Disclaimer: I don't own Gargoyles; Disney does. No trademark or copyright infringement is intended. I make no money from this. Story concept by Mentoria, on commission. All the flaws are mine.

Rating: T for language, gore, scary situations

Summary: A Halloween tale from Castle Wyvern. Alex exacts some revenge, Lex loses some guests, and Brooklyn gets spooked. 89% crack.

Notes: Takes place in the cartoon universe, post-Goliath Chronicles.

Shrunk

By probablyquantum

CHAPTER 2: The Party

Brooklyn folded his wings over his shoulders to keep the crisp, autumn breeze at bay. The castle was bustling with guests, and he still wasn't used to the idea. Sure, it was great that the humans felt comfortable enough to throw a party at the Eyrie, but being surrounded by so many enthusiastic humans was disorienting sometimes. After years of being hated and misunderstood, it was difficult for him to cope with all the warm and fuzzy acceptance.

Of course, Halloween among Xanatos's crowd meant domino masks and traditional masquerade attire. The costumes did little to conceal identities, much less species, so in Brooklyn's opinion it missed the point of the holiday entirely. He and his clan weren't wearing costumes at all, just fancy clothes that Xanatos had had custom-made for them.

At least the adolescents and children had enough style to have real costumes. At Lexington's suggestion, the clan's P.R. team had invited all the children of the guests. The adults were mingling on the terrace while the younger crowd was inside the keep, where the haunted house had been constructed the week before.

He nodded to Lexington, who followed him into the great hall. They went into a small room to the right of the haunted house's entrance. The office was small, but big enough for the two smaller gargoyles to sit in front of an array of computer terminals. He and Lexington were supervising the special effects, some of which Lex had designed himself.

Beside him, Lexington grinned with pride. The house had turned out to be a maze of true horrors, according to all the relevant human customs about Halloween. Brooklyn had come up with the idea that it would be vampire-themed, which seemed to be all the rage among humans that year. So he'd set up the house like a castle-within-a-castle, and the guests would wind their way through the halls dodging actors and robotic bats alike. The final destination was the main resting chamber for the vampire, and the guests had to drive a stake through robot Dracula's heart in order to leave.

It was brilliant, even if he did say so himself. Still, monitoring the guests from a cramped office wasn't as fun as he thought it was going to be. After the first few groups went through, it got to be routine, even though Brooklyn tried his best to crack vampire jokes.

He was beginning to think there was no reason to keep an eye on things at all when he noticed five teenagers pausing by the cages of werewolf guard dogs. They didn't look like they were getting along. He turned around and nudged Brooklyn, who turned out to be reading a graphic novel.

"Hey, check this out," he said after Brooklyn ignored the poking.

"What?"

"I think there's going to be a fight."

Brooklyn sighed and peered over his copy of Y the Last Man. He looked at the screen where Lexington was pointing. "Where?"

"There." Lex looked back at the monitor. The humans were gone. "Huh. They were just there . . . maybe they moved on to the next room?" He scanned the other views of the house, though, and he couldn't find the same group of five people. "They're gone."

"Spooky. Very funny, Lex."

"No, really, they were—"

"Uh huh. Just watch for real trouble, okay?"

Lexington frowned as Brooklyn turned his attention back to the book. He crossed his arms and stared at the view of the werewolf cages. Maybe he had just imagined it.

The haunted house was pretty cool, Margaret had to admit. Her mother said some of the gargoyles had designed it with help from Xanatos's vast resources and staff. That alone had made her excited, and the result hadn't let her down. It wasn't revolutionary or anything—a standard haunted house where people and robots jumped out at you—but it had flair, and a sense of reality that Margaret couldn't shake. Maybe it was because it was a castle inside a real, ancient Scottish castle that made the special effects and actors seem more believable.

She felt Andrew slip his hand in hers. She smiled politely and allowed it, even though the guy's hand was a little clammy. He was cute enough, she supposed, but she was only going out with him as a favor to a friend of hers she'd met from the People for Interspecies Tolerance. He was the child of one of the members, just like she was. Somehow, that made people think they belonged together.

At least Andrew seemed excited about the date, even though he'd brought his little sister. "Little" was harsh, Margaret knew, since Alice was only two years younger than them. But that put her into the "eighth grader" category, and there's nothing that will cramp a sophomore's style more than that.

Still, Margaret was at heart a sweet person, and she was at least going to pretend like she wanted to be on a date with Andrew. Being nice didn't mean there had to be a second date, after all.

And besides, there were benefits to being seen at the hottest Halloween party in all of Manhattan with a more-attractive-than average date, sister or no sister. She smiled as she thought of what she could tell her classmates the next day. They would be positively green with envy.

The party wasn't bad, either. She was worried it was going to be one of her mom's stuffy, over-the-hill affairs for bored socialites. But it seemed the gargoyles wanted a younger crowd around, especially since there were more adolescent gargoyles than adults in the clan. She'd met them once, briefly, when they'd attended a PIT meeting.

They were passing by a room filled with cages. As she walked near one, a snarling wolf leapt at the bars, its eyes glowing. She yelped grabbed Andrew's arm (to his delight, she was sure). It took her a second to realize that it was just a robot. But it wasn't a wolf, she realized; it was a werewolf. Kinda cool.

Alice had jumped, too, and the two girls giggled nervously when they realized they'd fallen for the oldest trick in the haunted-house book.

"Thought you liked monsters." It was a guy's voice, and for a second she thought Andrew was making fun of her. But the way Andrew twisted around to look behind them made her realize that the voice belonged to a stranger.

She turned and saw two guys there. They had to be in high school, too, but she couldn't tell how old they were. Probably juniors or seniors, if she had to guess. They were dressed like . . . well, kind of like Indiana Jones. They had white shirts, khaki pants, and ridiculous hats. There were bloody stakes stuck in their belts, though, so they must be vampire hunters. They were smiling behind two sets of perfect, white teeth, but they didn't look nice at all.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Andrew asked, his arm winding its way around Margaret's shoulders, as if she needed some man to shelter her. She considered shrugging him off, but that would probably just make the two newcomers happy.

"You're part of the P.I.T. posse, right?"

"Our parents are," Margaret said. "I take it you're not?"

The guy who'd spoken, a blond guy with way too much hair gel, slipped his hands into his pockets. "Nah. The old man does business with David Xanatos."

The brunet next to him smiled. "I'm Preston Wentworth. This is my brother James." The blond one nodded.

Margaret narrowed her eyes. She knew the family, at least by name. James Wentworth the Third was their father. Everyone in P.I.T. knew Wentworth had been one of John Castaway's favorite Quarrymen, probably because the Wentworths could foot the bill for two private armies if they wanted. Why he was here, Margaret couldn't fathom. "The name's Margaret. This is Andrew and his sister Alice."

Alice waved half-heartedly.

James's smile faded from his lips. "I know who you are. You didn't answer my question, though. I thought you liked monsters."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Margaret snapped. She knew what he meant, but she wanted him to say it.

"I'm just making sure we're being consistent here. If you're really okay with gargoyles, I don't see why anything in this house should scare you."

"What? So maybe I'm a hypocrite? Is that what you're getting at?" Now Margaret did shrug off Andrew's arm by stepping forward and crossing her arms over her chest.

"You said it, not me."

"Well, it's better than being a terrorist."

The brothers smirked, as if they'd practiced it. "Not in my book," James said.

"Well, you shouldn't believe everything you read," Margaret snapped. "Especially if your father wrote it."

"I don't know what you mean," Preston said haughtily.

"Like hell you don't."

"Listen, listen," Preston said, holding his hands palms-up as a gesture of peace—and Margaret knew immediately that she would never like Preston because he was the type of person who would repeat words like that. "I was just clearing up some confusion, that's all. You've got to admit it's a fair question. I mean, Jim and I were talking, and we don't really see the difference between a gargoyle and a werewolf."

"Except that the werewolf is in a cage," James cut in.

Preston grinned. "Right, so it seems like you'd be less afraid of the werewolves."

"If you're being internally consistent, anyway," James added.

Ugh. They even finished each other's sentences. Margaret was about to retort—or maybe just roll her eyes and walk away, she hadn't decided—when Andrew did something awesome. Margaret blinked, and then suddenly Andrew's fist was slamming into Preston's jaw.

Even she would admit to being impressed, but that didn't solve the problem of two muscled guys against one scrawny guy, no matter how gutsy the latter was. And there was no way Margaret was going to join in the fight. She grabbed Alice and tried to back away, but they were backed against the wall.

Meanwhile, Puck was minding his own business, which happened to be the three-year-old Alexander Xanatos. Alex, however, was never one for minding his own business.

[Several years into the future, ten-year-old Alex rolled his eyes and tried not to look embarrassed as Puck recounted the tale. The fae was really not helping his reputation.]

Alex had wandered away from his diligent guardian and was watching the exchange between the five teens in the hall below him. The haunted house didn't have a ceiling, and it was a simple matter to peer through the balcony railing at the werewolf room below.

While Puck was looking for his charge, Alex was getting annoyed with the two boys. When the third, skinny boy punched the blond one, Alex giggled in delight. He wanted to help out, so he lifted his hand above his head and envisioned the results.

Preston and James thought they were big and bad, so they should be taught how it felt to be small and weak. The air around his hand shimmered.

Then something went wrong. Instead of just the two bullies disappearing, all five teens blinked out of existence.

Oops. He turned around and looked for help. Sure enough, Puck was there to rescue him.

"There you are, little one!" exclaimed Puck, who scooped Alex up into his arms. "What have you been up to?"

"I missed," Alex tried to explain, but Puck's reaction wasn't what he expected it to be.

Instead of fixing the problem, his teacher just shrugged. "You miss your mother and father? Well, come with me, and we'll crash their boring party."

Alex craned his neck to see the empty werewolf room, but soon Puck had carried him far away from the railing.

Too bad, he thought, and then promptly forgot all about it.

"No, really." Lex frowned. "There were kids there."

"Uh huh."

"There were."

Brooklyn narrowed his eyes. "Were not."

"Were."

"Were not."

"You're a kid."

"Touché." Brooklyn sighed. "Fine, they were there. Well, they went somewhere. Maybe they're just in a blind spot and the cameras didn't see them."

Lexington bristled. "I designed that camera system myself. There aren't any blind spots."

Brooklyn stood up, finally defeated. "Of course there aren't. Okay, fine, they disappeared. Let's go look for ourselves before we tell anyone that, okay?"

Margaret blacked out for a second, and when she opened her eyes, she was staring at . . . well, she was staring at the other four people, who were staring wide-eyed at each other. But where they were, she had no idea.

The stone floor was very uneven, and there was a thick layer of dust and dirt beneath her feet. Next to her, there was even a small log just lying in the middle of the room.

And the room itself was huge. She looked right, then left, and then up and almost fell down. She couldn't make out any details in the ceiling. It was so high that it should have been the sky, but it was obviously made of stone and wood. A strong wind nearly knocked her down.

The guys stopped their fistfight in favor of looking around in wonder. Alice still clung to her arm, her nails digging into Margaret's skin. The girl's eyes were wide, and she was gawking at something in the distance.

"Alice?" Margaret asked. "What's—what's wrong?"

Alice didn't answer. She just kept staring past the group to something in the distance. Margaret turned and saw a wall behind them. It was the only wall she could see in any detail. There was something off about it, though: the wood was very coarse, with deep lines in the wood and giant splinters sticking out in weird places.

There was a large metal disk in the wood, too, and Margaret wildly wondered if it was a door. It had been silver once upon a time, but now it was partially coated with black grime. She'd never seen anything like it before. Maybe they had fallen through a trapdoor in the haunted house, and this was a planned section. Maybe the walls and ceiling weren't that far away after all. It was probably all done with mirrors, she decided.

She was going to explain that to Alice when she blinked and looked at the metal disk in a slightly different way. She tried very hard not to scream, so she squeaked instead.

"What?" Andrew turned to her.

"It's a screw." She was going crazy, she just knew is. "That's a screw, and it's . . . really . . . big."

The look on Andrew's face said she'd finally lost it, and Margaret couldn't blame him.

"Uh." Preston pointed in the opposite direction. "So're they. Big, I mean."

Margaret was afraid to turn around, but she knew she had to. Alice's vice grip on her arm got impossibly tighter when they saw what Preston was pointing at.

Bearing down on them was the biggest gargoyle she'd ever seen. And she didn't mean four-times-her-size big. He was thousands of times her size, a true giant coming down the hallway. It looked like Brooklyn, and Lexington trailed behind him.

"Everything's bigger," Alice finally whispered.

"No," Margaret said after a pause. "I think everything else stayed the same size. We're the ones who are different. We're . . . still in the werewolf room," Margaret said. As she spoke, she knew she was right no matter how crazy that sounded.

The others were quiet as they watched the two gargoyles get closer. When their steps started disturbing the dust and sending gusts of wind their way, Margaret realized that they were soon going to have a problem on their hands.

She wasn't the only one to think of that, thankfully, because James started backing away. "Um, the green one's coming this way. Maybe we should, you know . . . run?"

Margaret exchanged glances with Andrew and Alice, both of whom had gone pale. They looked like they were having trouble thinking.

She looked up at Lexington, who was a lot closer than he'd been a second ago. In fact, he was way too close for comfort.

Then he looked down, and Margaret thought they were all saved. She smiled, but only for a second. He was trying to step on them! "Right. Run!"

She grabbed Alice and Andrew and started running for the wall. She could hear Preston and James coming behind them. There was a small space under the wooden plank, and she rushed the four others into it before her. "Go, hurry!"

As Margaret ducked down after them, she spared a glance over her shoulder and saw Lexington's foot just a few inches above her. With a gasp, she flung herself under the cage and rolled out of the way just in time. She heard a terrifying thud as the gargoyle's foot hit the floor just a few inches away.

Lexington and Brooklyn had made it through a third of the haunted house again. "Are you sure you'd recognize them again if you saw them?" Brooklyn asked.

"Yeah, positive."

Lexington walked over to the werewolf cages. He couldn't help but admire his handiwork as the machines inside the cages growled and strained against the bars when he approached. "They were right here one second, then gone."

Brooklyn shrugged. He was getting a little worried because if Lexington said there wasn't a gap in the surveillance cameras, then he'd bet anything that Lex was right. "They probably went on ahead. Let's check the next room for a problem with the cameras, okay?"

Lexington hesitated. He gave the room a once-over, but the only signs of life were a few ants scurrying underneath the cages. He tried to step on them, but he was a second too late. Sighing, he made a mental note to look into extermination techniques later.

Chapter three coming soon! Reviews appreciated!