we get there." Draculaura said, adjusting all the things in her arms, not all of which was strictly necessary for their health/anatomy class.

They walked into class, Frankie a little dismayed as she recognized the signs in the other students as getting ready to do something else other than watch the movie. Just like with the Halloween film, she thought. From the looks of it, their teacher didn't seem as though there was any other plan than to watch the film, which looked to be just as old as the Halloween film. The girls settled in next to each other, or in Cleo and Draculaura's case, next to their boyfriends. Lagoona undoubtedly would have also sat next to Gil if he wasn't already seated next to Heath and Manny on either side. Sighing, she sat next to Frankie even though doing so meant that she would probably not be able to let her mind wander too much from the film and resulting conversation Frankie would likely want to start with her or Clawdeen at their table.

Their teacher had the film set to begin but before the lights were turned off, a few things were passed out to the students – pamphlets that must have come from some random normie doctor's office or something, Clawdeen reasoned as she looked through some of the ones in her packet. There were also a few that seemed to be old copies made by monsters about normies from ages ago. As she read, she found that there were actually some interesting things in the pamphlet that might have explained a few things for her. Frankie was also deeply interested, continuing to read on even as the lights were turned off and the movie began. Geez, it even has the same narrator as the old Halloween film, Clawdeen thought. She wondered how accurate these perspectives actually were, although the other film may not have been totally wrong in how it told how normies would be worried by their monster neighbors and try to defend themselves against their perceived threat. Hopefully this one would at least give them some understanding of why monsters tend to seek out normies, even if they are as fragile as the film made them out.

Despite themselves, the others were more than slightly interested in the film, even if they pretended not to be for the sake of their appearance to the other classmates. After all, with Jackson hanging around with them as often as he did, they were curious. They could have just asked – Cleo wouldn't have had a problem with that for sure and Deuce probably would have had the same amount of tact in this area – but they had tried to avoid any awkward conversations since Jackson didn't typically bring up any questions about monsters. They figured he had spent a lot of time growing up around monsters and probably had learned from his parents, or had just figured things out on his own as he normally seemed to do. About three-quarters of the way into the period, the whole school gave a little shake.

"Uh oh. Mad science fair and shaking building….there's got to be a connection there." Clawd said, looking upward as the lights were flickering out in the hallway. The other students also got up to take a look around, completely disregarding their teacher's request to stay seated until they knew what was happening. The speakers for the PA system went off and they braced themselves for the news. However, what they heard instead of their Headmistress was the usual upbeat music that filtered through the system when there was the student-administered radio show in the morning during their homeroom announcements. While enjoyable since put together by Operetta and Holt, it wasn't exactly the right time of day for this to be going off unless something had messed things up.

"Okay…."Heath said slowly as they tried to figure things out. Manny, however, was more focused on getting out into the hallway to see for himself what was going on and began to physically lift the other students out of the way. But the teacher had enough of that and leveled a threat of detention at him and Heath.

"I didn't do anything this time!" Heath complained. As much as he hung out with Manny during the school day, he wasn't going to take the fall for him on something he didn't do.

"I bet it was your normie cousin!" Manny bellowed in his typical fashion. He had made it known since Jackson's first day that he was going to mess with him relentlessly because of the fact that he was a normie going to a school for monsters. He had mellowed over time, but still held onto that bully mentality sometimes with Jackson.

"Hey!" Heath said, although thinking back on it, he hadn't really been much help to Jackson in defending him from Manny. He wasn't much better with the occasional pranks he pulled on his cousin either, but at least he was more careful. But he too was guilty of assuming that his being a normie would make him less than the other monsters. Still, he had hoped that since Jackson's transfer and spending more time with his cousin, he had vastly improved on his previous attitude.

The music stopped blaring and Headmistress Bloodgood was heard asking students to remain in their classrooms while the mess left by the mad science students was taken care of. "It would seem that one of the capacitors was overloaded and the jolt from the energy discharge was enough to wreak havoc on some of the electrical systems. It's nothing to worry about and no one is badly hurt…"

"But there could have been an awesome mix if you'da just let me…." Holt could be heard saying in the background. Evidently he had helped with getting the musical equipment back under control after Jackson had transformed. His friends had to admit that while Holt wasn't known for his brilliance in scholarly subjects, no one had a better grasp on the musical broadcasting equipment.

"Yes, thank you for your help Mr. Hyde. Now, if you could…." The headmistress was heard saying to him, since it didn't seem like the PA system was completely fixed.

"Yeah, yeah. I got it covered." Holt said, and shortly afterwards the music stopped completely and the lights went back to their constant stream of light.

"The automatic locks on the doors for emergency situations should be released shortly if you could all be patient." The headmistress continued, Jackson heard mumbling in the background as he took in his rapid change of location. "Until then, return to your regular class if possible. Things will be back to normal in no time" she said, instructing her students.

"How did…Headmistress? What am I covered in?" Jackson was heard saying as the line switched to static. Heath was laughing as soon as the announcement was over. He could only imagine what Jackson could have gotten himself covered in with all the chemicals the aspiring mad-scientist had been playing with before the electrical geeks had blown stuff up. If only I could have gotten to see it, Heath thought. He wasn't alone in his chuckling either, as most of the students in this class found amusement in the day's events and sideshow.

"Well. Guess that answers your question about it being Jackson's fault, dude." Deuce said, directing his statement to Manny. Manny huffed, but didn't have much of a response.

"C'mon man. You should ease up on him." Clawd said. "Or weren't you paying attention to class at all?" he teased him, hoping the teacher might call him out on it just so he could watch Manny have to sit down and cool off.

"I mean, I know I mess around with him all the time too, but he's my cousin so I get a free pass at him. Plus, he's really fun…" Heath said, trailing off at the look Frankie was giving him.

The teacher told them all to take their seats rather than crowd the door. While it didn't seem like they could be getting back to the video with the faulty electrical systems the way they were, she asked them to at least read over some of the pamphlets.

"Ugh. I don't like being in confined spaces." Manny whined. "Makes me think of mazes with all those dead ends and nowhere else to go."

"I suppose you could say the same thing for classrooms too." Gil supplied, earning a laugh from the other guys. The teacher didn't seem to appreciate the remark, but as the bell rang and the doors were still stuck tight, she didn't feel the need to say anything – especially since no student ever really seemed fond of this subject.

"I'm sure we'll be out of here in no time. Ghoulia's there helping out, and so is Jackson – those two have to be the smartest students in the school." Clawd said.

"I hope so – it's supposed to be lunch." Heath complained. Frankie and the others shook their heads at Heath's usual focus on food. Lagoona smiled at Gil from her seat, silently sympathizing with him for being stuck next to Heath for a little while longer. There was no doubt in her mind that the conversation over there would become repetitive until the doors opened.

"There's a lot of stuff in these. There's a lot of 'don't do this' or 'be gentle when doing this', or better yet, 'don't give a human this to have nearby or to eat'. No wonder there was a long time where they thought all we wanted to do was kill them." Draculaura said. She had been around a while to have experienced a few of these "don'ts" personally – she found she could have written half of this particular pamphlet.

"Yeah, but Jackson's got it down. We shouldn't have to be too concerned over these things, since he did grow up around monsters…and is partly monster too." Deuce said, leaning back in his chair. Cleo leaned forward onto their table to talk to the girls.

"At least we didn't have to watch the rest of that film – all that technical stuff and numbers to remember for certain things….too complicated. I'd much rather focus on getting to the maul and on the numbers for the outfits there." She said, examining her nails as she spoke.

Clalwdeen agreed with her, having been eying a certain dress that she and Draculaura had seen on their last trip. Clawd rolled his eyes, knowing for sure that this would set his girlfriend and sister off on some fashion discussion. Frankie just turned to talk with Lagoona, who hadn't said much. She said as much to her. "I would have thought that was more like Abbey. She's probably also been trying to get out of the garden area where her class had been. Venus is probably ecstatic to have so many people contained to listen to her lecture on the plants in there, but Abbey's probably fighting back the urge to just freeze her and the glass to break out."

Lagoona chuckled at the thought, even though she realized that Abbey might actually do just that. "She does have a way of getting around obstacles. So long as Manny doesn't decide to make a new door in the wall, I think we're safe from any destruction."

"Speaking of destruction, I wonder how bad it is in the gym. And what Jackson was covered in. if these pamphlets are right, he might be hurt." Frankie said, concerned for him. It was just eating her up inside to not be able to go and see him to check on him herself. She would deny that she had any overprotective streak when it came to those she cared about, but she knew that Jackson could take care of himself – for the most part. She did delight in being able to play his knight in shining armor every now and then, though, since he seemed perfectly fine with having been cast as the damsel in distress in those situations. Just thinking of him made her sigh dreamily, which Lagoona perceptively picked up on.

"You and your beau will be able to look each other over in no time." Lagoona said. Deuce entered into their discussion as Cleo, Clawdeen, and Draculaura had moved on to talking about potentially making a weekly fashion clip for their morning announcements.

"Jackson can handle these things, I think. But I might have to cover for him if he's covered in some sort of goo – it'll be too easy for those two," he said, indicating Heath and Manny, "to call him out on it. But Heath at least will be gentle. I 'm not so sure about Manny after being agitated like this for so long."

Clawd agreed. "We can try to steer him away, maybe let Iris talk him out of his temper tantrum." Deuce nodded his head, his snakes hissing as though they too agreed with the plan.

"I hate to sound like Heath, but I do hope they get the doors open soon." Lagoona said, returning a funny face that Gil had sent her way as he played middle man to Heath and Manny. Frankie laughed along with her. "Yeah. Me too. Maybe we'll get to go home early though." Frankie said, trying to be optimistic.

"Dudettes, that would be awesome. I still have to finish that literature project." Deuce said. Clawd looked over at him curiously. "But that was due two days ago." He said.

Deuce just shrugged. "I got the coach to give me a pass, but I need to actually start it first. I've got another couple of days." Clawd just shook his head at his friend's antics. "I thought you would've asked Jackson for help on that already?" he asked, Frankie and Lagoona listening.

Again Deuce shrugged, "He was busy getting ready for this science thing. He can help me later today, especially if we get out early."

"I think the only thing that would send us home early is if there was something serious going on. Y'know, other than that fishy smell." Lagoona said, pondering over these measures. "But I wonder what would make the doors seal tight like this for so long."

Almost as though her question had been the trigger, there was a knocking heard from one of the vents for the room. Turning to the noise, the girls could see a face peering out at them and then a British accent answered Lagoona's question.

"It seems like the electrical equipment's discharge interacted with the experiments that the chemists were conducting, creating a mix of things that has spilled out into the hallways. It's reached pretty far from the gym, but I don't think it's nearby this corridor…I saw the smoke coming through one of the vents and checked it out…It looks like it could be dangerous and the doors have remained shut because the sensors picked up on that; at least those in the floor are still working with the way they had been shaken up."

Frankie's eyes widened at this news. "Jane, are you saying there's some toxic spill on the floors of the school?"

Said ghoul's face could only be seen through the vent, but it looked as though she had shifted her weight around under all the attention. "No, I'm not sure how bad it is. It just doesn't look like anyone should go near it just yet. But Holt ran out of the gym at the same time the doors were closing- some other students that were in there might have gotten out too through the doors that lead outside…But anyway, he slipped in it. His back was completely covered in that goo. Some of it even got in hair a bit I think. The purple stood out from the usual flame red."

Cleo laughed. "Purple is the color of royalty. It's no wonder it doesn't suit him." She remarked, earning herself a look from Deuce, although even he had to admit that neither Jackson nor Holt could do a purple look.

Frankie however was more panicked now by Jane's news. She wondered, if he could get hurt easily, then what might this stuff do to him? Luckily, the doors were heard unlatching and any further questions she might have directed at Jane were drowned in the loud cheers that were heard coming from the classrooms. All the noise had spooked Jane off anyway it had seemed.

"You guys, I'm gonna head over to the gym to see what's up." Frankie said. But an announcement over the PA system told her that students needed to avoid the listed halls or the gym and that those in those halls would have to continue to wait a little longer. It seemed like they were going to head home early too as she had earlier discussed with her friends.

"C'mon. Let's go get our stuff together. You'll see him soon and if not, you can always call him." Clawdeen suggested at Frankie's desperate look. She could sympathize with her though, since she was friends with Jackson too and Ghoulia was also still in the gym.

"I guess you're right." Frankie sighed. Abbey was seen nearly running through the hallways to get to her locker, knocking a few of the smaller and slower monsters to the side unintentionally. But it seemed this sort of behavior wasn't too uncommon for all those getting out of the garden class. Draculaura giggled as Abbey finally reached the group.

"Was terrible. She never shut up. I was this close," Abbey said, indicating with her fingers, "to just freezing trap shut. She mean well, I think, but she does not understand anything about tundra life. I tell her, but she does not ever listen to anybody else – only wants to talk, talk, talk." Abbey ranted, earning more giggles from Cleo, Clawdeen and Lagoona. No one had to ask who the "she" was that Abbey was talking about.

"You did well, mate." Lagoona said, patting her friend on the arm. "At least there was some music for a while."

Abbey sighed once more, hands still on her hips. "Yes. But how is it that Holt was able to leave gym if Ghoulia is not here?" she asked, noticing their zombie friend's absence.

Frankie was reminded of her earlier anxiety again by this question and the others tried to fill in for her. "Jane talked to us through the catacomb vents and said she saw him run out after the music started, just before the doors were sealed shut everywhere. She said he got covered in purple goo too on his way to Headmistress's office." Cleo said, putting things away in her locker.

"So that's why doors stay closed." Abbey reasoned. The girls nodded and continued to get ready to go home. But it would seem that, based on the amount of students gathered by the exits that the doors to the outside were not yet ready to open.

"We could always go out through one of the exits into town from the catacombs." Clawd suggested as he walked back over with Deuce and Gil. Considering that option, Lagoona was about to suggest something to Gil when they were startled by the sudden appearance of Jane Boolittle again.

"I wouldn't recommend it just yet. It would seem that there was more of that goo which seeped into some areas of the catacombs, particularly the ones we would have to go through to reach the deeper parts that might lead back up to the surface…I checked." She said, nervously fidgeting at the discomfort of having to forcefully remove herself from her comfort area.

"She's right. I near about stepped in that goop myself. It smelled somethin' awful and with what looked like some electric current or somethin' going through it to make it keep on growin." Operetta added in to the conversation in passing. "Seemed to dry up all the water down there too, getting hotter than a balmy summer day. I couldn't stay down there too much longer. I'm just glad the door to the catacombs didn't seal itself up tight, but I did wander around for a while tryin' to figure things out – there were some others just wanderin' around too. I'm guessin' Holt was one of them?" she asked, tilting her head to the side a little as her spider seemed to droop a little more on her shoulder.

"Yeah, Jackson must have transformed quick enough for Holt to bolt out of the gym before it sealed itself up to try and contain whatever that gunk is." Clawdeen answered her. Operetta just shrugged and walked away to take care of her own business now that she couldn't practice.

"Anybody seen where Heath and Manny might have gotten to?" Deuce asked, looking around for the two in question. The girls just shrugged, Abbey the only one to have glimpsed the minotaur on her way over.

"My guess he and Heath trying to find a way to get out – probably will cause some damage." Abbey said, pointing in the direction from which she had come. "But Heath wanted to grab lunch with me, so I guess we will find him in creepateria even if Manny is not there"

Finding that to be the most reasonable option, the girls with Clawd, Deuce and Gil made their way to the creepateria, noticing that several others had come straight here it seemed to grab something after their prolonged wait for lunch. Sure enough, Heath was snacking at one of the tables, waving to them once he noticed them. The group made their way over to him, sitting down next to him.

"You guys should go get something to eat. I'm not the only one who figured out it might be a while before we get out of the building." Heath said, continuing to munch.

"Aren't you worried about Jackson?" Gil asked his friend, but his attention was only partly on his question. Instead, he noticed that his skin was starting to feel dry and cracked and he was sure that Lagoona was probably also beginning to feel dried out. Operetta was right about feeling like all the water in the air was bring dried up by this stuff, he thought, flexing his hands a little to test out his theory. Looking over to Lagoona, no words were needed between the two of them as they felt the effects of this chemical reaction gone wrong.

Heath had just waved off Gil's concern. "He's with the headmistress, so I'm sure she's taking care of him. Besides…" he said, looking pointing at Frankie, "he's probably survived worse." Both of them knew of the situation that they both were thinking of, no doubt just like the others did.

"Hey mates…" Lagoona said, having not been paying too much attention to their silent conversation. The others looked to Lagoona standing beside Gil. Gil had her hands in his, gently rubbing them.

"Operetta is right about the air getting drier from this stuff. If we can't get the doors or the windows open, we have to try and get to the pool area." Gil said.

"But there is all this stuff on the ground by the gym area." Draculaura objected, knowing the pool was nearby."

"Well, if we can't get there, we can always go up." Cleo suggested. Gil and Lagoona nodded at that idea, Lagoona going off to go get a drink, since she didn't have the benefit of Gil's water tank.

"Yeah, then maybe we can all try to find a way to get down from there – or at least the students who can fly…" Clawdeen said, looking at Draculaura to emphasize her point. She knew her friend would want to try and stick around for the sake of her friends, but if she could get out then Clawdeen wanted her to take that opportunity. "You might be able to help with the clean-up efforts to get the rest of us out." She suggested, hoping that might convince her friend.

"Oh, what a good idea." They all heard a feathery-light voice above them exclaim. Spectra was seen floating above them, already sending out messages to get everyone's attention. Soon, there was a stampede of students up the steps to the roof.

"Well, we can always wait here to see if anybody figures out how to get down. No sense in rushing up there when there won't be any room to make a difference anyway." Clawd said.

"Should we try to get to the headmistress' office?" Frankie asked, still worrying about Jackson.

"Jackson will find his way back, or he's helping out with the headmistress. We shouldn't go wandering around just yet – we might get in the way." Abbey pointed out in her typical logical fashion.

As if to prove her right, Jackson came slowly walking into the creepateria, wearing his gym clothes instead of his typical yellow shirt and sweater vest. Even his shorts were from his gym uniform, making him look out of place walking around in the creepateria.

"Whoa. What's with the fashion change?" Heath smirked, amused by his cousin's glare that was sent his way.

"Yeah, well, I got covered in the chemical mixture after the capacitor overloaded. I remember trying to get it off and then the music started. Headmistress Bloodgood told me that Holt didn't stick around in the gym and got out of there in time before things started to seal up everywhere – typical bailing fashion of his – but she found him in the hallway, apparently in some discomfort from the stuff, and had him fix the broadcasting equipment at least." He explained, turning to cough into his elbow a few times before continuing.

"He must have fallen in more of this since I woke up completely covered. I went down to the gym area to check things out since I couldn't possibly get more of it on me. Everyone looks okay in there, the smoke was ventilated out and I couldn't tell if anyone else was covered in this stuff." He said, letting them know that Ghoulia was fine if just a little shaken up by all the excitement.

"So what is this stuff?" Cleo asked, leaning into Deuce's side to make herself more comfortable. To her, it seemed, this was just an inconvenience and waste of her time.

"I'm not sure. There were multiple set-ups for the chemists; despite what you think, there are a few others in the school that like this stuff too. But it was my turn to act as a sort-of teacher assistant this time – only a few tables" He said, rubbing his bare arms.

"You okay?" Frankie asked, watching Jackson continue to rub his arms, coughing a few more times.

Jackson shrugged. "I don't know what this stuff might do – but I feel like crap right now. I used the showers in the locker room to scrub it off and change out of my dirty clothes, but I can't seem to warm up again." He said. By this point Heath had long since finished his food and had latched on to that last part of what Jackson had said. The last time he had said something like that led to a horrible night. Frankie also looked concerned, as did Clawdeen and Abbey. Blowing into his hands again and rubbing them, Jackson looked up at his friends.

"Oh," Jackson sighed. "Not to worry, 'cuz." He said, producing a small flame in one of his hands. "That still works, but it stings when I do that." His elemental abilities had shown up recently while Jackson was still Jackson, since Holt seemed to have had a better awareness of them from the start. Still, if a fire elemental is cold without having been interacting with a cold environment, or someone with the ability to manipulate colder elements, then it was a safe bet that he or she had caught a serious cold.

Frankie sat closer to Jackson, wrapping her arms around him. She might not reach the same body temperature as a human, but she was determined to help in any way she could. Jackson didn't seem to mind that either, scooting closer to her with a small smile on his face.

"So, no ideas at all? It might not affect monsters at all so we could just walk through it and out – no offense Jackson." Cleo said, willing to leave Jackson behind if it meant getting out sooner. She figured he would be safe if he stayed away from the stuff until it had been taken care of, so no need for the others to stick around with him.

"Well, I was in the middle of reading over the experiment parameters when the capacitor went off. That, and when Holt showed up, I doubt he'd pay too much attention to those even if they were in his hand at the time. He probably singed them too by accident." Jackson said

"If you could skip over the whole "tortured two-halves" soliloquy and get to the part where you tell us what you do know, that'd be great" Cleo said, earning herself a gentle push from her boyfriend defending his friend.

"I don't..." Jackson started but Frankie just rubbed his shoulders. "Yeah, you do, but it's okay. That's how you two are." She said, smiling at how he continued to open and close his mouth. Laughing, she urged him to continue.

"Fine, maybe sometimes I do. Anyway, one of them had to do with something to recreate elements of a 16th or 17th century Italian apothecary who apparently inspired parts of English play…I don't really remember too much of that part, but that it had elements of magical potions mixed in to create some sort of illusion. Like the ones Cupid had." he explained, getting more of his usual look when discussing science, "They're actually pretty fascinating if you just look at the…properties…yeah, I'll move on." He said, noticing the looks Cleo and Clawdeen were sending his way. At least Lagoona and Gil went to the roof with Draculaura, he thought, so three more glares avoided. Frankie continued to just laugh.

"You really do follow in the family business, huh?" she said.

"And you don't? I know you prefer history, but you get into this stuff too …" Jackson teased her, causing her to smile. She had been offered the chance to participate, but had forgotten to get the permission slip signed and handed in on time.

Clawd elbowed Heath as the elemental had been beginning to fall asleep onto his shoulder. Heath's hair burst into flames at being startled awake.

"Hey, watch where you're burning! You're gonna singe my hair." The werewolf barked out, shoving Heath away from him. Heath smiled sheepishly at him in apology. Looking over at Jackson still shivering, Heath got up and walked over to him. Taking his jacket off, he draped it over his cousin, whose shivering lessened almost immediately. "Ahh…" Jackson sighed in comfort, "thanks Heath."

Abbey smiled fondly at Heath, causing him to have his hair burst into flames again briefly. "Ahem," Heath coughed, "you were talking about these experiments?" he asked his cousin, sitting back down at the table. Jackson had put Heath's jacket on and was hugging it to him, eyes closed as he huddled in on himself.

"Oh, yeah." He responded sleepily. "The other one was the one I had been more concerned with since it involved some more,dangerous, elements. But that was the one I had in my hand as Holt came out and I could only glimpse something about…being able to spread over a large distance and take in heat…something about, fotia?" he said, questioning the last word that he had remembered seeing on the papers.

"Hey, I know that word, dude!" Deuce said excitedly. "That's fire in Greek. My mom talks about how there used to be a special kind used only by the ancients before it disappeared and then came back again and then sort of disappeared again. It was supposed to be even more effective than the original version that blasted things to bits. I'd bet there was some magic involved too…"

"Wasn't that stuff really, really dangerous?" Cleo asked, thinking about what she had heard of this in the past. From what she knew, it wasn't something to take lightly. Deuce shrugged, looking to Jackson to elaborate.

"Wait, I've heard of that too…the reason why it was supposed to continue building its flame as it was used, was because some normies had found a way to…siphon…the fire from fire elementals." Heath said, eyes wide. "I thought it was always just a scary normie story to keep me from doing something stupid."

"Well that worked out well" Clawdeen remarked, crossing her arms and smirking at Heath. "You never do anything stupid, do you?"

"Then that explains this…" Jackson said, gesturing toward himself. "Wait, Heath, you didn't go anywhere near that stuff did you? I'm only half elemental, but this stuff could be worse for you…it's like a poison mixed with all those other ingredients."

Concerned, both Frankie and Abbey did a quick check of their guys, assuring themselves that there was no more of that stuff on them. Deuce however was more concerned with the word Jackson had used to describe that stuff. "Did you say…poison?" he asked Jackson warily. Cleo gasped, realizing that there could be more trouble than just sticky shoes from this mess.

"What a mess!" Cleo exclaimed at their situation. Unfortunately, Torelei and her two followers chose that moment to show up. Torelai had her hands behind her back, looking the image of innocence.

"Oh no, this is a mess!" she said, pulling a container with that stuff out from behind her back to toss at her rival, apparently not realizing what it was since it didn't seems to affect her. Cleo involuntarily dodged out of the way of what was flung at her so that it went farther and onto the table, some of it splashing onto Heath's exposed arm.

"Ah!" he hissed in pain, standing up as he tried to get it off of him. "Ah! That stings!" he said, gripping his arm with his hand as what looked like steam started to come off from where the goo was on him. The small amount that had gotten onto him also seemed to immediately start to spread, and his friends could see his skin getting paler by the second.

"Abbey freeze it!" Jackson shouted, snapping everyone out of their shock. Abbey did as she was asked which kept the goo from spreading it seemed, but remained attached.

"Ugh…it's like a leech! How do I get it off?!" Heath exclaimed, feeling drained already.

"Let's get to the science lab upstairs. There should be something in there to help get this off." Jackson said, letting Frankie help him as he continued to cough from his earlier exposure to the goo.

"I...I didn't know…I didn't think this would happen." Torelai stammered as she was pushed out of the way by Cleo so the others could make their way quickly out.

"No, you never do think about others. You and Manny should go get lost together!" Cleo said in the werecat's face before following her friends to the lab, leaving her and the other two standing there looking horribly guilty. Making their way to the lab, both Heath and Jackson were out of breath. Jackson walked over to the cabinets to rifle through the chemicals and other equipment, grabbing a few things before making his way back over to Heath and started to work to create something to get off the attached blob of purple goo.

After a few minutes of him mixing some things together, he called Frankie over. "I think this is something that should be enough of a base to get the chemicals used in that glob to want to mix with it. But with it frozen, it's consistency makes it more adhesive to Heath's skin for his warmth. If you can give it enough of a spark to disconnect, this should get it off." Frankie got ready, already apologizing to Heath for how bad it might hurt him when she gave it a shock. On Jackson's command, she did as asked and the goo fell off of Heath's arm and into the container Abbey held ready to contain it.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" Heath yelled as this all happened, glad that the only ones around to see him were his close friends. Sighing as the shock wore off and the stinging in his arm lessened, he looked back over at Jackson. "Thanks, 'cuz. That thing….that thing coulda killed me!"

"How are you feeling?" Abbey asked, afraid to touch him just yet. Heath moved his arm around, wincing a little, but otherwise seemed alright. "It's gonna be sore for a while, but I wouldn't mind a little sympathy" he said to Abbey, opening his arms for a hug. Shaking her head at his response she nevertheless still walked over to him and embraced him.

"You do still look a little pale dude." Deuce said, drawing attention to the lack of the usual color the fire elemental had. "You might want to just take it easy". Heath nodded to this suggestion, walking over to one of the tables and sitting down next to Abbey.

"I'm gonna go see how things are going with getting down off the roof. We haven't heard anything yet from the others and I'm curious. You comin' Clawd?" Clawdeen asked her brother. At her question, he looked away from the spectacle that had occurred and agreed, the two of them walking out into the hallway and shutting the door to give the others some privacy as they recovered.

"Oooh, I'm gonna skin that cat!" Cleo growled, hands on her hips. "This was just a dirty, nasty thing to do."

"I agree, but she probably just thought it was really sticky – her intention was more along the lines of ruining your outfit than killing you or Heath." Jackson said as he looked at the goo in the container. Frankie walked over to Heath and Abbey, offering to go get a wet towel or something to help, but Heath rejected it as part of his attempt to appear tough. As the others were concerned over Heath, they heard Jackson start coughing again, this time for longer and harder than before. Jackson had to lean on the table to keep himself upright, Deuce rushing over to help his friend. Jackson just waved him off, taking deep breaths to try and regain his breath.

"Dude, what about you?" Deuce asked, although he was pretty sure that Jackson really didn't know what else to do for himself. As expected Jackson just shrugged, sitting down in one of the chairs. "I have no idea. I might be able to compare notes with those in the gym once the iCoffins' wireless network isn't so scrambled, but let's just focus on getting some color back into Heath's face."

Abbey and Cleo were helping clean up the burn mark on Heath's skin, Cleo wrapping it up as expertly as only a mummy could do. Frankie walked over to Jackson, tilting her head sideways as she looked at him in confusion.

"About that…you're turning a little blue there." She said, Deuce doing a double-check and confirming that she was right.

"Dude, really. Not like the color Holt is, but you've definitely got a pale blue-ish color going on." He said, Jackson just scrunching his face up in confusion. Frankie pulled out her compact mirror for him to look into. He took a look and nearly dropped the mirror.

"Whoa…I look like a…" he said before looking off to the side, a look his friends recognized as him trying to recall something as he figured out a puzzle. Frankie found it cute on him, but was curious. "Like a what?" she asked.

Jackson shook his head and refocused on where he was, answering dismissively, "Never mind. I can't be sure of it just yet anyway. How're you Heath?"

Cleo finished up wrapping Heath's arm with the bandages she had with her and Heath walked over to his cousin, Abbey still grasping one of his arms.

"I'm good for now, just feelin' a little drained. You're not lookin' so hot though." Heath said, Jackson rolling his eyes at his cousin's use of puns. "I don't think humans are supposed to turn that shade."

"Not normally." He said, mumbling in a quieter voice meant for Deuce and Heath to hear as they stood right next to him, "Not the live ones anyway…". Frankie overheard and covered her mouth with her hands, eyes wide. Cleo also looked more concerned.

"Dude, what are you talking about?" Deuce asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. Before he could say anything else, Frankie let out an 'oh' as she fumbled around in her bag for something. "We got pamphlets on how to better understand human behavior and health in anatomy class today…we can take care of you!" she said, flipping around some of the papers that had gotten crumpled.

"What?" Jackson asked in confusion, looking to the others for an answer.

"Frankie managed to get a normie special for our anatomy class." Cleo answered, taking pleasure in the look of horror that started to spread on Jackson's face as he realized what that could mean for him. But rather than complain directly to Frankie for her good intentions, he just rubbed a hand on his face and did his best to ignore the chuckle that Heath gave.

"Frankie…just, don't worry about me okay?" Jackson asked, his voice sounding fainter as he tried to talk normally. "I'm sure Heath needs your attention." He said, hoping to redirect her attention onto his cousin. But Abbey seemed to already have covered the role of smothering Heath as she was latched to his arm despite his requests to be let go. Even the usual complaint that she was going to freeze him solid had no effect as she tried to make sure that her boyfriend was alright.

"Jackson. I want to help you. You said this wasn't natural…so maybe this poison is still in your system too? Do you think you can come up with something to reverse its effects?" Frankie said. Clawd and Clawdeen returned at that point and announced that while access to the roof is easy, getting down was harder. Those that could fly had already left, but climbing down would be nearly impossible with the electrical barrier that had encircled the lower half of the school and sent out shocks to those who got too close.

"I convinced Draculaura to leave with the other vampires so she could help with the clean-up efforts." Clawd said, coming to stand next to his sister. "Gil and Lagoona are doing better though out in the open air. It is getting drier, and hotter, in here." He finished.

"Phew. You're tellin' me" Clawdeen said, sitting next to Cleo as she tried to fix her hair as they worked to keep the frizz of their hair to a minimum.

"Maybe we could set off the sprinkler system? Get some water in here?" Cleo suggested. "I spent enough time in the desert to last several lifetimes."

"Wait!" Jackson said, perking up a little. "I think water might be the key to why Heath and I are so messed up."

"What are you talking about dude?" Deuce asked, all for Cleo's idea. Jackson stood up and fiddled a little with the goo before explaining further.

"Well, what do you remember about Greek fire from the stories you were told?" he asked Deuce and Cleo, the only ones who might have anything to offer about this particular obscure aspect of history. Cleo just shrugged, mentioning that she hadn't paid much attention to the changes in weaponry with her interests having been focused elsewhere. Deuce took a moment to consider what his mother had mentioned in one of her stories.

"Oh! It was used by boats…on water. That's what made it burn the way it did, why it spread so fast." He said, pleased with himself. It was rare for him to be the one to supply the others with information rather than to just act the typical tough-guy act in keeping his girlfriend and the others content. Sure, it also had to do with the fact that the only class he actually paid attention in and enjoyed was Home-Ick, but that was beside the point in his mind.

"So…what does that have to do with anything?" Clawdeen asked, still toying with her hair.

"It means that turning on those sprinklers will activate the poison again for Heath…and I'm not sure what it would do for me" Jackson said, brushing his bangs out of his face before clutching his arms around his middle again as he tried to stay warm.

"Well that's just fantastic!" Heath said sarcastically in his fear at the thought that he couldn't do anything to help himself, effectively a sitting duck until there was an antidote or, hopefully, until it worked out of his system with time.

"Well it may not be immediate…" Jackson started, but Heath just gave him an incredulous look. "That doesn't make it better! C'mon Jackson, there's got to be something you can do with all the stuff in here." He said, Abbey tightening her grip on him as she realized the potential danger of the situation.

"Not to worry. I freeze sprinklers before water hits you if they go off." Abbey said, willing to do anything to protect him.

"Wouldn't that just set that stuff off again?" Cleo asked as she tried to comprehend the situation.

"No, she already froze it." Clawd said, picking up the container to look at the goo inside, despite Jackson's warnings to be very careful with it.

"You're right" Jackson said, coughing a little, "It must only ignite or activate or whatever when in contact with liquid water. That must be why all the moisture in the air is getting sucked into the goo…"

"But that doesn't explain what's happening to you." Frankie finally interjected into the conversation. "What is this doing to you?"

Jackson shrugged, readjusting his glasses even though all he did was move them around without actually changing the way they laid on his face. It was clear that this was just as upsetting to him as it was for Heath, but the cousins had different ways of managing their frustration or lack of control.

"I really don't know Frankie. I'm not holding anything back from you." He said, walking over to her, the pamphlets still in her hands as she looked through them.

"Then maybe there's something in these that could help. There might be one with a list of symptoms for something…" she said, looking through the outdated papers again.

"Look. I already told you that I took a shower to get the goo off of me. It stung, but I doubt it was anything like Heath's…" Jackson said, resting his hands on Frankie's shoulders as he tried to comfort the both of them and to work things out.

"No way. That stung like a…" Heath said, Abbey grabbing at his face to stop him from continuing. "Hey! I was just giving input for his resear-" he said, cut off as Abbey decided to silence him with a well-timed kiss. Immediately he melted into her kiss, his agitation visibly fading. Clawd rolled his eyes while his sister and Cleo laughed. That was one way to keep the motor-mouth from running, Cleo thought.

Frankie however was still waiting for some form of an answer from Jackson. Jackson shivered again, catching Deuce's attention. "Why isn't Heath cold then? And what's stopping you from just, y'know…?" he asked, avoiding what they both understood was the predictable outcome for a fire elemental.

"Maybe because there was some magical stuff mixed in, since there was more than one experiment going on?" Cleo suggested. Frankie and Clawdeen gave her an astonished look. "What, I was listening. You just weren't getting to the part I needed to hear so I stopped responding." She said, motioning with her hand in her usual fashion.

"Alright then, any ideas about what that 16th or 17th century famous apothecary potion thing might be?" Frankie asked her. Cleo just shrugged.

"It's been a while and like I've said, I didn't really pay too much attention to those sorts of things. Besides, that's a really vague description for me to go off on." Cleo said, crossing her arms.

"Guys, this mark on my arm is turning redder by the second. Can't we do anything to try and fix this thing?" Heath complained from where he was sitting with Abbey, who had again applied ice to the area in the hopes of keeping the pain down for Heath.

"He's right." Jackson said, getting up again to check over what was available in this lab. Readjusting Heath's jacket for the umpteenth time in his attempts to keep warm, he was rewarded in his efforts with only a few more containers of the items he had used to make the previous solution to neutralize the goo.

"Unfortunately, I think all that we can do for you at this point in time Heath is just wait it out, keep anymore of that stuff from getting to you until I can figure something out. But since you were already exposed, the atmosphere that this goo is sustaining is going to continue to…well…be draining on you." Jackson said, rubbing his head as he tried to think of a better way to explain things to his cousin. "As far as I can tell without knowing the actual ingredients that got mixed, the other experiment's reaction to the Greek fire ingredients seems to be the only thing that kept you from quickly being overtaken by that poison."

"This is not making me feel any better Jackson!" Heath growled. Abbey tried to comfort him by rubbing his shoulders and letting him lean his head on her shoulder.

"I know, I know. I'm just thinking out loud – I'm trying to help." Jackson said, bursting into another coughing fit. "I think the only reason I'm still alive is, ironically, my human heritage. But it's messing with my concentration. If I could just….wait….concentration!" He said, immediately grabbing some paper and pencil, jotting down his idea to continue his thought process.

"Now what are you doing?" Clawdeen asked. She was getting tired of just standing around watching as Heath was in pain and Jackson rambled. Deuce followed his friend's movements as best as he could, Frankie also staying close by in case Jackson started to show any signs of succumbing to this thing other than the weird, pale blue his skin and lips were starting to turn. But Jackson seemed to have tuned them all out as he worked out equations.

"Is Scarah anywhere nearby? Did she go on the roof? She hasn't gotten out, has she?" Jackson rapidly asked of Clawd, effectively ignoring Clawdeen's question and proving to her that he had indeed not even heard her.

"Umm…I can go check. I thought we saw her up there. Pretty much the whole school decided to go up there. Why?" Clawd asked, curious to know what Jackson might be planning. Cleo also looked intrigued, if only because she thought that there might be a closer end to their problem in sight.

"I think she can help with contacting the others still in the gym. They've got to have been working on this thing too. If the phones aren't cutting through the electrical mess beyond the space of a couple nearby rooms, then she might be able to act as an intermediary." Jackson said, pausing in his writing to look over what he had written.

"Okay. Clawd you go see if you can get Scarah's help. Clawdeen, come with me and we can see what's available in the library – ugh. I avoid it, but it might have something that Jackson is looking for about that apothecary potion…" Cleo said, taking the authoritative tone she regularly had in ordering out her friends actions.

"Seriously?" Clawdeen asked, taken aback by her friend's unprecedented willingness to go look something up in a library without having been asked. "What made you want to do that?"

"Well, I'm curious. Plus, it has to be better than just standing around here collecting dust." Cleo said, shrugging nonchalantly. Still, Deuce was impressed by his girlfriend's initiative and desire to help out her friends. Clawdeen just shrugged, resisting the urge to comment on the similarity between the books and Cleo in regards to dust, before pausing to consider if this was a safe idea.

"You have any idea what this might do to other monsters who aren't flame-brains?" Clawdeen asked, concerned about how to proceed with this plan. Unfortunately Jackson just shrugged and answered with the ever helpful, "Don't touch it and we won't have to find out", before going back to his writing. Clawdeen just rolled her eyes, following Cleo's lead.

"Are you coming Deuce?" Cleo asked once more, pausing in the doorway abruptly so that Clawdeen walked into her. The werewolf just growled but Cleo seemed unfazed by such a show of irritation.

Clawd returned with Scarah at that moment, blocking the girls' exit as they walked back into the classroom. "Anything I can to do help, I will." Scarah said, obviously having been close enough to have picked up on their thoughts for the two of them to have returned so quickly. She looked around and took in the state of Heath and Jackson. "What happened to you two?" she asked, walking over to Heath.

"Ask him" Heath said, pointing to his cousin who was yet again coughing. Turning to Jackson, no questions were needed as she picked up on what part of his plan she was to play.

"Oh. I should be able to contact the others in the gym…there isn't that stuff all over the place is there?" she asked, wondering herself how to get close enough to pick up on the others' thoughts. "Maybe if I'm just over the gym, that should be good enough."

Jackson nodded. "I thought you might be able to from the second floor, or as close to the goo as possible, if you agree. I don't want to put you in danger too."

"I already told you, I want to help. But there aren't any lab rooms over the gym are there?" Scarah asked, the others in the room just standing off to the side until they all decided on what to do. Jackson shook his head no again, but before he could suggest anything, Jane Boolittle reappeared. "I can take you through one of the air ducts under this floor." She offered, looking apologetic as everyone in the room jumped at her surprise appearance. "Sorry. I do that….but I know how to get into those areas. They're a little snug, but it should do the job." Scarah nodded and made to follow Jane, but Jackson held her back.

"Wait. Take these." He said, handing her what he had been writing down. She looked at them and then asked, "But won't you be needing them to work once I've been able to communicate with the others." Jackson just held up his phone, showing that he had taken pictures of his notes. "The phone signal may be out of whack, but the camera still works. I'll try to move to one of the closer rooms on this floor with the stuff from here, that way we might be able to come up with something before Heath passes out." He said, indicating the state his cousin was in. The mark on his arm was red and there were small red lines coming from it up into his arm. Whatever was still in his system was continuing to affect him, albeit at a slower pace.

"Alright. But is there anything else I should tell them?" Scarah asked. Jackson turned his head to cough away from her before responding. "I wrote down what I used to get this," he said, holding up the container with the goo in it for Scarah to see, "off of Heath. But this thing is rapidly self-replicating and absorbent – I think with the right concentration of chemicals injected into it, the counter effect could also potentially be self-replicating by using the charge that seems to be flowing through it at a low level." He said, Scarah doing her best to keep up.

"You think same thing could make cure for Heath?" Abbey asked into the conversation, still sitting beside Heath as he appeared to be wilting. Heath nodded along with her question, admitting his exhaustion with the lack of a witty – or not-so-witty – comeback to this.

"It's possible…" Jackson said. "I don't have everything I can think of to make it right here though – that, plus there may be something that I can't think of with what information I do have." Turning to Cleo and the other girls, he said. "Could one of you ask around with anybody still on the roof – see if anyone knows anything about Greek fire?"

"I could…" came a voice out in the hallway. Torelei walked into view, nervously holding herself as she faced the large groups of friends. "I really didn't think it was going to hurt anybody. Plenty of other monsters had some of it on them, but it didn't do more than make their hands sticky…" she tried to explain.

"Fine. You do that." Cleo said dismissively, waving her hand in her typical fashion. "We'll help you set up in another room and then head to the library. Everybody got it?" she said, taking control. Wouldn't daddy be proud, she thought.

"Alright then, let's get to it." Heath said, trying to stand up, but doing so stiffly with Abbey's help. "Deuce, Clawd, I'll need some help carrying things." Jackson said, looking as he too might need some assistance moving around like Heath did. They boys nodded and started to gather up things, Frankie coming over to walk beside Jackson to help him. Once everyone had grabbed something and moved it to a room as close above the gym as possible, Scarah and Jane made their way into one of the vents and were soon communicating with those in the gym.

---

With Jane running interference between Scarah and Jackson to deliver messages, it seemed as though things were settled enough for the others to go about their previous plans. Cleo and the others, excluding Heath, Abbey, and Jackson, made their way to the library.

"I'll see what progress Torelei is making on getting information from anyone on the roof." Clawd said, splitting off from the group to head back up to the roof.

"Sure. He just wants a break from the stuffy air in here." His sister said, watching her brother go with a perturbed look on her face. "But maybe he can get more done than having us rely on Torelei."

"True" Cleo agreed. "But we should probably work fast in the library too – there has to be either a lot, or very little to find with the search words '16th or 17th century famous apothecary potions'…" she said. Deuce opened the door for them and they piled inside, noticing that the air in this area of the school wasn't as stuffy as the others. Walking over to one of the computers, Frankie attempted to pull up the catalog, but they found that the computer system was also caught in the cross-hairs of whatever electrical malfunction that continued to affect all devices of the school.

"Looks like this is gonna take a while." Clawdeen said, looking around at the stacks of books, knowing that there was another floor for them to consider too.

"There must be a paper version of the catalog too." Frankie said, getting up from the computer desk. "It's probably on the first floor- we should use the staircase in the library"

The four of them made their way down to the first floor and spent some time looking around, asking the librarian at the desk still if she could help them in their search. While appearing reluctant to do so, she nevertheless managed to guide them back upstairs to a single stack that might have what they were looking for. Still, that was a lot of books to go through and so they split up the rows on the stack to try and get through them as quickly as possible.

"This is takin' forever!" Clawdeen said, rubbing at her tired eyes from reading. "Nothing in here is anything close to what Jackson described"

Frankie absentmindedly nodded, paying more attention to the pamphlets from class that she had pulled out again rather than the stack of books all about the different types of herbal teas that apothecaries might have used for various ailments in the 16th century. None of her books gave her the impression of any hint of magical properties and so her mind had wandered back to focusing on her concern for Jackson.

"You find anything useful in those things?" Cleo asked, drawing Frankie's attention back into conversation with her friends. Sighing as she folded up another finished pamphlet, she shrugged. "I don't know…this one is just more of 'don'ts' to consider when dealing with normies for the first time. Like, how you're not supposed to engage in any death threat-like behavior…which monsters do that as bonding?" she asked. Behind Cleo, Deuce sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. Frankie rolled her eyes. "What did you do? It can't have been that bad since Jackson's still around."

Cleo also turned to look curiously at her boyfriend. She was well aware of how gorgons sometimes attempted to make friendship ties with other monsters with their borderline hostile endeavors, but she was surprised to find that Deuce would have unwittingly made such a blunder with a normie.

Deuce uncomfortably shifted a little before answering, "Well it was just a game of casketball. He had said that he liked to play and he really did turn out to be pretty good…" he said, stalling a little to try and worm his way out of answering. But Cleo crossed her arms and gave him a look he had learned meant she wanted him to continue on until she was satisfied. "I may have tossed the ball a little too hard at his head while in the moment…I kinda forgot about him being a normie and fragile and all that stuff. At least he caught it in time so he only tripped a little."

"I guess growing up around humans and monsters made him look out for more of those things." Clawdeen said. "We should've gone to him for advice too when we were all fused, since technically he's a hybrid too."

Cleo looked off thoughtfully, as did Frankie, neither of them having really considered at the time that Jackson and Holt were a hybrid monster too. They had always thought being half-normie was something separate than those like Bonita or Neightan with two monster scaritages.

"Maybe we should try to find Neightan? He could help Heath and Jackson with his unicorn healing abilities, don't you think?" Cleo suggested, having had enough with the books too. Frankie shrugged, going back to searching through her stack of books.

"So what else is in these handouts?" Deuce said, walking back over to the table they had set up at to pick up one of the scattered materials.

"This tip seems a little obvious – 'Human blood has certain effects on monsters such as vampires'" He read, chuckling a little. Cleo also took a look at the papers he was reading, looking for anything particularly interesting.

"Hmmm. This one talks about the theory that the majority of monsters seek out humans 'because of the connection they can make with the way that humans are so alive- even if a monster is not completely of the undead variety-in ways that monsters do not similarly behave or act'. Supposedly 'The touch of a human can help stimulate heightened emotions such as happiness or for creativity, which makes for increased chances of productive development within monster society. Conversely, there are other kinds of monsters without this dominant trait and can have a more aggressive response since contact with humans is limited, but can develop it with repeated exposure to humans if both actively pursue a more passive interaction with one another'…huh" Cleo read off, clearly with some disbelief in her voice.

Clawdeen had only been half listening as she continued to let her mind wander as they waited for anything to happen towards getting out of the school. "Why can't we just ask the monster in the gym who was working on the experiment for details?"

Deuce shrugged. "I think that was on the list of questions Jackson wrote out for Scarah to ask…but Jackson wasn't under the impression that this monster had done anything extensive for her project. Dude knows when there's something to remember, at least for tests anyway, so he probably would have remembered more about the stuff if there was more to remember." He rationalized in a way that made sense to him, but unfortunately the girls continued to give him confused looks. He sighed and tried again.

"Jackson read over the experiment before things went boom, so if it this one focused more on that play rather than on the actual science, then there probably wasn't anything rock solid for Jackson to remember science-wise." He said, trying to pick his words carefully. It looked as though it was taking some serious effort, but Cleo was impressed with the wealth of knowledge that Deuce had apparently become since the accident.

"Huh. That actually makes a lot of sense." Cleo said, walking over to wrap her arms around her boyfriend. He looked pleased with himself too before realizing she had also simultaneously made a jab at his intelligence too. Oh well, best to pick my battles, he thought when considering whether he should defend himself to his girlfriend or let it go.

Clawdeen gasped as she processed what Deuce had said. "A play! That's right, he said something about an English play!" she shouted, jumping out of her seat. "Oh, I should know this. Claudia would rave about these things for hours…just give me a minute. I can think of it." She said, beginning to pace around as she tried to recall what her sister may have said to her in the past.

Frankie shut the book she had been skimming and placed it back on her pile as she waited for Clawdeen to some up with something.

"So you two, is any of this stuff in the pamphlets true?" Cleo asked, watching as Clawdeen sprinted over to the opposite side of the library to check on something.

"What are you talking about?" Frankie asked nervously, blushing as she knew where Cleo was directing the conversation.

"Well, Deuce and Jackson are best bloodies, and you and he do spend an awful large amount of time with one another lately…." Cleo goaded, hoping to get one of them to respond. "So, does he make you guys feel happy?" she teased.

"This makes it sound like we're parasites or something" Deuce said, tossing the papers he had in his hand back onto the table. "Can't I just want to hang out with the dude 'cuz I want to be a nice guy? The fact that I like to hang out with him is because he's a cool guy…not just because of this outdated stuff."

Frankie fidgeted as Cleo directed her look to Frankie. "Well, Deuce is right." Frankie said, but Cleo continued to give her a look that said she wasn't satisfied with just that information. "Okay, well, so what if I find that there's nothing like it when he gives me a hug or we cuddle up and watch a movie…" she trailed off, fearing that she would start sparking any minute if Cleo continued this conversation. Cleo smiled and sat next to Frankie, leaning against the table. "So, the rest of this is true then too? The whole idea that 'Like newborn humans babies are comforted by their mother's heartbeat, some monsters are also soothed by the presence and sound of human life…'" she trailed off, laughing. "Oh my Ra! This is worse material than some of those monster-normie couple movies where the monster is so hung up on the fact that they're dating a human…Oh, I should have read these in class; they're so amusing."

Frankie pursed her lips at her friend's persistent teasing. She had intended that this class be just like any other anatomy class which taught about different monsters' abilities, how things worked and so on, including behaviors. But she had to make a compromise since this is a school predominantly for monsters who wouldn't have bothered to learn about normie health anyway. This compromise meant that there also had to be an inclusion of monsters' behaviors around humans and why that might be. As it was, she thought she might have to give Jackson an apology later if this is the sort of response she was getting from those who knew Jackson enough to consider them part of their friends' group. The fact that there may have been some validity to these musings was something that she planned on keeping to herself, although the blush that was spreading all over her face and neck was more than enough for Cleo to make her own conclusions.

"Maybe I should be more friendly with him more often…" she teased, smirking at the look Deuce shot her for her comment. "A… handshake… every now and then"

Deuce just shook his head, his snakes bobbing in their embarrassed state too. Frankie was looking as though she was going to start sending sparks their way too if Cleo didn't ease up on her teasing.

"Hey, Deuce and I just like do spend time with him. Him being human doesn't mean anything different to us." Frankie said, trying to gather up her things. She decided to try and give Cleo a taste of her own medicine too. "Besides, maybe there's something about mummies that makes them so fond of Gorgons…you get more wrapped up in him than your own bandages…"

Cleo's eyes widened and her mouth formed an 'o' as she took in what Frankie said to her. Deuce also took a moment to comprehend what she said before laughing at her remark and its effect on his girlfriend. "Well look at you getting some spine. Nicely done, Frankie" Cleo said, smiling at her friend's banter. "But seriously, there might be something behind this since even Manny has mellowed from spending more time around him – but Iris probably has more to do with that than any special human powers over monsters." Cleo suggested. Frankie shrugged and stood up, intending to return to the shelves to grab another book when Deuce's exclamation of "Uh oh" made her turn her attention back to the two at the table.

"What is it?" Frankie asked, trying to see what he was talking about. Clawd had walked back in with Gil and Lagoona, Torelai following them into the library. Clawd didn't look like they had made much success, which is probably what Deuce had picked up on.

"Hey you two. I thought you were going to stay up on the roof to keep from drying out?" Cleo asked of Lagoona and Gil, pretty much ignoring that Torelai was even there.

"Yeah, well, Torelai had been asking around if anybody knew anything about something called Greek fire. Gil here said he knew something about it – I only ever heard of it in passing, like in old stories." Lagoona answered, plopping down in one of the library's softer chairs as the atmosphere continued to be a drain on her.

The three looked over expectantly at Gil before Clawd asked, "Where did my sister go?"

Frankie pointed over to the other end of the library, where he could see Clawdeen frantically looking through some old files that she had brought up from the catalog downstairs. "Okay. What is she doing that you guys aren't?" he asked again, curious as to why the group may have broken apart again.

"She said she might have remembered something Claudia had talked to her about with some famous English play and apothecary potions…" Cleo said, waving her hand as she spoke. At that moment, Clawdeen picked up a few pieces of the papers she had scattered on a table to rush over to the others.

"Okay," she said, "I've got it narrowed down to at least these authors, but I still can't figure it out. Apothecaries apparently were a big part of several famous plays of that time based on what these summaries say – I haven't actually read them, even though I think one of them was supposed to have been assigned…."she trailed off. Clawd picked them up to look them over.

"Wait…it's this one." He said, picking up one of the cards for a book. Clawdeen looked over at him incredulously. "How can you tell, just like that?!" she asked, frustrated that her efforts may have been a waste of time.

"Well, Claudia mentioned it like a million times. But I didn't really remember all the details until you brought it up…" he sheepishly said, handing her the card. Despite the situation she was in, Torelai was chuckling not quite so subtly behind Lagoona until the sea monster shot her a dirty look that hushed her laughter.

"Well now that we've got that settled, what is it that you were going to say Gil?" Frankie said, turning away from the spectacle that Clawd and Clawdeen were making as they argued with each other. Cleo and Deuce also turned their attention to Gil, who coughed a little as he tried to explain what information he knew about a possible solution.

"Well, it's an old fish tale that freshwater pearls were used for their iridescent capabilities to capture the magic in the Greek fire– it's just a story, but the salt water pearls didn't have the same qualities and so ancient freshwater monsters supposedly traded with ancient sea monsters with these pearls in their brief encounters with each other…." He said, fidgeting a little in discomfort.

Cleo looked as though she was still thinking about this, when a growl was heard louder than the others. Turning back to see Clawd and Clawdeen finishing up their argument, Clawdeen stormed away from her brother presumably to go get the book. "We should have just had Scarah ask about it" she shouted over her shoulder.

"That probably would have made more sense…"Frankie said, shrugging. "But Jane said it was possible that some of the other students could have gotten out through the door to the outside. If they were able to get out while this barrier was still forming, then we probably wouldn't get any help from this particular monster who had set up the experiment." She paused, thinking back on the information that they had gotten from Jane and Scarah. "Besides, they probably would have told us by now if they knew anything about that since it was on the list of questions."

Clawd rejoined the group after his fight with his sister, having heard the last bit said between the others. "Well, whether or not that's the case, we should head back to Jackson, Heath, and Abbey. Once Clawdeen gets this book, he might be able to come up with something or at least be able to understand better what this other student is talking about…" he said.

"Well, what are we going to do about this pearl solution?" Cleo asked. "I like gemstones like any other girl, but I don't have any freshwater pearls just lying around, and we can't exactly get to the pool to see if there are any there."

Deuce nodded along with his girlfriend's point. "I could try to turn some of this goo into stone, but Jackson said that it might not hold. It may not do much to some monsters, but I don't think I want to figure out if I'm one of them – and you two," he said, addressing Lagoona and Gil, "definitely are going to be affected by it since it likes to spread out with more water around it."

Lagoona nodded as Clawdeen returned with the book, stiffly getting up to join the others as they made their way back to the room their friends were using. "If we could just get to the pool, we could try to get them. They might not fix everything, but they may make it easier for us to be in here." She said, locking arms with Gil as they walked.

"How are things coming with getting off the roof?" Cleo asked, Frankie and Deuce giving her a look about her apparent concern with her own escape. "What? I'm curious. Besides, if the rescue efforts are going well, we might not need to worry about getting to the pool if they can provide something else to help."

Frankie had to admit that she had a point. Torelai took the opportunity to join in the conversation. "Things are going slow, with the barrier periodically dropping. The geeks in the gym are apparently tampering with things and might be able to get it down soon but it still keeps shocking those who decide to leap before they look." She said, trying to act nonchalant with the others and giving her fur a lick to smooth out the frizz that the dry atmosphere caused. "But I might be able to get you two to the pool…" she suggested, trailing off in the hopes that dangling this piece of hope like a piece of string would get them to be drawn to her help. She was a werecat after all, curiosity and mercurial attitude were her nature, switching from wanting to gain their apology to thinking they owed her an apology for still being mad at her.

"And how exactly can you do that?" Cleo asks, unwillingly to put so much trust in the werecat.

"Well…I had to get some of that goo on me to gather up in that cup to toss at you. It didn't really do anything other than make my fur sticky." She said, shrugging. "I could put down some of those poster- boards in the Home Ick classroom on top of the goo as I climb on top of the lockers in the hallway to the pool."

Frankie was amazed at Torelai's clever suggestion. "Wow. That actually might work." She said, earning a smug smile from Torelai.

"I dunno about that mates…" Lagoona said, hesitation in her voice at the prospect of not only being so reliant on an untrustworthy monster, but balancing on cardboard pieces surrounded by this goo that might potentially cause further danger to them.

"I really am trying to make up for what I did earlier – I didn't mean to actually poison Heath like that. " Torelai said in the hopes of persuading the water monsters to include her in their efforts.

Lagoona sighed and looked to Gil, who just gave her a small smile. "Alright. We'll give it a go – but you better not try anything." She said. Torelai smiled and promised to keep her word.

"Then we'll head over to grab those poster-boards and work to get to the gym. Torelai can carry back to Jackson any that we might find." Gil said, directing Lagoona towards the Home Ick room.

"What? No, that's not what I said." Torelai said, but nevertheless walked along with him and Lagoona, trying to argue her way out of any increased involvement with this part of the rescue attempt. Frankie chuckled, amused at how Lagoona and Gil were able to hold their own in a battle of wits with Torelai despite not feeling their best.

---

"Do you have anything yet?" Abbey asked Jackson, Heath sagging against her side as the effects of the goo continued to plague the fire elemental. He wasn't looking his normal self, but then again, Jackson was more the shade of a corpse now too.

"I've got something, but some of the things Scarah is telling me are complicating things – and I'm not exactly in any condition to work at top speed" Jackson said, walking back over to the cabinets in this room – not a mad science lab, but one that looked like the drama club used to make outfits. He rifled through some of the supplies in any attempt to find something that might inspire him to think clearer. There were plenty of decorations, but there was one thing that caught his attention.

"Hey Abbey, can you take a look at this? I think it's an actual pearl, not a plastic one like the others." Jackson said, handing it over to the yeti since he wasn't trusting himself enough at the moment to be sure. Abbey shifted her hold on the barely conscious Heath to take the pearl in her hand. Looking it over she shrugged and Jackson was about to reach over and grab it back, when she surprised him by biting the thing.

"What are you doing?" he asked, amused by her actions. He didn't spend too much time with her, but Frankie had told him that there were still moments when she would take them all by surprise with her antics. Apparently this was one of those times.

"I checking, like you ask. It is definitely real. Here you go." She said, returning the pearl to Jackson. He wasn't sure how she could tell this by biting the thing, but she was practically always right. Taking her word, he walked back over to his setup and sat back at the desk, picking up a pencil and tapping it against his notepad as he thought.

"What you thinking? Can you help him now or what?" Abbey asked, frustrated at her inability to do more than occasionally put more ice on her boyfriend's arm when it looked like the mark was getting redder and larger. Unfortunately, she was taking her frustration out on Jackson as time wore on.

"I know, I know. I'm hurrying as fast as I can with Scarah and Jane's help, but I don't want to make things worse by giving him something that could have the opposite effect." Jackson said. "But I think I might have something. Just give me some time, alright?" he said in what would undoubtedly have been a raised and strained voice if he hadn't also been affected. Abbey still looked like she wanted to argue with him to try about getting results faster, but Heath mumbled something to her that Jackson couldn't hear that quieted her. After a moment, she turned back to Jackson. "Abbey is sorry. I know you are also be feeling sick too."

Jackson accepted her apology with a silent nod, knowing she would understand his lack of a verbal response at the moment. He took the pearl and grabbed the mortar and pestle he had found in what was likely a prop container. "I'll be right back. I need to wash this thing before I use it."

Abbey's brow furrowed as she responded, "But what about the water? You said is not good for you?" Jackson nodded, coughing a little.

"I know. It isn't. But I need to be sure that there isn't anything in this that could contaminate whatever possible cure I can create." He said, slowly making his way over to the doorway. But Abbey shifted a little, saying something to Heath to get him to sit up a little straighter on his own. Maneuvering him safely and gently out of her hold, she walked back over to stop Jackson.

"You stay with Heath. I will go wash tiny bowl. You need to crush pearl into powder? Abbey can do that too, probably easier than you too." She said, taking the items out of Jackson's hands faster than he could protest in his drowsy state. "I will be careful. You go sit with Heath before you both collapse. I will be quick." She finished in her typical short sentences. Jackson felt that he didn't have the energy to fight with her either, hoping to remain awake long enough to keep communicating with the gym.

"Hey 'cuz…" Heath slurred out, doing his best to put up a brave front. Jackson could tell that he was in some serious pain, but also knew that Heath was also well aware of the state Jackson was in. "How is it that whenever I'm with you, some serious trouble seems to go down? This was totally uncalled for – I didn't do anything this time." Heath said, giving a tiny smile as he leaned against Jackson's shoulder once he had settled down next to him.

"No. Not your fault – it never is anyway, right?" he tried to tease with his cousin, hoping that if they could keep this up that neither one of them would pass out. Heath gave a tiny laugh. "Absolutely. I'm just a victim of circumstance…" Jackson had to laugh at that line, thinking it was quite appropriate for Heath to quote from the Three Stooges given his typical comical nature.

"But seriously, any idea on how to fix this? I'm not so sure I'm gonna be able to keep…" Heath started before Jackson interrupted him. "You're gonna be fine – I think I may have something here. Do you trust me to give it a try?" he asked Heath. His cousin gave him a long look, thinking over what Jackson had just asked of him before giving a small nod. "I know you mean well and honestly, doing nothing at this point is unbearable. I trust you." Heath said, letting himself grimace from the pain now that it was just him and his cousin in the room.

"Will it be enough for the both of us?" Heath asked after a moment of silence, concerned also for his cousin. Jackson looked away from Heath's gaze, choosing not to immediately answer that question. "Jackson." Heath said, a little louder to prod a truthful answer out of him. Jackson sighed and turned back to look at him.

"To keep the balance just right between the chemicals? No. Not with just the one pearl. I can give it to you and still have a little bit left over that maybe can be used to start an autocatalytic response within the goo…" He said, trailing off a little as he tried to explain to his cousin so that he could understand what he was trying to say. "There will only be enough to give you a proper dose and leave some to start another batch of antidotes to attempt to get the goo to create more of the antidote on its own. Even then, it may take at least a dozen more of those pearls with those properties to get that reaction started. Either way, there…there wouldn't be enough for two full doses right now."

Heath tried to sit up a little more to face his cousin properly. "But…maybe…you don't need a full dose anyway right? Half-elemental, half a dose, right?" he asked, trying to rationalize another possible route for them to take. "What about all that other stuff you said might have gotten mixed in? You'd need something for that right?"

Jackson sighed again, it turning into a cough as the mixture continued to affect him. "I don't know what that other experiment was really supposed to have been. You heard Jane - that girl managed to get out of the gym with a few others before the barrier went up and her notes are nowhere to be found. I would rather spend the time I have still moving around to work out the cure for you." He said. He started to get up as he spotted Abbey coming through the door. Heath made to argue further, grabbing onto Jackson's arm, but Jackson cut him off before he was able to say anything to him. "No, I'm giving it to you. You need it more and you can't stop me from giving you all the help you need." Jackson said, gently yet firmly laying Heath out on one of the benches for him to rest. Taking the things from Abbey, he quickly as possible went back to working on making the cure.

A noise from the PA system was heard again and their headmistress began to update the students on the state of the rescue efforts from within and outside the school. But shortly after her introduction to what she had planned to explain further, another painful sounding whine was heard and the music switched back on, no doubt the result of the technical staff and students having been continuously tampering with it since the barrier was noticed and tried to be removed. Heath and Abbey tensed as they expected Holt to be joining them and potentially ruining Jackson's efforts from a mid-action transformation. However, they were even more startled to see that Jackson remained Jackson despite the music playing.

"How is that possible?" Abbey asked, although judging from Jackson's face he wasn't too sure either.

"Huh, so that's what that sounds like? I like it." He said, finishing up with filing a needle full of his mixture. "I don't understand…but this could really…wow." Jackson stammered out as he swayed where he stood. "Maybe the other guy's gone…no more Hyde, just Jekyll. I don't know what to think about that." He said, a far-away look on his face. Heath urged Abbey to go over to Jackson, worried for both halves of his cousin. Abbey steadied him, looking him over intensely like she was expecting Holt to suddenly appear and shout 'Got ya' at them. Jackson shook his head a little as though to try and remain focused. He thrust the needle into Abbey's hand, feeling his legs start to buckle from underneath him.

"Here. You need to give him this – all of it" he said, Heath already starting to protest. "Abbey, please. I can't do it like this…I think I might be…just do it, Abbey." Jackson pleaded with her as she guided him gently to the floor. Deuce, Cleo, Clawd, Clawdeen, and Frankie came running into the room at that moment.

"We heard the music and figured we better rush over…" Frankie said, trailing off as she looked over at how Heath looked far worse than they had left him, lying on the bench in a way she could only describe as pathetic. But what really stopped her from continuing was seeing Jackson still Jackson, sitting on the floor.

"Dude, you're still…you" Deuce said, rushing over to his side as he managed to regain his sense of mobility faster than the others. Jackson just gave a small wave in response, looking more like he was flailing than able to control any of his movements. Clawd came over to help Deuce lift Jackson onto another one of the benches, to at least get him up off the floor.

"Abbey, now" Jackson said, putting as much force behind his words as he could with whatever was in his system starting to get a stronger hold over him. Heath at this point had managed to get himself semi-upright. "No, Abbey, wait…" Heath tried to protest, but Abbey did as Jackson instructed. She grabbed ahold of Heath and jabbed the needle into his arm, injecting him with what she had hoped was the cure that Jackson had seemed so confident about. Almost immediately, Heath gasped and gripped his arm tighter, curling in on himself. Abbey dropped the needle and attempted to help Heath, but it seemed that whatever pain he had originally been in was waning, color returning to his skin and the mark on his arm getting less red.

"It worked…" Heath gasped out, the girls also showing shock on their faces. All except for Frankie, who had refocused her attention on Jackson. Deuce and Clawd were trying to help keep him awake, but it seemed as though it was a futile effort. That strange shade he had been developing becoming more prominent throughout the rest of his exposed skin. His face had been getting that tint to it, but it seemed as though it was just as clear there as elsewhere on him. "Hey, hey" Clawd said, trying to shake him to stay awake. "Music usually wakes you of all people up, man" he said.

Deuce turned to Abbey and Heath, who had been joined by Cleo and Clawdeen in helping Heath sit up more and ensuring that he was okay. "Dudes, is there any more of that stuff we can use for him? He could really use it right now" He asked, the urgency evident in his voice in his concern for his friend. Cleo may have been teasing earlier about how normies apparently can affect monster's moods, but Jackson was usually there for him – Holt's unexpected appearances not counting - and he genuinely was concerned.

Abbey shrugged, not sure how much of that antidote he was able to come up with, as she had only been concerned with the amount that Jackson had handed to her for Heath. Cleo walked over to the table he had been working on to see what there was for them to work with based on his notes and all that he had set up. Heath pushed himself upright despite Clawdeen's insistence to keep lying down. Gaining his breath, he angrily exclaimed, "The idiot gave it all to me. I told him to wait or…to do anything else…he only left a tiny amount that's no good to him at this point. That was so stupid! How could you do that!" his hair started to flame up again involuntarily, but it was a testament to the success of Jackson's efforts since he didn't wince or seem to be in pain as it happened. He still looked very weak, but it seemed Jackson had actually done it and cured him.

"So we'll make more." Frankie said, getting closer to Jackson and cupping his face in her hands. "You wrote it all down right? We can just copy your notes and make more for you, okay?" she bargained with him. Jackson smiled up at her from his position on his back on the bench that Clawd and Deuce had laid him on. "I wrote it all down…but there isn't any more of the last ingredient…" he trailed off, giving a few faint laughs, "But it worked. Heath's gonna be okay." He said, pleased that he had been able to make a difference with his cousin.

Frankie looked back and forth between Jackson and the others, turning back to ask him, "What do you mean, no more? What was it? What did you use?" Jackson attempted to reply but seemed to drift off, saying, "I like this music…Holt…I'm sorry Frankie, I'm tired…" before letting his eyes close and falling asleep. Frankie groaned as she realized that there was likely no waking him for a while, but hopefully they would be able to fix things soon.

"Jackson?" Heath called over to his cousin. He made to stand and walk over to him, but the others stopped him. "Is he alright?" he asked of the others, Deuce only motioning with his hand in a so-so motion. "What the heck is that supposed to mean?" Heath asked, frustrated with the situation. The music was eventually turned off, and the headmistress explained the situation although it wasn't anything that the group hadn't already been able to figure out for themselves – they wouldn't be surprised if she had gotten her information through the grapevine from them to begin with.

"Well, we may have found what that student was trying to recreate." Clawd said, indicating for Clawdeen to show him the book with the play in question. "It was meant as a sort-of sleeping potion that would give the appearance of death for the normie who took it…but it doesn't say anything on how to reverse it, only that it was supposed to last a couple of days…"

Abbey had taken the book and was flipping through it, but Heath just stared, open-mouthed at his friends. Before he could spontaneously combust again, Cleo intervened. "We'll still try to recreate his antidote and give it to him, but for all we know, the added magical elements might not be affected by the antidote and he might stay that way for a little while – but at least he isn't actually dead. Frankie could always have her dad try to resurrect him anyway if he doesn't wake up within a day or two." She said, managing to make Heath's face get even redder.

"That was not exactly the most inspiring speech you could have given him babe" Deuce said from where he was standing beside Jackson, shaking his head as his snakes seemed to be laughing at the situation.

"What? It's true though. If none of my amulets work, Frankie's dad could…"Cleo began before Frankie stood up from crouching beside Jackson, waving her arms frantically in a negative manner. "No. There will be no need for any reanimation experiments here – we'll just recreate his antidote."

"But how? He said he was all outta whatever special ingredient he used" Clawdeen said, putting her hands on her hips.

"Oh, he use pearl he found in decorations" Abbey supplied. "It was greenish in color; had me crush it up to add to chemicals to make medicine – said something about its absorbent properties that would help." The others turned to look at Abbey curiously. "What? I help" she said, shrugging a little and not understanding why her friends continued to react that way to her comments still.

"No, no, we just didn't expect that you…never mind, let's just hope it's the same pearls that Gil, Lagoona and Torelai are going to get. That would be an amazing stoke of good fortune" Frankie said, crossing her arms. At this, Abbey and Heath looked curiously at the others for an explanation. Cleo explained in her typical and slightly demeaning manner when concerning Torelai, that the werecat was helping to get to the gym to see if there were any of these pearls, repeating what Gil had told to them.

"Then maybe I can go help" Heath said, attempting to stand up only to have Abbey and Clawdeen push him back down again. "Ugh…I can't just sit here while my cousin just, I dunno, falls into a potentially never-ending coma…there has to be something I can do."

While the others sympathized with Heath, they knew that he still needed to rest and his weariness might unintentionally set back any progress that they might make. Normally when he did that, they could cope, but it seemed that it was an issue of time now. They all were counting on the outside efforts that were getting more success in increasing the amount of time between the gaps of the barrier dropping and reappearing. There were fewer students left within the building, but without a way of getting rid of the goo, the doors to some areas would remain locked to keep it from spreading to the students stuck in there.

Jane came back in to relay another message. "Ghoulia says that she would need to pull up a schematic of where to….oh my!" she exclaimed, looking at Jackson. "What happened? He looks..." she trailed off, looking to the others for an explanation.

"I know, he looks awful, but he only looks it" Frankie said, walking over to Jane. "But it would help if we knew what Ghoulia's plan actually was."

Clawd nodded. "Yeah, with Jackson down for the count, it looks like the rest is up to us." Jane looked unsettled by the fact that Jackson looked the way he did and was so still, but it didn't seem as though the encouragement from the others was doing much to bolster her confidence either. Recognizing the signs that she might bolt at any moment, Clawdeen walked over to hold onto her hands.

"Jane, just tell us what you were going to tell Jackson. We may not be him, but he wrote everything down in case something like this might happen. We can all do this" she said, smiling encouragingly at the shy girl. It was obvious she worked better in smaller groups of monsters, but it seemed like she was willing to come out of her comfort zone to fix the literal mess the school was in.

"Alright…well…Jackson and Ghoulia were working on a plan to inject into the goo at various strategic points for the concentration of the antidote to be replicated enough on its own to shrink the goo down so that everybody can leave. A smaller amount of it would let the sensors in the floor release the locks and everybody could get out…." She said, fidgeting under the looks of the others. "But Robecca has almost got the electrical equipment back under control, although even she's been affected by the lack of moisture in the air to turn into steam to power her…"

The girls gasped, not even having considered the effects that all of this might have on monsters other water creatures or fire creatures as these polar opposites were ironically in the same position. "Well then, we better hope Torelai gets here soon with some positive news." Cleo said, leaning forward onto the table as she looked over the notes in a vain attempt to understand. Looking back up Cleo offered them to Frankie in the hopes that out of all of them, she might at least have some understanding. Heath at this point managed to brush off Abbey and walked over to the table to look over the notes too. He may not be a genius like his cousin, but he was probably more adept at reading Jackson's version of abbreviations than Frankie would be, considering he had spent the most time re-reading the notes Jackson took or passed to him over the years.

"Heath, you shouldn't be up so soon." Abbey protested, following all of his moves just in case he wasn't completely as alright as he said.

"She's right Heath. You should let the antidote work its way through your system so you're not in any more danger." Clawdeen said by her spot standing next to Jane, effectively keeping her from shying away too soon before they had something to respond with for Scarah to relay. Heath just gave a tight smile, refusing to look directly at either of them. "I can read his notes off to Frankie who can probably follow his instructions better than any of us. Team effort and I don't have to do anything other than sit here and read" he said, waving the papers in his hand around to make his point that he was determined to do something. He knew that just saying he was feeling much better wouldn't be enough to convince the others to let him leave the room in any other effort to help out. Reluctantly Abbey had to agree with her boyfriend, picking up a chair and walking over to where Heath stood. Dropping it onto the floor a little harder than necessary, she made her point of telling him to sit still without saying anything other than the glare on her face. Sighing, Heath took a seat in the offered chair and he and Frankie started to get to work.

"Okay, but what do we do with him?" Cleo said, leaving Heath, Frankie, and apparently Abbey to try and figure out what ingredients they would need and to recreate the antidote.

"Dude's not going anywhere." Deuce said, shrugging. "We should probably just leave him where he is – better than on the floor."

Cleo just sighed and shook her head. "So much for that whole wanting to care for normies thing…Deuce, he's lying on a bench that's not exactly thick enough for all of him, half of him is already hanging off." She said, indicating the position that Deuce and Clawd had plopped him onto the bench, with his left side dangling off of the side. "At least clear off one of the tables and put him on that. Maybe we can bunch up some costumes and fabric to make some kind of pillow."

Deuce shrugged, having thought he had taken good care of his unconscious friend. But he and Clawd both knew that what she had said wasn't meant to be taken as just a suggestion, as most things with her turned into commands. Clawd put a hand on Deuce's shoulder to steer him toward his friend. Clearing off a table, they did their best to accommodate what Cleo had in mind, lifting Jackson up onto it. When they were finished, it made for an even more unsettling sight.

"Well that doesn't look creepy at all." Clawd said sarcastically. "He really does look dead now Cleo. We should have just left him where he was instead of laying him out like you would have done in ancient Egypt."

Clawdeen snickered, although Jane looked as though she would rather not stand around with Jackson looking the way he did. Coughing a little to get everyone's attention, and blushing when succeeding, she asked, "Wasn't there something you wanted me to tell Scarah for you? I'm sure she's getting cramped just waiting in the vent."

Frankie's eyes widened. "Oh! Right! Tell them that we're working on making more of the antidote – that Jackson was successful in finding one – just that it might take a while. Gil and Lagoona are fishing for more of the last ingredient but it could take a while…" she said. Jane nodded at this, and Frankie returned to looking over Jackson's notes with Heath. Clawdeen was about to ask her not to mention anything about Jackson, but found that when she turned to face her, Jane had already left.

"Grrr…that can be really annoying. I wish I knew how she does that so fast." She growled out in her frustration at Jane's ability to just show up and disappear at any moment. Her brother just laughed at her reaction. "Yeah, but you probably never will" he said, earning himself an unamused look from Clawdeen.

Deuce had been looking over Jackson as the two of them began to bicker as siblings do, a concerned look on his face. Cleo wrapped her arms around her boyfriend, trying her best to comfort him. "I know you were making fun of Frankie and me for liking to hang around with him, but I'm really worried. I know the book describes the way that potion is supposed to act, but it's still eerie." He said. She nodded, looking up at Frankie working frantically and sending frequent glances over at Jackson.

"Yeah, I know. He's not a total drag to be around – I kinda enjoy his company too." she admitted. "It was just easier to make fun of you two than to admit that there might be some truth behind all of that – even though several Halloween experiences might suggest otherwise, with how some normies behaved…but anyway, I'm sure he'll be fine." She said, giving Deuce an encouraging smile.

"Yeah, but even for me, I'm having a hard time telling if he's really breathing or not." He said, sighing again.

"Well, focus on something else then – how about how incredibly mortified he'll be when you tell him everything we read about humans in those pamphlets?" she suggested, earning herself a smile from Deuce.

---

Gil and Lagoona had their arms locked as they balanced on top of the flimsy cardboard pieces as they made their way across the goo on the path created by Torelai.

"This is ridiculous." Gil said, steadying Lagoona who was about to place her foot on the edge of the pieces and possibly topple them both.

"You're tellin' me." She replied, shooting a look at Torelai as the werecat fumbled around on top of the lockers to get another piece in place. There was barely enough room for her to maneuver around by herself, let alone while carrying multiple pieces of cardboard. And while it seemed like she was enjoying the torment that Gil and Lagoona were going through, she was also doing her best too. That was the only reason that neither of them, particularly Lagoona, had called her out on her efforts. They had also gathered an audience too, as the students stuck in the classrooms in this hallway had gathered around the small windows in their doors to try and see what they were doing.

"Just…a few more…" Torelai growled down to them, placing another piece within stepping range for the two of them. She crawled a little farther and dropped another close to the door to the pool. "There, that's the last one." She said, shooting a look in the other two's direction. Taking a deep breath, Gil and Lagoona carefully and slowly made their way to the door.

"But how are we gonna open it without getting the goo inside this room?" Lagoona said, realizing that they should have considered that question much earlier. Gil pushed her forward anyway, noticing that the cardboard pieces were sinking into the goo.

"We'll just have to be quick. But we can't stand around here for much longer either. Go!" he urged her, and the two of them opened the door and maneuvered quickly enough to squeeze in, Torelai shortly following with a jump from her perch atop the lockers. She and Gil pushed the door back into place before too much goo could get on the floor, considering themselves lucky.

"Now it's time for you two to do your thing. I have no idea how I'm gonna get those things back to the geek upstairs, but just be quick." Torelai snidely remarked. Restraining herself from just tackling the werecat, aided by Gil's arms around her, the two of them made their way into the pool, feeling relief almost immediately as soon as they were completely submerged under water.

"Ah, that's much better!" sighed Lagoona, swimming alongside Gil as they made their way towards the deep end of the pool. "Do you have any idea where these things might be?" she asked him. Gil didn't have a confident look on his face, but turned to answer his girlfriend.

"I have a vague idea – I thought I saw some of the kinds of mussels that produce those pearls in the cross-stream area of the pool, but I can't be sure." He admitted. Lagoona's eyes widened. "Why didn't you say that before to the others? They're countin' on us to help." She asked.

Gil sighed. "Because I'm not sure that they're not here either. Look, I'm trying to help out here. Let's just look around – there has to be something here." He said, trying to keep up Lagoona's spirit. He had no doubt that the longer they took, the less likely Torelai was going to be still waiting for them at the surface. After searching for a little while, Lagoona spotted something that matched Gill's description. Calling him over, they were thrilled when they were able to find a pearl that fit with what Gil's stories had described. They took a few more minutes gathering up the rest of the mussels from that area. Lagoona had her arms full and turned to Gil, saying, "I'll head up and pry these open with Torelai. You should keep looking around for more of them, just in case." He nodded his head in agreement, already returning to his search. He realized that Lagoona probably was having a more difficult time in this section of the pool with its less salty content, but was touched by her faith in him despite her initial doubt.

Reemerging, Lagoona had to look around a few times before spotting Torelai on the top bleacher, no doubt to keep as far away from the water as possible. "C'mon down. I need you to help me get these open so you can take whatever's inside back to Jackson." Stretching out as though from a cat nap, Torelai was in no way rushing down to help Lagoona, but she did make her way over to her and started to work on opening the mussels.

"This would be so much more enjoyable if we had to look for, say, tuna…" Torelai growled, but nevertheless opened another mussel to find it empty. "Not all of these have what we're looking for anyway."

Lagoona took a deep breath, resisting splashing some water onto the werecat. "Just look. I've got a few of them already and Gill's going to be bringing up more any minute now. We should be able to get at least a handful…" she said, hoping she wasn't being overly optimistic. Shortly, Gil resurfaced with another armful of mussels and they ended up with thirteen pearls for the nearly thirty mussels that they opened. Sighing, Gil and Lagoona were contemplating taking another dive to pull more up while Torelai was experimentally sniffing the mussels, but it didn't seem like they were her kind of seafood.

"You missed the music blaring through the PA system again." Torelai said, noticing how Gil and Lagoona's eyes widened in realization of what that meant.

"Uh oh. Holt's out – who's gonna work on getting rid of this stuff then?" Gil asked, looking to his girlfriend.

"We better just go with this amount then Torelai, just to try and get things from coming to a standstill with Holt trying to do science…" Lagoona said, indicating that it was time for the werecat to make her exit back to the others.

"What? And how am I supposed to do that? I may be nimble, but I can't just fly out of here." She complained, sticking the pearls into one of her jacket pockets.

"What about climbing through the vents back out into the hallway, like Scarah and Jane were doing? You won't have to worry about us drying out in those since we won't be coming." Lagoona suggested, pushing away from the side of the pool to make it more difficult for Torelai to argue with her and Gil. The werecat growled, but started to climb up the bleachers again toward the nearest vent.

"I don't know which way I'll need to be going…" she turned around to face Gil and Lagoona to complain further.

"I can help" Jane's voice filtered out through the vent even though Torelai couldn't see her, causing her fur to stand on end. "Sorry" Jane apologized, " It's just, Scarah picked up on what you were thinking…I can point you in the right direction." Torelai sighed, realizing that there was no way to win this argument. Still, she tried one more time, "Well then why don't you take the pearls back?"

Jane's face appeared behind the vent, although she looked like it was a tight spot for her. "I'm helping Scarah with moving around to get closer to those in the gym. I need to stay with her, but I can give you directions. But we should hurry…" the shy monster urged, backing away from the vent to give Torelai room to climb in.

Gil and Lagoona wished her luck, but got no response from their reluctant partner. They chose to submerge themselves once again, feeling much better in the water after having spent so long in that dry atmosphere. Plus, they were effectively stuck in the pool area anyway. "Hey, do you think we might be able to make it out through one of the tunnels that leads to the fountain by the side of the school?" Gil asked Lagoona. Lagoona turned to him, "That's brilliant Gil! I've got such a smart guy!" she said, elbowing her boyfriend playfully and earning a blush on his face for her efforts. "I know just how to get us there!" she said, leaning in to give him a kiss on the cheek. "Follow me." She said, diving further down into the water. The look on Gil's face was enough for her to realize that those last two words weren't really necessary, as he followed her lead and swam faster to catch up with her.

Torelai missed their exchange, only hearing their splashing as she maneuvered into the tiny vent opening . She followed Jane back to where Scarah was, and told her to head left, with a turn right and then another right before exiting the vent and walking the rest of the way to the classroom.

"Yeah, okay. It should be interesting to see what Holt did to this little science experiment." Torelai snickered. Jane looked stricken at her words and Scarah picked up on that.

"What is it Jane? What have you been blocking from me?" Scarah asked, ashamed that she had been unable to pick up on Jane's distress as she had tried to focus on filtering out all the thoughts of those students aside from the few in the gym she had hoped to reach. Jane bit her bottom lip in her hesitation.

"C'mon. I haven't got your tongue." Torelai goaded, wanting to make her way out of the vents as soon as possible.

"Well…there was no Holt…"she said, trying to find a delicate way of explaining things to the two ghouls.

"Wait, if there was no Holt – and there's always a Holt when that kind of music is playing – then, does that mean there was no…Jackson…either?" Torelai slowly asked, actual concern evident in her voice.

Scarah gasped, reaching the same conclusion. Unfortunately, such a shocking thought as that was harder to keep managed than others, and too late she realized that she had likely shared that information with several other students within her range. One of which happened to be a certain specter intent on detailing and documenting every move of this event to report later. Spectra also gasped and floated up into the vents, her upper half coming between Torelai and Jane. Torelai let out a hiss in surprise but Spectra seemed to just ignore her.

"Oh my! Such a horrible detail!" she said, covering her mouth with one of her hands. "I'll have to relay that to Headmistress Bloodgood!" she said, taking off almost immediately. Jane reached out a hand in a futile attempt to stop her, her hand going straight through Spectra's arm as she shouted for her to wait.

"Oh dear, she didn't hear everything again." Jane said, shaking her head. "I'll admit she has been helpful in communicating with Bloodgood and the outside for us -every now and then-but this could just cause trouble."

"Whatever are you talking about?" Scarah asked. "If Jackson's, if Holt's…I mean if…" she stammered out, trying her best to phrase her statement about the duel-natured monster that was the two boys.

"But that's just it. The others found what they think that other experiment was from research in the library. They think it's a potion that gives the illusion of death, bringing whoever drank it under a, well, sleep like death…we were all kind of hoping that's all this was since Holt didn't show up with the music, but that was when Jackson began to lose the fight to stay awake." Jane rushed out, eager to say things as quickly as possible.

"Huh, then who's going to be making the antidote?" Torelai asked. Jane just shrugged and Torelai rolled her eyes, figuring that she would be finding out soon enough.

"You didn't share that thought with too many people…did you?" Jane asked, shoving closer to the side of the vent as Torelai made her way past, having had enough of this conversation.

"I don't think so…I don't know for sure…oh, dear." Scarah fretted, the two typically shy girls both a little panicked at the idea of what rumors might spread with Sprectra on loose – even if she only had good intentions.

---

"What do you mean it's going to be a little longer before you can try again?" Headmistress Bloodgood was saying into what appeared to be the only emergency landline still working in the school, connecting her to the outside efforts. Rubbing her head, which remained on her shoulders, she sighed. "Fine, but these students are going to try to do something on their own terms if there isn't any significant progress soon. There are a few who are working out how to get the goo contained so the doors can be unlocked, but it's up to a couple of students in the gym to try and maintain the electrical impulses…Well, that's where they're originating from…I'll let you get back to trying again and keeping the students on the roof from attempting any more jumps down from the second floor ledges…"

She slumped in her chair, Nightmare giving a whiny in an attempt to comfort her. "I know, things will work out. There's always something going on here anyway, but at least it seems everyone is still safe and plenty of students have already been evacuated. It's only been a couple of hours, so I shouldn't lose my head over this yet…" she said, gaining an amused snort from her horse at the pun. She had been lucky that there were so many resourceful students that she could count on to help her manage this situation, even if they were also partly responsible too, although she had yet to determine that part. She had hoped that Jackson and the others would have reported back on their progress by now, but it seemed Spectra may have gotten sidetracked. Waiting patiently was not an issue for her, but it seemed the parents outside weren't so patient. A significant portion of the those whose children were already out had remained to help in the efforts to get the others out, a testament to how a crisis can bring monsters of all kinds together, but there were also a plethora of tiny squabbles that had hampered coordination of efforts too.

She looked up as she heard a familiar rustle of chains and saw Spectra come flying at her top speed through her door. She had left it open to pull in a few of the students who had gotten caught in the hallways at the time into her office to explain and direct them either to remain on the second floor or on the roof. She had been impressed by Spectra's offer to provide her with the information she had already gathered, choosing to remain behind despite her ability to simply fly away during one of the barrier's down moments. It was through her that she had been aware of Jackson's efforts to help out his cousin Heath and provide a possible solution. Spectra had reported to her about Clawd and Torelai's questioning of the other students on the roof about Greek fire, and Gil and Lagoona's suggestion, along with the relay of communication between the gym and Jackson's group via Scarah and Jane. It had been touching to see how quickly her students were able to overcome their situation and work together, although she had to resist the temptation to just look in on Heath once she had heard how severe of a reaction he had to the goo. Her responsibilities to managing all the efforts had kept her in her office. Standing back up to talk with Spectra, she was overwhelmed as the ghost ghoul barreled into her in what would surely have taken them both down if not for her spectral biteology.

"Spectra, what happened?" she asked, trying to calm down her student. Spectra looked at her with her wide eyes and blurted out in her whispery voice, "I just heard from Scarah and Jane that something terrible has happened to Jackson and Holt…"

"Oh yes, the music…" Headmistress Bloodgood remarked, thinking back on her inability to keep it turned off as she used the PA system, since she had apparently undone what Holt had fixed in keeping the two systems separate as she tried her best to assist in managing all the systems from her office. "But Holt couldn't have been out for more than a few minutes…" she started, but Spectra shook her head and her arms.

"But he didn't come out and if there was no transformation…there was no Holt…and now, now there's no Jackson either!" Spectra wailed in a voice that could rival a banshee's moan. She may not have been close friends with either of them, but this was still upsetting news.

"Are…are you sure?" Headmistress Bloodgood asked, feeling her stomach drop at the thought of having lost one of her students. There had been a few cases when students had gone missing within the school, but those were short-lived concerns as they always turned up again a few days later at the most. Spectra just nodded her head. "That's all I heard…but Torelai also said something about getting something to finish the antidote, needing to get it back to Jackson. I don't know what they're going to do now…." She trailed off again, unable to keep from floating back and forth around the room. "Do you want me to go over the barrier and let his parents know?" she asked, coming close enough to the headmistress' face so rapidly that she almost caused her to lose it.

Headmistress Bloodgood sighed, looking over at her horse as though Nightmare would have all the answers. Turning back to Spectra, she answered, "It might be for the best if you did, but just wait a little longer before you do – we don't want to cause any further alarm out there. What about Heath? Do you know what his condition is like?"

Spectra shrugged. "To be honest, I just overheard that information and flew off to find you. I can go find out." She offered already floating away. Headmistress Bloodgood nodded and placed her head on her desk, sitting back down in her seat as she watched Spectra float away. Sighing, she asked of Nightmare, "Oh, Nightmare…what am I supposed to do now?"

Her horse just gave her a short neigh and placed her head on her owner's shoulder as though to comfort her. The landline began to ring again and Headmistress Bloodgood seriously considered ignoring it. But she chose to do the responsible thing and answered. "Medical teams? Yes, it would seem like we do need those – there were a few slight injuries in the gym when the explosion happened, but there…yes, I did tell you that one of those students was working on an antidote but we shouldn't be totally reliant on that…"she sighed as specifics were asked for on the other end. "There is a more serious case with a student named Heath Burns having gotten the substance on him and it acted as a slow-moving poison to his system. Yes, the same fire elemental – cousin to the other student I mentioned…Any fatalities?" Headmistress Bloodgood was hesitant to respond, wishing that these questions had been asked earlier so she could have in good conscious answered as she would have before her conversation with Spectra. "It would seem that there was one, but I would recommend against informing the others out there of it just yet. I'll have one of my students fly back over the barrier shortly to tell his parents. This is also the reason why the antidote might take longer than expected since he was the one working on it and also got covered in that substance… " She took a deep breath before continuing what would be a difficult admission. "…The student's name is Jackson Jekyll and Holt Hyde."

She could hear silence on the other end of the phone as what she said was comprehended on the other end. "Could you say those names again?" the woman's voice asked. Headmistress Bloodgood could pick up on the unusual tone in the woman's voice that wasn't as detached as she would have expected from the typical emergency response personnel. She said to the woman, "I'm sorry. I didn't even ask if you were a parent or not, I'm so overwhelmed…are you not one of the emergency personnel that was sent for?"

"No, but my husband is a doctor… Dr. Jekyll…and I'm asking you as calmly as I can with the other parents watching, to say those names again." The woman responded, her voice cracking towards the end.

"Oh, I had no idea…I'm so sorry." Headmistress Bloodgood said. "I haven't been able to confirm it yet for myself, but your son…" she started, but she heard the line cut short after she said the word son. It would seem that there would be no end to the pile up of unfortunate circumstances for that day.

---

"Ugh…I feel totally useless right now." Clawdeen complained, letting her head fall back as she rocked against the back of one the chairs in the classroom. She had been looking through the book with Clawd to try and find anything of use to help with speeding up the time Jackson would be playing the part of Sleeping Beauty, but the play didn't do much else other than to describe the effects of the potion. The two were hoping that Jackson remaining in his more human half for a longer period of time than his more monstrous half had caused those other unknown ingredients in the goo to have this effect, rather than the more poisonous effect that Heath had suffered or some combination of the two that they couldn't notice. Looking over to Heath, Clawd could tell that he seemed to be doing much better despite still looking like he was getting over a bad cold. Abbey hadn't left his side at all and Frankie was a nervous wreck, continuously sending out random sparks from her bolts.

"Yeah, I know, but there's not much else we can do." Clawd said, flipping through the book once again. "We could wait here, or wait in the library, or wait on the roof…"

"I get it – we wait." His sister growled at him, turning to look over at Cleo, siting by Deuce's side. The gorgon hadn't strayed too far from the table Jackson was on, leaning an elbow on it as though expecting his friend to pop back up any second like this was some sort of joke. She might have expected that from Heath, but she knew Jackson didn't have that sort of sense of humor. Even Deuce's snakes occasionally would stretch out to get closer, almost in a puppy-like way.

"I sure hope this is just that magic potion and not, ya'know…"Clawdeen said, returning to her conversation with her brother. She didn't need to finish her sentence, Clawd well aware of what she meant. "It's creepy having him just lying there though…" she said. Clawd nodded along with her.

"Okay, I think we've got it!" Frankie shouted out, nearly knocking Cleo out of her chair as she had managed to startle her out of her dozing state. Deuce turned to make sure she was alright, but Frankie continued to talk.

"All we need now are those pearls that Torelai is supposed to be bringing any time now…" she said.

"Yeah, but is there enough now to give some to Jackson?" Heath questioned. Frankie's triumphant smile almost immediately vanished as she realized that even with the larger quantity they had, they would have to use it all for Jackson's and Ghoulia's plan to work. Heath didn't need for her to answer, getting it from the look she sent him. His hair beginning to flame again, he walked away from the table with the equipment as he fumed. He turned around to say something when it seemed his exhaustion caught up with him as he used his fire abilities, stumbling. Abbey moved quickly to catch him, carrying him back over to the other bench that he'd previously been laying on.

"Ooh, Abbey told you to be staying still, no being stupid. Now you will have to listen to me." She said, forcing him to lay back down and rest. "We can handle everything. Everybody will be being peaches. Just rest or Jackson's work will be for nothing." She said sternly. Heath gave her a look before his face screwed up as he held in laughter. Giving up, Abbey looked at him curiously as he laughed on the bench but did as she told him.

"What I say now?" Abbey said, looking to the others who had similar amused faces despite the situation. Cleo waved her hand dismissively. "Nothing Abbey…everything's peachy." She said, giggling a little.

"Yes. Is what I say" she said, shaking her head when the others wouldn't give her a straight answer. "You are all strange bunch." She said, grabbing a chair to sit next to Heath. "And you be sleeping now, yes?" she directed to Heath, who smiled at her. "Abbey, there's no way I could sleep now. But you're right. Getting frustrated will do no good."

"I know. Better to keep cool." She said, hoping to get him to smile at her again and pleased when her tactic worked. Heath just nodded and closed his eyes, settling himself into a more comfortable position.

"Oh please. You two are made for each other – so many bad puns." Clawdeen said, returning to her slouching position.

Torelai walked back into the room in her usual relaxed gait, walking over to Frankie at the table with the mix. Wordlessly she pulled out the pearls from her pocket and dropped them onto the table for her, and turned to leave when she spotted Jackson.

"Whoa…I thought Jane was just exaggerating…" she said, breaking her stride out the door to double back over the take a closer look at Jackson. "He looks terrible…worse than you Heath." She shot at the fire elemental, who only remained where he was by Abbey putting a strong hand on his shoulder. She too was aggravated by the werecat's typical antagonistic behavior, but could be patient enough to just have her leave now that there was nothing else for her to do.

"Hey! This is my friend you're talking about!" Deuce defended Jackson, standing up from his spot to point accusingly at her. "Knock it off or you're gonna be stuck here for a while too." he threatened, indicating his glasses.

"Alright, alright!" Torelai said, backing away. "I'm heading up to the roof now anyway – I've had enough of playing hero…I was just a curious kitty. He really doesn't look good." She said, genuine concern entering into her voice at the end. "You sure he isn't really…y'know?" she asked, trailing off instead of finishing her sentence.

"He'll be fine." Frankie interjected forcefully from behind. "Thank you for helping." She said, urging her with her tone to take her leave or to make herself useful. Shrugging and shooting Jackson one last look, Torelai made to head back out into the hallway when a camera flash was heard. Cleo stood up and looked around, but was unable to see anything.

"I only know of one person who would be taking pictures at a time like this and not be seen. Torelai, you didn't run into Spectra, did you?" Cleo asked, still looking upward in the hopes of catching a brief glimpse of their flighty friend.

"Uh oh, this could be bad." Clawd said, thinking back on the rumor mill that often spiraled out of control when Spectra doesn't wait to get all the details.

"She popped up – literally- as I was making my way back here with the pearls. Jane was telling me and Scarah what she saw when Scarah let it loose into everybody's minds that something had happened to Jackson. It's Spectra who tends to overdo things. But it should be amusing to…" Torelai was saying, stopping abruptly at the growls she was getting from the werewolf siblings. Smiling sheepishly, she backed out of the door.

Once she was out of sight, Frankie returned to Jackson's instructions, but shortly gave out a defeated whine and leaned against the table and held her head in her hands.

"What is it? Why did you stop?" Cleo asked. Frankie looked back up at her with watery eyes, the stress of everything letting itself come to the surface for her. "Jackson didn't write down the last few steps – he must have hurried. I…I…I don't know what to do. And what if he really is beyond our help? What if there's something else we need to do for him. What if this isn't enough? What if...what if…" she rambled on. Clawdeen got up from her spot to comfort her friend. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, she let Frankie sag into her a little for support.

"Shh, shh. We can figure it out. But let's not wake up Heath…" she said, Frankie looking over to see that Heath had fallen asleep despite what he had said only minutes ago to Abbey. She figured dealing with Torelai had used up his last resort, as it did for most people. "Maybe you and Abbey can figure something out. We have to at least try."

Deuce, who had returned to sitting by Jackson's table, spoke up. "It may not look like it, but he's definitely still here." Cleo looked over at him questioningly. "How can you tell? His heartbeat is so slow I can barely tell it's there even when I know it still should be." She said, unintentionally causing Frankie to let out a desperate sounding whine at that piece of information that she hadn't known, instead of remaining focusing on doing what Jackson had planned to get him to wake up.

Turning back to her friend, Cleo smiled apologetically. "Sorry. But it's true. Spectra's picture is going to convince everyone she shows that Jackson really is dead, and not in a good way…and Heath, well, still sorta looks on the verge of having his flame extinguished."

"Cleo, stop helping." Clawd suggested of the mummy. Looking abashed, she actually took his advice and chose to refrain from any further comments.

"Look, I'm a gorgon. I can tell that he's still here with the heat signature that I can pick up on – it's faint, but I can pick up on it." Deuce said, not doing too much to ease Frankie's concerns.

"That's great and all, with us getting to know more intimate details about each other, but what about getting the antidote done like Frankie said?" Clawdeen asked, trying to get them back on topic so that Frankie wouldn't fall apart at the stitches.

"Okay, this is what I saw him do." Abbey said, coming over to demonstrate for Frankie, who had come out of Clawdeen's hold to try and concentrate. The two of them were talking amongst each other, when Clawd had decided to make a suggestion.

"We thought we would have to spread this stuff out in certain areas across the school where the goo went, right? Maybe we can talk to the others and get more people to help dump it in at the same time once we're finished?" he said, looking at Deuce, Cleo and Clawdeen. His sister seemed to think it over, scrunching up her face as she pondered on how to convince whatever remaining students were still in the school to help out.

"Oh come on. Torelai and Spectra have probably already set rumors flying – we might as well use them to persuade the more…unwilling…students to want to help out." Cleo said, unable to keep from staying quiet for too long. Clawdeen looked at her and shrugged. "That might help us to do this…but we better be careful or it could seriously backfire…"

Clawd made his way to the door, turning back around to talk with his friends. "Well, I know for sure that we can't just keep sitting here. We've got a general idea now thanks to Ghoulia, but we're all going to need to head out with some of the antidote and we have nothing to carry it all in. I'm going to go back to the science labs to see what we can use. Clawdeen, can you come with me?"

Clawdeen rolled her eyes but realized her brother had a point. Even if Frankie was done right now with the antidote, there was no way for them all to spread it out across the school. She wasn't sure what they could use, but looking around was better than just doing nothing. She followed him out into the hallway, both of them promising to be right back. "Wait, we'll come too." Cleo offered, pulling Deuce up too from his seat to leave the room, Frankie and Abbey hardly noticing that they had left.

"Okay, but then how much did he add to what amount of this solution?" Frankie asked. Abbey had a lost look on her face, trying valiantly to remember anything that might give her any clue to that question but all she could do was shrug. "He added one pearl that I had crushed for him into most of what he had – we can only guess at what that amount was…Abbey is sorry. I was focused on Heath." She said, looking away from Frankie to glance at Heath sleeping on the bench. She was sure that the antidote was working, but it still bothered her to see him so unlike his usual loud and rambunctious self.

Frankie sighed again, completely understanding how Abbey was feeling. Stepping away from her work to take a breather, to try and clear her mind of the overwhelming sense of panic, she couldn't help being drawn over to the table that Jackson was lying on. She had to hope that this was just the effects of the ingredients for that potion, as he had turned a shade similar to some of the zombies. She looked over to Abbey who turned her gaze away from her. "I will keep working on crushing up pearls. You do what you need to do." Her yeti friend said, allowing her a brief moment of privacy to reassure herself that her efforts weren't going to be for nothing once this was all over with. Frankie reached out and pulled Jackson a little closer to her and she leaned over him, laying her head on his chest. It didn't seem as though he was breathing at all as she waited to hear a heartbeat. She made another involuntary whine when she wasn't able to hear anything, only being able to assume it was too faint to pick up because of the potion. Deuce had reassured her that his reptilian abilities had picked up on a marginal heat signature, but to see him like this still made her question her boyfriend's condition. She remained in that position for a little while longer until Abbey had announced that she had finished, keeping the powder of each pearl separate so they could attempt at providing the correct measurement for mixing.

Having to pry herself off of Jackson, she was still leaning against the table wiping her crying eyes when their friends walked back in carrying what looked like test tube vials. Cleo and Deuce immediately noticed Frankie's state. "Oh no. What else has happened?" Cleo asked, dropping her load of items onto another table with the others. Deuce did the same and hurried back over to his friend's side.

"Nothing's changed…I just…needed to hold him for a minute. I can't tell if he's breathing and I can't hear his heartbeat. It must be too slow…" she sniffled out, unable to hold back her tears completely any longer. "Stupid potion! What good is it supposed to be?" she shouted out in her frustration.

Cleo and Clawdeen came to stand on either side of Frankie, hoping to give her some support. "Don't worry ghoul. Your boyfriend will be fine. You just need to trust him that what he came up with will work…I know it doesn't look great right now, but let's focus on finishing up so you can wake him up. Alright?" Clawdeen said, hoping what she said would be enough for Frankie to keep pushing forward. With Heath pretty much out of the picture, they didn't need a third person in their group to have a meltdown, even if it was perfectly understandable. Luckily, it seemed to do the trick, and Frankie shook off Cleo's and Clawdeen's hands from her shoulders, standing up a little straighter and walking back over to where Abbey was still standing by the table with the chemicals.

"You're right. Okay…" she said, picking up Jackson's notes. "I think we can figure something out. Let's get finishing up Abbey." She said, taking the offered test tube Abbey had handed to her. Measuring out a third of it with the other two chemical combinations that they had made, she carefully poured in the dust from one of the pearls. A reaction was slow in coming, but a few shakes to the vial produced a glowing rainbow iridescent color within the compound for a brief moment before it returned to its original clear color.

"Oh, I think that's what happened last time too!" Abbey excitedly shouted. "This will be working! We fill up the other containers and spread out around school. We will be out in no time!" she optimistically proclaimed. Frankie and the others were also smiling, giving hushed cheers as Heath moved around in his sleep in response to the noise. He mumbled something, slowly blinking open his eyes to look around.

"Abbey? What's goin' on?" he asked of his girlfriend. The yeti rushed over to her boyfriend's side, kneeling down to be at eye level with him.

"Frankie did it. We made Jackson's antidote!" she happily told him. Her announcement woke Heath up completely, as he started to try and sit up. "Then we can get to doing something." he said, trying unsuccessfully to get up with Abbey pushing him back down.

"No. You stay there or Abbey will freeze you to your seat." She threatened, but Heath gave her an equally stern stare. "Then I'll thaw my way out on my own. I can't just do nothing Abbey!" he said. Abbey's look softened as she took in how much her boyfriend really was a caring person, despite his lack of tact in most of what he said and did. She sighed and looked at his pleading, yet determined face. "I know Heath, you are hot-head. But somebody better be staying with Jackson while we go carry out plan." She said, arguing her case for him to stay where he was but to also stay still so the antidote could be fully effective. She didn't dare think about what might happen if something caused the poison to start acting again. As it was, she didn't think she would be sleeping soundly for a while after being unable to care for Heath as the poison had spread through him while Jackson had worked. Luckily, Heath seemed to understand, or was just too tired still to put up any more of a fight. Laying back down he asked in general, "Is there enough to give to Jackson yet?"

Frankie bit her bottom lip as she contemplated her response. "Well, for Ghoulia's plan to work, we would need pretty much all of it to dry up the goo… but if it works, we can always make more." She said.

"How's that going to help Jackson?! He may actually need it sooner, but we have no way to tell unless he never wakes up!" Heath argued back, visibly trying to refrain from releasing his fire abilities so as to not pass out again.

Frankie slammed a fisted hand down on the table, hard enough for it to pop off. "I'm doing the best I can Heath!" she shouted at him, taking heavy breaths to keep herself from either crying or shouting some more in misplaced anger.

"We know. It will be okay Frankie. We'll work things out." Cleo said from Deuce's side. Frankie looked to her gratefully, swallowing thickly in an attempt to regain her composure. She quickly grabbed her disconnected hand and worked on stitching it back on again.

"Okay then…we should just wait for Jane and Scarah to get back to tell us where we need to pour these concoctions into the goo." Clawdeen said to break the heavy silence.

"Even with all of us – minus Heath – we're still gonna need a few more people to dump out all these vials in the different spots." Clawd said, counting off the vials. The six of them, and maybe Scarah and Jane, would still leave them with four more vials to dump out.

"Since I've been running back and forth to the roof already, I can make another trip and see who else that's still here would be willing to help." Clawd said. "I'll be as quick as I can and…"

"We're here" Jane's voice interrupted Clawd, who jumped a little in surprise as she snuck up behind him. "Scarah needed to stop in the restroom first. I guess this was taking more of a toll on her than we thought."

Deuce looked up from his seat beside Jackson. "Do you think she will still want to help?" he asked. Jane gave him a smile in response. "I don't have to be a mind reader to figure that one out. She's still here, isn't she?" Jane said, walking over to the vials.

"So, we can map out where we need to go and Clawd can see if he can recruit any more help." Frankie said. Cleo looked to Deuce and gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze. "I'll go help Clawd. No offense, but you may need to be a little more persuasive than is typical for you…" she said. Clawd gave her a funny look, not appreciating her evaluation of his people skills that he thought had ended when they stopped dating, but just shrugged. He knew that she probably only offered to do this to help put Deuce's mind at east and he had to respect her for that, following her lead out of the room.

"Alright then. Let's be getting going!" Abbey said, encouragingly. It looked like they might be able to make a difference finally.

---

Gil and Lagoona finally resurfaced in the fountain that was luckily just outside the school's defensive barrier. Climbing out carefully, they were surprised to see how many people were working on trying to get the barrier down.

"Look at all the people from the emergency crews here. This must have been more trouble than usual." Gil said to Lagoona, who was leaning against him as they surveyed the crowd of students, rescue personnel, and parents both contributing and standing by.

"Maybe we should go find someone in charge, let them know that there's at least an aquatic route into and out of the school…maybe tell them everything we know if they haven't already gotten that information." Lagoona suggested. Gil didn't look too thrilled with the idea, but let his girlfriend drag him over to where it looked like things were being managed.

"Hello? Hello? We managed to find a way out!" Lagoona shouted out into the crowd as she and Gil walked over. Having gotten their attention, they were rushed by emergency personnel who were both asking them for information and looking them over for any injuries. Overwhelmed by the sudden massive attention, Lagoona leaned further into her boyfriend as she tried to figure out which questions to answer first.

"Um…" she stammered out, but a high-pitched accented voice saved her and Gil from further scrutiny.

"Lagoona! Lagoona! Get out of my way, I have to get to my friend." A little black and pink head was seen shoving people aside. Although it was more likely that she had just gone underneath everyone because of her smaller size, Draculaura nevertheless was able to get to Lagoona and Gil and crush them both in a hug.

"OOOH. I am so glad you two are okay. We've been so worried. This stuff has only been hurting fire monsters and water creature. Spectra's been going back and forth and we've only gotten about half of all the students out…and…and…" Draculaura rambled as she walked Gil and Lagoona over to where her father and some of the other parents had set up their own independent rescue efforts other than the police and fire departments. "…and now we've had to call in ambulances…What's been happening in there?" she finished.

"Well, Jackson's been able to come up with something close to an antidote. We farmed a few river pearls from the pool for him and hopefully that should be enough to get things back to normal." Gil said, coming over to sit in an empty chair next to Lagoona. "At least that was the plan so far as we know."

Lagoona nodded. "But what about out here?" she asked, looking over to where a fire elemental woman was sitting and sobbing while a fire elemental man was crouching next to her and trying to console her. "Are those Heath's parents?" she asked, turning back to Draculaura.

Draculaura shook her head. "No. Well, that's his dad, but that's his aunt and Jackson's mom. I don't know what happened, but she was helping to coordinate the medical efforts when she just started to break down. I think it was after she talked with Headmistress Bloodgood.

"Oh, well, we should go talk with her." Lagoona said, ignoring Draculaura's attempt to keep her seated. Gil looked at Draculaura and noticed the worried look on her face. "What's wrong Draculaura?" he asked of her. The vampire wrung her hands a little.

"Well…it's just a rumor that I've heard as we've been trying to fly people off the roof. Spectra has been going back and forth…and well…I think something bad may have happened to Jackson." She admitted. "I haven't been able to contribute much since I left before I had a chance to really talk with Jackson about what was going on in the gym."

Gil looked back at the school, noticing that the barrier looked significantly smaller and less thick, demonstrating that there had been some slow progress in getting toward entering the school. "At least it looks like the barrier might be down soon. I guess the school's going to need to update its defense systems in case something like this happens again…" Draculaura sighed but just took Lagoona's empty seat, the two of them watching as she tried to speak with Mrs. Jekyll.

"Excuse me, ma'am." Lagoona said, Mrs. Jekyll looking up at her from her slouched position. Mr. Burns attempted to persuade her to talk with her later, but she put a hand on her brother's arm. "Did you have something to say about Jackson?" she asked in a pleading voice, her eyes redder than usual for a fire elemental.

"Well, I just wanted to let you know how close Jackson is to getting at the antidote – he plans to use something Gil and I went to the pool to get and that should have been the last ingredient if it was…useful. I'm sure he'll be out in no time." She said, giving a nervous smile. "I mean, he was planning on giving it all to Heath to help him since he needed it so badly, according to what Clawd Wolf told me."

She was taken aback when her words seemed to have the opposite effect she was looking for as the woman started to tear up again and leaned more into her brother. Mr. Burns also looked emotionally affected by this news. "Yeah…that's sounds like my son." She said. Lagoona hurried to try and fix her mistake. "Well, he had intended to use the rest to spread over the goo enough to dry it up…um…but I don't know how quickly that might happen since he was turning a bluish-pale color when I last saw him." She tried to chuckle, but everything she said seemed to make things worse as the woman started to openly cry in front of her.

"But I'm sure he's fine…He can handle things. He's being a real hero in there!" she tried one more time, but Mr. Burns just thanked her for coming over and suggested that she just leave them alone for the moment. Lagoona nodded, backing away with a short "Okay. I'm sorry…I didn't mean to say anything to upset her…" Mr. Burns just nodded and turned back to his sister. Lagoona hurried back over to Gil and Draculaura.

"What did I say?" she asked Draculaura. The vampire looked to Gil before answering. Taking a deep breath, she said, "We think that…Jackson…didn't make it." She said, also starting to tear up as she rubbed her arms to try and comfort herself. Lagoona gasped, unconsciously leaning toward Gil for comfort. He wrapped an arm around her and hugged her closer. Lagoona looked back over to Mrs. Jekyll and Mr. Burns, understanding now how what she said might have been upsetting and getting a sympathetic look from Heath's father.

"Let's just hope that he can surprise us again." Gil said. Draculaura nodded, standing up and drying her eyes. "You two okay to stay here?" she asked them. Receiving nods, she was about to walk away when Lagoona called out to her. "Draculaura…I'm afraid to go back over there to talk with them, but…" she said, reaching into one of her pockets, "I still have one of these pearls. Torelai must have dropped it as I was giving it to her. It might work to help save Jackson. I don't know how helpful it will be." Draculaura took the offered pearl and gave her friend a nod to let her know she would do as she asked.

"Hopefully we'll be able to get in soon. We've set up things so if we time it right with the efforts Ghoulia and Robecca are doing, the barrier should be able to be dropped within the next ten or fifteen minutes…I hope." Draculaura said, trying to cheer up her friends who looked as though they weren't sure whether or not staying stuck in the school would have been better than what they faced after getting out. Walking away, Draculaura made her way over to Mrs. Jekyll.

"Please, Draculaura. Not right now." Mr. Burns said, his hair alight in a way that Draculaura could tell how much Heath looked like his father.

"I know. I'm sorry…but, Lagoona asked me to give you this Mrs. Jekyll. It was what Jackson was using as the last ingredient. If there's still hope, maybe you can use it to help him?" she nervously suggested, handing her the pearl in her hand. "Lagoona didn't know about…She didn't mean to…oooh, I'm sorry" she said again, fleeing as soon as Mrs. Jekyll had taken the pearl.

She looked it over and turned to her brother. "At least your boy will be okay. But if I have a chance to get inside as soon as the barrier is down, I'm not waiting." She said. "My husband is on his way. I haven't told him yet, and maybe I won't have to."

---

Clawd and Cleo walked out onto the roof where there were still plenty of other students still waiting around. Cleo climbed up on one of the stone platforms that connected to the doorway and cleared her throat to get everyone's attention. Not succeeding immediately she looked to Clawd reluctantly for some assistance, which he provided with one of his typical howls. No doubt my parents heard that, he thought, concerned that it might get them more worried than they probably already were.

"Thank you Clawd." Cleo said, once she had everyone's attention. "Listen up everyone. The barrier will most likely be coming down shortly if we can have a few volunteers to help get rid of this goo. Jackson and Ghoulia worked out a plan to do it…" she said, holding up the couple of vials that she had taken with her. "We need at least four monsters to come with us and dump these into the goo at specific spots. It will work. Jackson was successful in his…"

"But this already got Jackson!" Spectra said, floating over to Cleo. "I already saw what happened. How can you be sure that it will work if he couldn't help himself?"

Clawd growled a little, hoping to use Cleo's suggestion from earlier to convince her to either back off and let them try to fix this, or to help out.

"Because he was able to save Heath from getting killed by the poison, giving him the antidote he had made instead of himself." Clawd said. Cleo nodded and returned to addressing the other students from her pedestal.

"And that is why we're asking for your help. We only need a few of you to help, but do it for Jackson and Holt. We can save ourselves if we can just overcome our fear and follow his lead." She looked directly into the faces of the other students. "Who's going to help?"

Looking around at the students in the following silence, Clawd whispered to her in a barely audible voice for only her to hear, "Maybe you should say something else…" he suggested. She ignored his suggestion, responding out of the side of her mouth, "No, I need to stare them down. Just wait a second". Shuffling about anxiously, Clawd was debating on whether or not he should try something when Cleo's plan worked.

"I suppose I can help" Spectra said, coming back down to appear as though level with the others standing on the roof. Operetta gave an audible sigh. "Fine…any little ol' thing I can do to help, I will. I'm sure Jackson, and Holt, would do the same" She said, walking over to stand beside Spectra.

"Awesome. Come on guys, only a couple more monsters need to help." Clawd said, Cleo climbing back off her pedestal by using him as support.

"Hoodude, why don't you show that there's more than fluff in you and help out?" Cleo said, knowing that the attention she directed toward him would probably get him all too eager to be involved. As predicted, he straightened up a little more.

"Uh, well…I…yeah. Yeah! I can help" he said, walking forward to stand next to Operetta. "We can be a team" he smiled at the phantom, although she only gave him a small smile in return. She was aware of Hoodude's efforts to make himself likable to ladies, especially since that was how Frankie made him, but she wasn't more than just amused by some of his antics. Still, she was concerned that his zealousness might lead him to goof up the plan. "I'm not so sure about that sweet pea…you sure you're gonna be able to do this?" she asked of him. His large smile faltered a bit, but he just waved his arms around as he responded, "Of course I can. I can do it". Operetta just shrugged and looked over to Cleo and Clawd, hoping they knew what they were getting themselves into.

"Well, I'm always up for a clean-up effort." Venus said, getting up from her seat to join the others. Cleo gave a triumphant nod to the four of them. She handed out her vials and Clawd did the same.

"Oh, I should let those outside the barrier know we're about to do this. That way they can go ahead with their efforts to try again to bring the barrier down." Spectra said, handing back her vial to Clawd. "They think this time it might be successful, especially if they can time it with our efforts. I'll be quick. Do you want me to meet you back at the classroom with the others?" she said, turning to Cleo for answers. Looking to Clawd, Cleo responded with a nod and Spectra flew off.

Cleo and Clawd led the way back down to the second floor and to the classroom where Scarah and Jane were no doubt giving all the details of what Ghoulia's plan was to the others. Walking in, Operetta, Venus and Hoodude got a glimpse of Jackson and let out gasps. Operetta rushed over to Jackson, most affected by his state since she and Holt often spent a large amount of time together with their music. She might not talk as much with him as Jackson, but it was inevitable that the two of them would also get to know one another and become friends in their own right. She and Holt had even gone to a few dances together as friends. "Oh my…is he really…" she started to ask, twang thicker than usual.

"Oh Frankie, I'm so sorry." Hoodude said at the same time, walking over to her and giving her a hug. Venus also looked upset, a hand still covering her mouth as she looked on.

"No. He's not dead. He'll be fine." Frankie said, only briefly looking up from the map that she and Scarah had drawn out on some scrap paper to figure out where Ghoulia thought everybody needed to go.

"But…oh, Frankie…" Venus said, concerned that her friend was choosing not to accept reality. She knew that Frankie's father might be able to reanimate him, but she didn't think that's what Frankie had in mind. Nor did she think that his parents would be agreeable to that option.

"No, she's right." Deuce said, moving from his spot near Jackson's table, having gotten up so Operetta could come over. Operetta looked over to Deuce, with a hopeful yet hesitant look on her face. "There were two experiments that were going on and the other ingredients caused this reaction for Jackson since he's mostly normie when he's, well, him and not Holt…" Deuce tried to explain.

"Long story short, he's under some sleeping potion that makes it look like he's dead." Clawdeen said, crossing her arms. "At least, that's what we're hoping is what's happenin' here. With everything that got mixed, we're just going off of what Jackson was guessing but we've kind of been improvising since he, well, you can see…" she trailed off, uncrossing her arms to motion in Jackson's direction.

"So, what makes you so sure he isn't…" Operetta said, swallowing thickly before continuing, "…dead?" she asked. From what she could tell, he wasn't breathing and he rivaled the tan of a zombie. Deuce sighed and answered, "Because I can still pick up some heat signature coming from him" Operetta nodded, but didn't look all that convinced.

"Okay, everybody get over to map. We pick our spots to drop in antidote. We need to stop talking and get to fixing." Abbey said, moving away from Heath's side. Having got their attention, Venus and Operetta came over to stand next to Frankie and Scarah.

"Whoa. You don't look so great either Heath." Hoodude said, looking sideways at Heath. Rolling his eyes, Heath leaned back on the bench he was sitting on, running a hand through his hair. "Yeah, well, I'd probably be looking like him if he hadn't given me the antidote when he did…" Heath said. "So we should stop standing around…and since there's still one more person needed, I guess I am going to help out." He said, slapping his hands onto his knees to push himself off of the bench. But Abbey was quicker and pushed him back down onto the bench.

"No, you will be staying here with cousin. We can handle it." Abbey said, earning herself a frustrated sigh from Heath.

"Spectra is on her way here." Cleo said, eliminating any further argument from Heath, who just groaned and lay back down on the bench. Abbey smiled at her boyfriend, sympathizing with his eagerness to help out. But she was also determined to make sure that she kept him from hurting himself too.

"Yeah. She just wanted to let the people outside the school know what was going on so we could time things out right." Clawd said. "She probably will be here any second."

True to her word, Spectra came floating back in. "I've let everybody know. We've got about five minutes before they do their part of things" she said, picking up one of the vials.

"Alright. We better get to our spots then." Jane said, showing Spectra the map so she knew where to go. With a vial in everybody's hand, they all headed back down to the first floor of the school and split up, hurrying to their positions. They all barely got to their spots, as Frankie, Jane, Operetta, Clawd and Clawdeen had opted to squeeze themselves into the harder to reach spots. After their five minutes were up, they dumped the vials into the goo as the barrier outside also began to waver.

Cleo gasped and ran over to Deuce, the two of them having stayed toward the farthest edges of the goo. "It's working!" she shouted gleefully as they watched the greenish-yellowish glow from its current start to pulse and the purple portion start to shrink in on itself. Soon enough, they heard similar cheers from their friends, even Hoodude who had been successful in being careful. As it receded back toward the gym, they could hear the locks on the doors automatically releasing and the students who had been stuck in them came rushing out. The barrier also seemed to drop completely and it looked as though their temporary imprisonment might be over. Cleo and Deuce hugged each other, giving each other a kiss and turned to walk back upstairs by the main staircase. As they were walking closer, they could see the barrier start to reform. Deuce groaned at this and looked to Cleo who wore a similar exasperated expression.

However, before either of them could even consider doing anything like running out, the front doors burst open and two fire elementals came running in, a man following behind a woman who was in a mad sprint. "Sydney, wait!" he shouted to her, but she continued up the stairs, ignoring his calls.

"Whoa! Where's she goin'?" Deuce said. Cleo shrugged but shrugged off the arm her boyfriend had draped around her to pull him toward the stairs. "I don't know, but I think we should head back to Heath and Jackson. The goo may be taken care of, but if we're still stuck in here for a little while longer, the others will probably meet us there too." she said. As she said that, Frankie and Abbey came running down from one of the side hallways, Clawd and Clawdeen from the other. Catching their breath before heading up, they agreed to head back upstairs and try to wake up Jackson.

---

Heath had gone against Abbey's instructions but nothing too extreme, since he didn't want to actually leave Jackson alone either. Getting up from his spot slowly, he walked over to Jackson's table and sat down on the bench, leaning his head into his arms on the table next to Jackson's head. "Man, you better wake up, just so I can knock you out myself." He said, closing his eyes and trying to physically relax a little. Hearing footsteps, he assumed it was his friends coming back to either tell him they were successful or that it was back to drawing board to try again.

"Jackson?!" he heard a woman say, and he lifted his head slowly and blinking to make sure he really was seeing his aunt standing in the doorway. Shortly afterward, his father showed up behind her.

"Dad?" Heath managed to say, confused. He hadn't noticed that the barrier was down, but was still thrilled to see his father. "Aunt Sydney? How did you get in?" he asked as she came forward to get closer to her son. Heath's father came over to him and pulled Heath up off the bench into a tight hug, which Heath returned. "Boy am I glad to see you dad" Heath said, smiling into his father's embrace.

"Are you alright Heath? We were told that you'd gotten that poison on you…" his father said, pulling away to check over his son in concern while Mrs. Jekyll was silently crying.

"I'll be okay dad, I'm just tired and sore. But Jackson gave me the antidote and it seems to be working." Heath said, turning to his aunt.

"Aunt Sydney…he'll be okay. Look." Heath said, walking over to pick up Jackson's notes, his father not letting him completely out of his grip as Heath wobbled a little on his feet. But his aunt had picked up Jackson and was cradling him to her chest, hugging him tightly. "No really. Look. There was another experiment and it was supposed to make whoever took it fall asleep to look like they were dead – that's gotta be why Jackson is the way he is." He said, trying to get her to take the notes for her to look over herself.

"But…Heath, honey…he isn't breathing…" she hiccupped as she spoke, "…and…and he has no heartbeat. Even if this was caused by some potion, he may have been like this for…for too long to be brought out of it…" she said, burying her face in her son's shoulder.

"But we can make more of that stuff." Heath said, even though his aunt seemed to be overwhelmed with grief at the state her son was in. "We just…we just need to put it all together and get another one of those river pearls. It'll work." Heath said, his father standing behind him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on, Sydney. You came in here to try, didn't you?" Heath's father said, attempting to encourage his sister. As much as he was concerned for his son, he also cared deeply for his nephew and wanted to comfort his sister in any way.

Cleo, Deuce, Frankie and the others came running back into the classroom, noticing the two additional people who had joined them. Frankie made her way over to where Jackson was being cradled by his mother.

"I know it looks bad…but we have to try." She said to her, eyes watering up again. Since spending more time with Jackson as they got back into dating, she had met his mother a few times and could tell where Jackson had gotten his sense of humor. At the moment though, there was nothing on her face that showed the typical joyful attitude she and Heath's family seemed to share. Sniffling a few times, she nodded at Frankie's words and lay her son back down on the table, letting out a little whimper at the still sight of her son. Turning back to Frankie and picking up the papers, she dried her eyes and looked over the ingredients.

"We still have some chemicals already out. Be ready to make more antidote." Abbey said from her position at the table that was set up with all the equipment. She began to measure out some of the ingredients, having helped Frankie do it the last time. Her affinity may not be in mad science, but she had a good memory and could recall most of what they needed. Mrs. Jekyll gave her a thin, grateful smile and walked over with Frankie to mix the ingredients. "But we will be needing to get another pearl. Is water monster nearby for collecting pearl?" Abbey asked the others, Operetta, Hoodude and Scarah and Jane walking back into the room as Spectra floated inside.

"That's what that pearl that sea monster gave you is for Sydney" Heath's father said, having eased Heath back onto the bench and sat next to him so his con could lean into him. He had noticed how much cooler his son seemed to be and was doing his best to gently warm him back up, unsure of how much of the poison may have remained in his system still as the antidote worked. Heath leaned into his warmth, grateful to have his father here with him. "I'll be okay soon dad. It's been an hour since Jackson gave me the antidote." He said, but choosing not to move away from him either.

Mrs. Jekyll took out the pearl that Lagoona had given her, handing it over to Abbey who had placed the mortar and pestle in front of her to once more use it. As the three of them worked, Heath barely remaining awake, the others sat around the room in the various chairs that were available. None of them wanted to leave right away, even if they felt like they were intruding on a very private family moment for the Burns and Jekylls. Just like the other times, the mixing took a while to come together, seeming to take even longer than the last few times. Looking out into the hallway, Clawdeen noticed that it seemed like there was more activity going on outside and within the school. She got up and walked out into the hallway to look out the window. "Guys! Ghoulia and the others finally got the barrier down! We can get out!" she said, coming back in. But it didn't seem like anyone had any plans on moving just yet, although smiles did break out onto several of her friends' faces.

"Heath, why don't you let me take you down to doctors waiting outside?" Heath's father asked. Heath sat up straighter at that, more awake now. He shook his head, looking over to Jackson. "No. I can't leave with things still like this- dad, please." He pleaded with him. His father sighed, but conceded that they could wait a little longer, just enough to see if the antidote was going to work on Jackson too.

"Okay, that should do it" Frankie said. She was about to fill up the needle that had been used for Heath, hoping that it would be alright to be used again, but Mrs. Jekyll was quicker and had it filled and ready to be used faster than Frankie thought she could have blinked. Rushing back over to her son's side, she injected the antidote into her son's arm and stood back waiting for some reaction. After a few seconds of just watching him, Mrs. Jekyll looked over to Heath. "Do you have to wait long for a reaction too?" she asked, hoping he could ease her worries with a positive answer. However, Heath's widened eyes and stricken look were enough to tell her that hadn't been what happened. Dropping the needle to the floor, she gave out a chocked sob and once more cradled her son in a tight embrace to her chest. Frankie shook her head, looking to her friends for some sort of suggestion but they too had different looks of shock and pity on their faces.

"Sydney…" Heath's father said, reaching out with the arm that hadn't pulled Heath into his side to place a hand on her shoulder; he had nothing left to say to try and console her. She continued to hold him tightly, her hair completely aflame, as was Heath's. Abbey placed a comforting hand on Frankie's shoulder, allowing her to turn toward her and sag into her shoulder as she cried.

"But…I was able to pick up a heat signature from him the whole time since he fell asleep…" Deuce said, not understanding why the antidote didn't have the same immediate effect that they had seen happen for Heath. He was sure that his senses weren't tricking him, but it didn't seem like his friend was going to wake up.

"You said it was a magic potion, right? Maybe it needs, like, an antidote you'd use in a fairytale." Hoodude spoke up from where he had pushed himself into the corner. He got a few incredulous looks and hung his head. "Sorry…just tryin' to help."

Headmistress Bloodgood chose that moment to enter the room, looking as though her head was about to fall off her shoulders even if that didn't happen naturally. Spotting Mrs. Jekyll and Jackson, her face took on a sympathetic look as she made to approach the family. However, she must have changed her mind and instead chose to focus on the students in the room.

"The barrier is down now and I'm sure your parents are all waiting anxiously for you to head out to them." She said with as much strength as she could muster in her voice, trying to provide some sense of order for them to cling to at the moment. "If any of you were hurt, there are a few ambulances waiting to treat you. But I would suggest you head out now." She looked directly at them, hoping they would take her suggestion and leave to give the grieving family some privacy. It looks like Jackson and Holt really did fall to this thing after all- she thought – I had so hoped Spectra was mistaken. But none of the students in the room got up to leave, either just particularly stubborn or just too frozen in shock to move yet.

Pulling away from her son, she brushed the bangs out of his face and gently lowered him back onto the table. "Mrs. Jekyll? Your husband is here, but I wasn't sure where to direct him. I can go get him now if you would like? Have you told him yet, or would you like to me to inform him?" she asked, hoping to aid the woman in any way she could. Mrs. Jekyll nodded her head and Headmistress Bloodgood left to go get Jackson's father. Mrs. Jekyll continued to stroke her son's face, but once the headmistress was gone, she looked to Hoodude and asked, "What sort of fairytale cure were you thinking about?"

Hoodude looked a little panicked at having actually been taken up on his suggestion and having to then provide any additional suggestions. As he stammered to come up with a response, Heath's father spoke. "Sis, you don't even know…" he started but his sister turned to glare at him. "I am willing to try even the most ridiculous thing to get my son back. Wouldn't you do the same for Heath? You were considering all sorts of things when we were still stuck outside and you had heard he had been poisoned and could be dying. So don't…" she shouted, getting more and more visibly angered as she spoke and flames continued to grow from her,"…tell me what I should and shouldn't try, because you have no right to!"

Turning back to Hoodude, who visibly shrank as though trying to disappear, was unable to say anything at the sight of the angry fire elemental before him. Cleo thought about what Hoodude might be trying to suggest and timidly answered, "There's always that whole 'true love's kiss' that's supposed to wake up all those sleeping princesses…"

Pulling herself back together, Mrs. Jekyll put out the flame that she had going and leaned on the table, hand on her head. "I have kissed him, but he's still not awake…Oh, you were right." She said, addressing her brother at the last part. Settling Heath down on the bench, he walked over to his sister, taking her into his arms as she collapsed into him. He guided her out into the hall so that they could meet her husband, Heath's father convinced that they would be dealing with his Hyde side at any moment.

"Maybe we got the wrong play…" Clawdeen suggested once Heath's father and aunt were out of the room. Turning to Clawd, she explained what she was thinking. "Y'know, Jackson said it had something to do with an English play that included that potion from the 16th or 17th century, right? So, when I was looking through the catalog and the summaries, there were a few that had to do with more modern plays that were set in those times…" she said, talking faster as she was coming up with an alternative suggestion. "Maybe…maybe it's a different kind of magical cure. Plenty of them had a mother's kiss, or the boyfriend's or girlfriend's kiss..." She continued. Frankie looked back up from her spot in Abbey's arms.

"I haven't tried yet…but we just got together…we can't possibly know if it's a true love's kiss…" Frankie said. Abbey shrugged. "We know that you care for him great deal. Maybe that is being enough?" she suggested. Frankie looked to Clawdeen.

"What else was there Clawdeen?" Frankie asked. Clawdeen chewed on her bottom lip as she thought. "Well, the more modern one had a different spin on it and required a different kind of bond, since it was all about these two brothers getting over their feud…" she explained.

"Well that doesn't help all that much now does it?" Operetta said from her seat. "He ain't got no brother or sister to give him a kiss!"

"Oh! That might work." Scarah said, looking over to Venus. It appeared as though there had been a silent communication between the two, as that likely had been the case.

"What are you talking about?" Heath asked, weary from everything that had happened. Venus pushed herself off the wall she was leaning on and stood up straighter to explain her idea. "Well, coming from my kind of family, cousins are often close enough to be considered brother and sister too…"she said, referring to the plant kingdom. It suddenly seemed like everyone's eyes were on Heath.

"You think I can wake him up? Not Frankie?" He asked doubtfully. Frankie walked over to him and grabbed his hand to pull him up off the bench and over to Jackson. "Come on. We can both give it a chance…we have to try." She said, Heath still looking doubtful.

"I dunno'…if his mom's kiss didn't immediately wake him up …"he sighed, "…doesn't it have to go both ways? I do love my cousin, but I'm not so sure he…" Heath started but Frankie smacked him on the arm.

"How can you say that?! He gave the antidote to you rather than take it himself." She said, glaring at him. "Of course he loves you too." Frankie took a few deep breaths to calm herself, Heath rubbing the spot on his arm.

"Well, he has two cheeks, so, you could both kiss him at the same time…" Clawd said, earning an eye roll from his sister. "What? Maybe this thing needs there to be more than one person to show Jackson he matters to them? No one here's an expert in this." He defended himself. Clawdeen had no response to that admission that they were just guessing.

"Okay, well, let's give it a try before my uncle gets here." Heath said, walking around to the other side of the table. He and Frankie gave each other a look before they both leaned down to kiss Jackson's face, the others in the room all unconsciously holding their breath as they hoped that it would work. Pulling away, it didn't seem like anything had happened. Clawdeen got up to walk over to Frankie since Abbey made her way over to hug Heath. Cleo also tried to comfort her boyfriend, knowing how affected he was by this, the snakes on top of his head also drooping in their sadness.

"Wait! Look!" Spectra said, coming to hover over Jackson, nearly face-to-face with him. "He's starting to change color!" she said, floating back away as Heath came back over to the table. He looked over his cousin to find that he was indeed not quite the same blue color as he was just a moment ago.

"Jackson?" he asked, grabbing onto his shoulders and giving him a little shake. "Jackson?!" he tried again, a little louder. Abbey came over to stop him from shaking his cousin, afraid that he might hurt both of them if he kept it up. It seemed like all they would have to do was wait a minute and their friend might actually be back with them.

A rumble out in the hallway announced that Mr. Hyde had finally arrived, crashes of destroyed lockers signaling his full-blown temper at the news. Wondering how to tell him that his son might not actually be dead without getting caught in the crosshairs of his anger, Heath made to go out into the hallway. However, Mr. Hyde came crashing into the room, nearly knocking Heath over in the process. He was righted by his aunt who came into the room behind her husband, his father shortly following inside too.

The others had by now thought it best to leave the room as quickly and quietly as they could, self-preservation overcoming their curiosity for their friend. Only Frankie, Abbey, Cleo and Deuce chose to remain in the room. Mr. Hyde had picked Jackson up off the table and had carried him in his arms as he found a chair to sit on. Mrs. Jekyll was whispering to her husband, trying to calm him down as much as she could when it was this half of him that was out. Frankie watched anxiously for Jackson to make any sort of move, looking to Heath who was also watching.

A sudden large gasp was heard, Jackson finally losing the majority of the bluish-tint to his skin and taking in a deep breath. His mother and father looked stunned, Mr. Hyde loosening his hold on Jackson ever so slightly as he pulled away from him to check on him. He and his wife had the same expression of hope on their face. "Jackson, son, come on. You can do it." Mr. Hyde said, petting his son's head and encouraging him to take in another deep breath, to open his eyes to look at them. A few seconds later, after Jackson appeared to be breathing normally again, he opened his blue eyes and looked around confusedly.

"Dad? Mom?" he asked. "What's going on?" he tried to move around a little, but his father immediately pulled him into another hug and his mother let out an elated noise as she joined in.

"Ugh…seriously…the last thing I remember is…Heath!" he said, trying to turn in his father's tight hold to find his cousin. Heath broke out of his father's hold to run to him. "I'm okay, cuz'! You did it!" he said, smiling and having his hair flame up again. "You took your time wakin' up though" he laughed, Jackson also smiling. He continued to look around and spotted Frankie and Abbey standing over by Cleo and Deuce, the gorgon's snakes indicating how happy he was as they twisting around contentedly on top of his head. He shot a smile in their direction, locking eyes briefly with Frankie who returned it with a heartfelt gaze of her own.

Heath's father came up to pull Heath away so that mother and father could confirm for themselves that their son was alright. Mrs. Jekyll had happy tears running down her face now, and Mr. Hyde didn't seem like he was about to cause any more destruction, although his other half would probably have to deal with some nasty bruises on his hands if the blood on his knuckles was any indication to the others. Frankie was unable to hold back any longer, and she rushed forward to also wrap her arms around her boyfriend.

"Oomfph…" Jackson grunted, as she flung herself onto him and crushed him in a hold that might rival Mr. Hyde's in its strength. "Frankie. Too tight." He mumbled out, earning a chuckle from his father. Shooting him a look, he nevertheless wrapped his arms as best as he could around his girlfriend. Still, it wasn't like his usual hugs. She released him and pulled back. "What's wrong? Why wouldn't you hug me back?" she asked in a concerned tone. Jackson's parents and Heath also looked on in concern. Jackson sighed before answering, "Everything feels like pins and needles…I just need a few minutes to wake up completely and get feeling everywhere."

Frankie sighed and let Abbey drag her away, motioning for them to leave with Cleo and Deuce out into the hallway so Jackson could be cared for by his parents. Heath and his father predictably remained in the room. The others had remained out in the hallway, Spectra floating over to them to get answers to their burning curiosity over whether or not Jackson was awake. Frankie gave a silent nod and smiled, causing the others to give out a cheer.

"It might be a few minutes, but it looks like the dude's alright" Deuce said. The others breathed a sigh of relief.

"I don't know about the rest of you, but our parent's will be howling mad if we don't catch up with our sister." Clawd said, wincing a little at the thought of the amount of barking that would accompany them on the ride home.

"Yeah. Better head on out now myself." Operetta said, waving goodbye. The rest of the group also seemed to follow those three's lead and said their goodbyes. Abbey and Frankie were left to stand in the hallway with Spectra, Deuce and Cleo.

"Are you sure you want to wait with us?" Frankie asked Cleo. The mummy just shrugged and leaned up against the windowsill. "My servants are used to waiting on me. I can stay a little longer for you." She said, looking between Frankie and Deuce. She could see a lot of activity going on from the window as people were rushing around with all sorts of strange-looking things to clean up whatever was left of that goo. Standing there, they noticed that Headmistress Bloodgood was walking back over to them, inspecting the damage to the hallway walls and lockers as she passed. "Well, I suppose that's to be expected. Just another thing to take care of." She said, stepping over some plaster that had fallen onto the floor. "Abbey, would you like to head home? I won't be back for a while but you don't have to wait here for me. Maybe you could spend the night at a friend's house so you won't be alone?" she asked of her ward, resting a hand on Abbey's shoulders in sympathy. "I know you were all close with Jackson and Holt, but…" she started.

"But he's not dead!" Frankie shouted. At the pitiful look her headmistress sent her way, she made to explain when Mr. Burns and Heath walked out into the hallway. Heath was arguing with his father about not having to go into one of the ambulances, but it didn't look like he was very convincing to his father. Following them, Mr. Hyde walked back through the door with his son in his arms, his wife right behind them.

"Mr. Hyde, Mrs. Jek…uh, Hyde" Headmistress Bloodgood said, not quite sure what name to address her by with her husband's other half present. "If there is anything you need..." she started, hoping to aid the parents in any way she could, but Jackson turned to look at her.

"We're okay…just, a little dead weight." He said, his father not appreciating the phrase he had unintentionally used in describing himself. Headmistress Bloodgood's eyes widened in surprise as she took a step back, having to catch her head in her hands as it fell off her shoulders.

"Jackson?! How are you…" she began to ask, looking at his parents and then to Frankie, having made the assumption that the Frankenstein monster had carried out one of their experiments that her family was famous for. Frankie just shook her head at the unspoken accusation.

"I will tell all story later, but Frankie and Heath get him to wake up from sleeping potion also in goo. Took longer to figure out and longer to get him awake." Abbey said, gesturing with her hands as she spoke. "But he okay now, yes?" she said, addressing Jackson at the last part. His mother smiled as her son nodded his head against his father's chest, Mr. Hyde already impatiently starting to walk away.

"We're going to bring him over to one of the ambulances with Heath, just to get him checked out." Mrs. Jekyll called out as she walked away with her husband. Stopping briefly, she turned back and jogged back over to Frankie, wrapping her in a strong hug. "Thank you for not giving up on my boy." She said, her eyes watering up again. "I'll let you know when you can come see him as soon as he's better" she said to her and the others, looking at Abbey too in her thanks. She turned and sprinted back down the hallway to catch up with her husband.

"Alright then…" Headmistress Bloodgood said, a look of shock on her face. "Good news. This is wonderful." She said, placing her head back onto her shoulders. "Why don't the rest of you head out and meet up with your friends and parents? I'll…I'll be back out for a while Abbey so if you still want to stay over at a friend's…"

"She can stay with me" Cleo offered, taking Abbey by surprise. Even Deuce looked a little shocked by his girlfriend's suggestion. Still, Abbey smiled and took Cleo up on her offer as Headmistress Bloodgood nodded and continued to walk down the hallway to assess any further damage to the school.

The four of them made their way outside and started their search to see if any of their friends were still on the school's lawn and to find their parents in what could only be described as barely organized chaos as many other students were also doing the same.

Abbey walked off with Cleo who headed toward her waiting liter that she was to be carried home in, giving Deuce a small wave and a promise to call later. That left Frankie standing there with Deuce.

"You think he's gonna be alright now?" Deuce asked her, doing his best to keep from walking over to where he could see the ambulances. Since they hadn't taken off with sirens blaring, he assumed that they didn't need to go straight to the hospital and he might be able to talk with Jackson and Heath later. Frankie was also thinking along the same lines, nodding in response to Deuce's question.

"Frankie! Deuce!" a shrill shout was heard, snapping their attention to the other side of the lawn where they saw Draculaura waving frantically at them from a spot next to what they assumed was a makeshift area where those on the lawn had coordinated efforts as chairs and a couple of folding tables had been set up. They walked over quickly to their friend, noticing Gil and Lagoona once they got closer.

"Boy are we glad to see you all again!" Lagoona said, standing up to give Frankie a hug. Gil nodded, getting up to talk with the others. Turning to them, he looked between Frankie and Deuce about to ask what they knew about what had happened and about Jackson when Draculaura couldn't contain herself any longer. "What happened with Jackson?! We saw his mother and his uncle rush in during the first time we brought the barrier down to the ground, you know, before it came back up again – that was really annoying, it's a good thing Ghoulia and Robecca were able to fix the fused wires – anyway, then his father came and we saw him talking with Bloodgood and he turned into his Hyde side and then, and then we saw him carrying Jackson out after Heath was practically dragged out by his father…" she ranted, waving her arms around in a way that Frankie was sure would have flung her limbs everywhere if it had been her.

"Whoa! Whoa!" Deuce said, catching one of her flailing arms. Gil and Lagoona looked at each other, both guessing he had perfected that skill with Cleo's dramatics. "If Clawd didn't have to leave so soon with his parents then maybe she might be calmer", Lagoona whispered to Gil, earning a small nod from her boyfriend.

"But seriously mates…"Lagoona said, joining the conversation. "What Draculaura said is true. Mrs. Jekyll was crying her eyes out here after some phone call, right Draculaura?" she said, looking to the vampire. Draculaura nodded, asking again, "Is Jackson really…ooh, maybe I should have bitten him when he asked…" she said. Frankie's eyes widened.

"What? When did he ask you to do that?" she asked, but thought better of pursuing that question until this crisis was completely over. "Nevermind. Jackson's not dead. He only…looked it." She explained, although the confused looks on her friends' faces told her she wasn't clear enough. Deuce sighed, attempting to help Frankie explain. "Look. There was another experiment that got mixed into this goo and that's what made it so difficult for Jackson to figure out the antidote. It turned out it was some sort of sleeping potion that would make a dude look like he was dead – no noticeable breathing and we couldn't hear his heartbeat once he was asleep. But we fixed him." He said.

"What? Just like that?" Gil said, obviously looking for more details, as was Draculaura who was still bouncing on her feet in her nervous state. Deuce rubbed the back of his neck and leaned his head back, not really wanting to do anything more than just go home. Lagoona seemed to pick up on that.

"Well, if you're sure that Jackson, and Holt, are still with us, then we'll leave you to explain some more tomorrow." She said, but Frankie seemed to fidget at her statement. "What? What is it?" Lagoona asked, getting frustrated at her apparent inability to speak properly with people today.

"Well, Jackson didn't transform into Holt when the music came on the second time." Deuce said. "I guess he was just too far under the influence of the goo to have it affect him like it usually does. We don't know for sure if that was just the one time or if Holt might be…"he trailed off, thinking about what exactly to say. "…That stuff was poison to Heath, and we just have to hope that this was a one-time thing" he said, shrugging at the end.

Frankie nodded but then she remembered something. "Oh! I nearly forgot!" she said, "Thank you for giving that pearl to Jackson's mom – we were able to make some more of the antidote for him. Hopefully it will have prevented Holt from permanently disappearing."

Lagoona gave a thin smile and gave Frankie another hug. "It was the least I could do." She said. Ghoulia and Robecca came walking over to the five of them, Draculaura letting out another happy squeal to see her friends safe again after having been separated from them.

"You guys did good in there." Gil said, Ghoulia and Robecca waving off their praise. Ghoulia gave out a moan and Robecca nodded. "We were just coming over to say our goodbyes for this evening. I think we could all use some rest. Is everybody okay? Scarah had been communicating with us but she sent us this horrible thought…and well, we were just checking…" she said, implying the question that Draculaura had asked.

"Jackson's still with us. He saved the day with you guys." Deuce said. Robecca laughed. "Oh good. But I think you should give yourselves some credit too – all of you." She said, addressing Gil, Lagoona and Draculaura too. "We were able to fix this together." Ghoulia moaned in agreement, nodding her head as she and Robecca waved and walked away to head to their homes.

"I guess she's right. Even Torelai helped out." Lagoona said, leaning into Gil as they took comfort in one another after having been waiting anxiously for so long.

"Well. I guess we should all be heading home too." Frankie said, taking a deep breath in relief that this was over. "I think that was more than enough after-school time for the week." She said, getting a few chuckles from her friends as they said their goodbyes and went to look for their families.

Frankie walked past the ambulances as she looked for her mother and father, unable to spot Jackson but catching Heath's gaze. He gave her his typical smile and his hair light up, singing the medic who had been checking him over. She laughed, relieved that he seemed to be doing much better and was up to his usual bursts of destructiveness. Heath turned to look back at her once he was done helping put out the flames on the medic's sleeve, this time giving her a meaningful look and a nod, conveying without words that Jackson was going to be alright. She continued to stand there, looking for a way to possibly get closer when she was enveloped in her mother's strong grip and pulled into a hug. She smiled and returned the embrace, glad to be feeling secure once again.

---

School was cancelled the next day as things were continuing to be cleaned up. But it seemed as though the goo, once it had the antidote in it, had actually managed to effectively steam-clean the hallways and the gym. The technical department of the school was able to argue persuasively to the Board of Deaducation that more all-new updated equipment and safety procedures were necessary to be installed, much to the pleasure of those who would get to play with them- even Robecca and her more outdated materials would be given funds to rebuild. All this information was filtered through Abbey, from Headmistress Bloodgood, to her friends as they decided to spend their day off at the nearby park. Deuce and Clawd were tossing a ball around nearby where Gil and Lagoona were relaxing by the pond. Cleo, Draculaura, and Clawdeen were sitting on one blanket spread out on the grass under a large umbrella for shade. Heath and Abbey were laying in the shade by the trees, cuddling next to each other, as Frankie and Jackson did the same nearby. Heath was looking as though nothing had happened, back to his usual self, but Abbey was determined to make sure that he really was feeling better by simply holding onto him and making it difficult for him to really do anything, not that he minded the extra attention his girlfriend was giving him. If anything, he played up a few things just to get her to dote on him, which she did even if she was well aware that he was being difficult with her to get some affection.

It seemed that Frankie's compromise with Draculaura about filling her in on all that had happened wasn't necessary, since the vampire called Clawdeen almost as soon as she got home and got all the details from her and Clawd, whom she spent another hour with on the phone before her father forced her to hang up. Frankie chuckled at that thought, knowing that only her father would have been able to get her to halt her conversation with such gossip. She watched as Draculaura continued to want more details from Cleo, who was more than happy to detail her part in the rescue efforts if the way she was holding herself was any indication. Frankie had wondered why the others hadn't joined them in the natural shade, but guessed that it had something to do with how Draculaura wanted to use her enormously oversized umbrella again, as she hadn't had the opportunity to use it fashionably in decades.

Clawd passed a harder toss than earlier to Deuce, who stumbled into the girls. "Hey!" Cleo said, redoing the bandages on her arm that Deuce had accidentally caught the end of and started to unravel his girlfriend. "Oops. Sorry babe, accident." He said. Cleo just rolled her eyes and continued to fix her bandages before she unraveled completely. She may not need to be completely wrapped up like her father, but with the way things had been going, she wasn't going to leave anything to chance.

"Hey, Abbey, you sure you don't want to go hang with the ghouls for a minute? I can go toss a few rounds with the guys if…" Heath tried to smoothly suggest in the hopes of getting in on some of the fun. Like his cousin Holt, he didn't really seem able to stay still for too long of a time. Unfortunately for him, Abbey wasn't budging and chose to snuggle closer to him. Sighing a little, he wrapped his arm around her as he resigned himself to staying put. He had hoped that convincing his parents – and Jackson's – that getting out of the house with their friends for some fresh air might let them do more than just lay around like they were restrained to doing at home. He looked over to Jackson who was in a similar predicament and only received a small shrug in response. Heath rolled his eyes, "How are you doing over there? Still out of whack?" he asked.

Jackson winced at Heath's wording, aware of why he decided to shift the attention back onto him. As expected, Frankie looked up at him questioningly. "Thanks for that Heath…" Jackson growled, to which Heath responded with an echo of the shrug Jackson had given him.

"I thought you were all checked out?" Clawdeen said. Jackson nodded. "Yeah, there're just a few things I need to be careful about the next couple of days as the potion – not the magical portion – works its way out of my system." He said, trying to sit up straighter only to have Frankie push him back down. "Honestly, it's nothing too bad or else my parents wouldn't have let me out of their sights at all today. As it was, I had to go through the same thing with my dad again once it wasn't his Hyde side I was talking to – I think that side of him might actually have been worse. His Hyde side didn't transform back until after I had fallen back asleep and he woke me up again…and again…and again…during the night even after mom explained everything to him." He said, fidgeting around in the grass a little.

"I can't say that I blame him." Draculaura said. "It must have been awful for him – both sides of him. Especially the side that's human, since I'm guessing he still thought you were…y'know…when he transformed back." She said, Jackson nodded.

"Do you remember what it was like at all?" Clawdeen asked, curious. Jackson paused as he thought back on his experience. Frankie rubbed her hand comfortingly on Jackson's arm, doing so to help herself too. It would seem dating a normie – even a half-normie – was going to be full of all sorts of mishaps as he tried to live within the monster world.

"It was…eerie. Not transforming into Holt…" he began, only to have Draculaura interrupt with another question. "Have you been able to let him out at all yet?" Jackson backtracked to be able to answer. "Yeah…I think it was about the third time I was woken up last night by my dad who isn't exactly the quietest person in the world no matter what side of him is in control. He accidently set off the radio on my alarm clock and then…I'm assuming Holt made an appearance as my parents said, but that's about it on what I can tell you – we didn't get around to leaving notes for each other last night." He said.

At this point Deuce and Clawd had finished up with their game and had come to sit next to their girlfriends. "What are we talking about?" Clawd asked as he pulled Draculaura into a hug, her giggling at his gesture.

"Jackson was about to tell his about what it was like playing Sleeping Beauty" Clawdeen said, earning an unamused look from Jackson. "What? It's appropriate since Frankie kissed you awake." She said.

"Hey. I was there too" Heath interjected. Jackson just groaned and tried to hide his face by curling in on Frankie. Frankie just laughed, pushing Jackson off so he could continue. "Come on. It might help to talk to us. We're all here for you. You should know that by know." She said, smiling at how adorable he made himself look as he gave her his best begging face to get out of talking about how awkward things were for him. Fortunately, the girls' phones went off and they all checked them, wondering why their Ghostly Gossip alert would be going off today. "Oh my Ra!" Cleo said, covering her mouth with her hand as she and the others stared at their phones.

Used to her typical dramatic outburst, Deuce rolled his eyes but asked what was wrong anyway. Frankie handed her phone to Jackson so she could see. Taking a look, he could see that it was apparent that Spectra had been busy putting all her research from yesterday into a story…with her typical artistic license. Jackson scrolled through the text and pictures, pausing as he looked at one of them and readjusting his glasses as though to make sure he was seeing things correctly. "Well that's creepy. How did Spectra…why…ugh…"he stammered out. It seemed she just couldn't help herself and had put every single one of the many pictures she had taken onto this particular blog entry, including the one where Heath was passed out on the bench next to Abbey and he had been laid out on top of the table. "Why did you guys put me on the table like that? Clawdeen's right to call me Sleeping Beauty like that" he groaned, leaning back onto the ground and covering his face with his hands in his embarrassment.

"If you think that's bad, you haven't heard all that was in those pamphlets from our health class…" Cleo said in a light-hearted teasing voice. She laughed as Jackson just groaned again, as Heath laughed at the good-natured torment of his cousin.

"Anyway, you can deal with this later dude." Deuce said, doing his best not to outright laugh. "What were you gonna say? I'm curious too." he handed Cleo's phone back to her after he briefly scrolled through the blog, Clawd and Gil also looking at their phones. "Oh look, we're in a picture too!" Lagoona said, pointing out her and Torelai working on opening up mussels by the poolside with Gil carrying an armful more. "She could've helped out then too…" Gil muttered, Lagoona shaking her head in agreement on that remark.

Frankie nudged Jackson to get him to take his hands off his face. "Fine" he said, sitting upright once again. He took a deep breath and started to describe what the sleeping potion did to him. "Well, it started with just feeling colder than normal, you three were still there for that part." He said, addressing Gil, Lagoona and Draculaura. "After that, it was like there was something stuck in my throat that I couldn't quite breathe around. It's why I was coughing so much. And I was tired, just like you Heath. After the music went off, I felt really lightheaded and had a hard time focusing as the music just sort of, drifted over me like I was under water. I tried to stay awake but I couldn't keep my eyes open. Then…then…"he trailed off, taking in another deep breath. "It was awful. I could feel my breathing start to get shallower and how my heart started to beat slower and slower…it hurt." He said, rubbing his chest as he thought back on it all. Frankie had at this point latched herself to Jackson's side, visibly starting to get as upset as she was at the time it happened. "After that, it was like when your foot falls asleep. No real feeling but still some sensation. I could tell when you picked me up and I could hear you, but I couldn't make out what you were saying. I knew you were next to me, but the only time I felt like I was still…there…with you, was the occasional touch to my hand or shoulder. I think you may have hugged me too at some point," he said to Frankie, "…before my mom came in." he finished. "Did you?" he asked.

She blushed and tried to think of how to tell him she was checking to see if he was really alive or not. As she nodded, Abbey seemed to think she needed some help and filled in for her. "She checking on you. See how you were doing. Placed head on chest." The yeti said, causing everyone to turn to Frankie. She sheepishly smiled at him, but luckily no one wanted to press her any further.

"So you really couldn't hear my heart or anything?" Jackson asked her. With her shake of the head, he seemed even more curious. "Well then, how come you didn't think I really was actually…"he said, waving his hand around to get his point across.

"Deuce here can pick up on heat signatures, you know." Cleo said, thrusting Deuce into the spotlight of the conversation. Noticing everyone's attention on him he gave out a nervous laugh.

"I didn't know you could do that…I mean, I guess I should've since snakes can…but you never said anything about it." Jackson said to his friend. Deuce just shrugged in response. "You never asked, dude." Jackson made a face that was the equivalent of saying 'fair enough'.

"But here I am and I don't think I actually thanked you guys for not completely giving up on me" Jackson said. "Is story time over now or do I have to undergo further embarrassment?"

"Hey, it had a happy ending. The hero came to rescue you." Heath said, causing Jackson to grab one of the juice packets he had had brought with him and fling it at Heath. The fire elemental just laughed and picked it up off the ground to take a drink from it.

"Seriously? Would you stop with that?" Jackson said as the others also chuckled. "Maybe he was talking about Frankie?" Clawdeen teased the two of them. "So what was the point of those things from health class then if you already know how to take care of him?" she asked of Frankie who started sparking a little from embarrassment, causing Jackson to shift a little away from her to avoid getting shocked. "Hey, I'm not a pet!" Jackson said, smiling at the easy tone between all of them.

"You still haven't been told about those things then, huh?" Lagoona asked, taking a bottle of water for herself and passing another off to Gil. Jackson shook his head, scooting back closer to Frankie once she had stopped sparking at the bolts. He wrapped an arm around her and leaned back into his previous reclining position, with Frankie resting her head on his chest. No one needed to say anything about their position, but it was obvious what Frankie was doing as she snuggled up to her boyfriend after all he had to say from his perspective. Picking up on where Lagoona was going with the conversation, Cleo smiled and casually repeated everything that she had read off to Frankie and Deuce when they were in the library, looking increasingly satisfied with the look on Jackson's face. Draculaura and Clawdeen also giggled, sure that Ghoulia would also have found it amusing if she had been able to join them.

Jackson sighed. "Frankie, I know you mean well…but maybe that's enough special attention for me?" he said. "Holt causes me to be in the spotlight unexpectedly plenty enough, thank you." He tightened his hold around his girlfriend as he said this, giving her a hug to show that he did appreciate all of her efforts to make him feel included among the other monsters at school.

"But some of that's got to be true with the way you two are." Lagoona said, playfully goading Jackson and Frankie but also curious as well. "Frankie's always smiling when she's around you…or after spending time with you…or thinking of you…"Cleo added, watching the blush spread on Frankie's face.

"So? Aren't you the same with Deuce or your friends?" Jackson said, saving Frankie from having to answer in her embarrassed state with her typical rambling to find a response in time. "Those papers may have said that hanging around with a normie would make a monster happier and feel more inspired, but isn't that really just what a good friend will do?" he said. The others paused their teasing, thinking about what he said.

"Wow. That's deep. Don't overdo it cuz'" Heath said, gaining a poke from Abbey. "Stop poking me already! I'm not doing anything!" he protested to her, but she simply smiled and laughed at his expression. She hadn't said much all that afternoon, but that was typical of her and she more than made up with it by those little touches every now and then that she gave to Heath.

Draculaura giggled, snuggling up next to Clawd as she thought about what Jackson had said. "Yeah…Still, being around a normie does make our group feel a little better. We shouldn't have kept you so distanced as, well, you, instead of always asking for Holt." She said, asking for forgiveness with her eyes. Jackson rolled his eyes. "Don't worry about it Draculaura. I get it. You're just more comfortable in dealing with Holt 'cuz he's more monster than I am – you can better guess what he'll be like, y'know, as much as anyone can guess with that guy." He said. "But maybe it'll help with easing up on the teasing in the hallway…or just make it easier for Manny…" he said.

"Hey. I've talked him out of his bullying ways with you a number of times." Heath said. "He just can't help it, being a minotaur and all, but he's trying…I think." He said in a poor defense of his friend. It was difficult balancing his friendship with Manny knowing how much he tormented his cousin at school, but luckily Iris had filled up most of Manny's otherwise free time in the hallways.

"Speaking of Manny," Gil said. "Anybody seen him since the whole thing at school? Lagoona and I were up on the roof for a while but we didn't see him there."

Heath thought about it. "We split up after I went to the creepateria. He was gonna try to get out through the catacombs – thought he could make a break for it by leaping over the goo before it had spread too far."

Clawd also looked like he was trying to remember if he had seen his friend at all. "Well, maybe we should call him later. If he was in the dark, it might have been tough for him to see through the labyrinth that those catacombs form." He said, pausing as he reflected on just what he had said.

"Oh no" Heath said, leaning his head back onto the ground. The girls knew exactly what he meant if their encounter with him in the cornfield maze was still true for the minotaur.

---

As it was, they weren't too far off from the truth as the catacombs under the school were in pitch darkness save for the occasional glow from the bugs and smaller creatures that lived in the catacombs. Drips from the pipes could be heard echoing around this particular chamber as everything else was eerily silent. All except for the frustrated yet sad-sounding whine. "Ugh…I hate mazes…"

A cracking sound began to echo from above and slowly more light was let into this particular area of the tunnels. "There you are Manny." A feminine voice said, a female minotaur's head peering through the circular opening that the removed manhole left behind. "Come on! Mom's about to knock the house down waiting for you…" she said, extending her arm to her brother.

Manny sighed. "Fine…Just…don't tell the others I got lost. Again." He said, taking his sister's hand and climbing out of the catacombs. Minny just laughed. "Only you Manny…By the way, someone called Iris called the house a few times…" she said. Manny's pathetic look instantly dissolved into one of happiness. "She was the one who thought you may have taken a wrong turn in the catacombs." Minny finished, explaining how she knew to find him.

Manny smiled as he took out his phone, the battery nearly dead from having used it as a flashlight in the dark. While his mother and father wouldn't be too pleased with him for having taken a trip though the catacombs, he thought it might be possible for him to get something to eat and clean up a bit in time to take Iris out on a proper date.