For all his worrying about Riku's sleep, it was Sora who woke up looking tired the next morning. Riku had been up before him, looking perfectly rested, and had even somehow managed to snag perfectly normal fruit and hot cereal for their breakfast. "So what's the plan?" He asked when Riku sat the hot cereal in front of him, with a sliced apple and a jar of very old ground cinnamon for him to take or leave.

"For now," the mage said, blowing on the first spoonful of his own bowl of cereal, "We're going to enjoy Halloween. The ritual can't start until the sun starts to set, and I don't want any lackeys reporting back to Oogie Boogie that I'm lurking near his dwelling." The spoonful went into Riku's mouth, and since it seemed to be edible, Sora took a bite next. It needed the cinnamon, but more importantly..."Who's Oogie Boogie?"

Riku paused, taking his time to swallow, but then answered. "He takes his name from the creature of 'boogeyman.' Which is another region's name for boggart."

"Oh," Sora nodded. "So he's a boggart. What kind?" There were several kinds of boggart, some more dangerous and powerful than others. In all his time with Squall, he had dealt with boggarts the most often. It felt kind of nice to be talking about something he actually knew.

"The creepy kind," Riku said with an unamused expression on his face.

"Uh, Riku? All boggarts are creepy."

"Then you've never met the kind that cook." Riku smiled a bit, but it quickly faded back into the serious expression, "I think he was originally a thrower, but he's gotten powerful enough that he's taken on a real personality. He likes throwing dice these days, rather than rocks or cherished family heirlooms." A gambling boggart. Now Sora had heard it all.

"He's not really the problem though. He's been defeated several times, his fatal flaw is now common knowledge, it's just that he has a nasty habit of coming back." The mage shrugged. "He's the one guy in town no one really likes, and he gets up to trouble every so often. The problem is what kind of trouble he and his friends are getting up to now."

"The summoning, right?"

"Yeah." His friend nodded. "Everything will be okay if we can stop it, but if we can't..." He strummed his fingers on the table. "I don't want to think about it."

"Then don't," Sora said with a firm nod. "Let's just stop it."

"Right." Riku nodded in agreement, took another bite of his porridge, and then got to his feet. "Did I show you Sally's gift?"

"Her gift?" Sora tilted his head. Riku certainly hadn't mentioned anything like that before, but then they hadn't talked much after he'd gone to return the dutch oven monster. "I don't think so."

"She said that she was sorry you couldn't handle Halloween style cooking, and to make it up to you, she gave me a costume." For a second, Riku disappeared into the kitchenette, but returned a moment later with a pile of clothing that he sat on the table in front of Sora. "They look like they'll fit you. I was surprised."

Sora lifted the clothes gently. They were mostly black with some white. Sora liked red the most, but black was okay, it was just a weird outfit, complete with a mask that looked like a pumpkin with a face cut in it. "What's it for?" A costume...

"For Halloween, of course. Don't you know what Halloween is about?"

"It's one of the days when the line between here and the Dark is thinnest."

Riku nodded, taking the mask from Sora's fingers and, with a slightly painful snap, placing it on the side of his head. "Yes, and the idea is for people to wear masks and costumes so frightening that the creatures from the Dark decide that here is much more scary than there! Ingenious, right?"

That didn't make any sense to Sora. "But if the idea is to make Dark creatures stay away, then isn't Halloween a...?"

"Holiday for the Light? It was." The mage donned a mischievous half smile. "And all the more reason for a little guardian like you to enjoy it. Go put it on." The rest of the costume was shoved into Sora's arms, and before he could even think to argue, Riku had him halfway up the stairs.

"H-hey! If I'm putting this on, you should get a costume too!" Riku wasn't scary looking. He was the very opposite of scary looking! Even with his choice of attire!

"Oh, you don't want me to try and be frightening." He heard Riku chortle as he made his way back downstairs. "Hurry up! I'm sure Sally is already looking to see if we're having fun."

Riku turned out to be right in more ways than one. The costume did fit in an almost uncanny way, there was no denying that, no matter how much the little bat wings bothered him every time he turned. He was also right that the moment they left Riku's small house Sora saw Sally peeking out from behind a wall on the other side of the street, only to dart behind it completely when he went to take a second look.

Where the streets had been mostly empty the night before, today they were full of people. Creatures of every shape and size were walking about in the daylight, even ones that Sora was almost positive were vampires, walking around with umbrellas high over their heads. Each and every one of them had a tune at their lips, humming or softly singing it, and for a while Sora was trying to catch the words off of the lips of passers by, until he realized that Riku was humming the tune as well. "What's that song?" he asked at last.

"It's the Halloween song," Riku answered simply with a laugh, before singing, "~Boys and girls of every age, wouldn't you like to see something strange? Come with us and you will see, this our town of Halloween!~" Sora smiled. The tune had a ghostly feel to it, yet it didn't feel like it came from the Dark. It was a airy song, and as Riku continued down the verses, Sora bobbed his head to and fro, and finally laughing when it came to an end.

"I like it," he declared.

"It is catchy, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Sora placed his hands easily behind his head, grinning. "But I think I like this entire town." They hadn't talked to anyone other than Sally yet, but it wasn't at all what he'd been taught to expect. When Sora thought of servants of the Dark, he thought of the night, he thought of blood and death, but he never thought of what he was seeing. His senses all told him that he was surrounded by the Dark, but the only danger he sensed was walking right beside him.

"It's because they're not evil."

"Hm?"

"The people of this town. They're not evil. Servants of the Light forget so easily...Dark does not mean evil. The people of this town...they were mostly born here, never knowing what the Light is, and not really knowing what the Dark is either, so they act as they want, creating their own sort of light, which I guess you could call fun."

"Dark, but not evil..." Sora frowned, "Like you."

Riku laughed, "No, Sora. Not at all like me." The slightly older boy placed his hand atop Sora's hair, ruffling it. "But you're too stupid to see that."

"Hey!"

"It's a compliment." The ruffling became harsher, but Sora could only smile at it. Teasing had always come naturally to Riku. "I like that you're too blind to see me as I am."

"I'm not blind about you!" He knew Riku was powerful and dangerous, his senses told him so! He knew Riku was aligned with the Dark, his senses told him that too. But he couldn't just trust his senses. There were things about Riku as he was now that troubled him, but his gut told him that Riku had never stopped being his friend, and that his friend had good intentions, no matter how he teetered on the edge of the Dark.

Riku withdrew his hand from Sora's hair at last, a grin commanding his face. "Oh, but Sora, you are."

Sora would have argued with his friend further, but when he opened his mouth only a gasp of both surprise and pain came out. A small foot had kicked his shin very hard. "Ow! Hey!" He whirled his head around to see three children standing behind them. They reeked of the Dark, but there was no danger at all from them, just the same as everyone else in town seemed to be. "That hurt!"

Beside him, Riku folded his arms over his chest. "What do you three want?"

"Trick or treat!"

Trick or treat? Sora didn't understand. Was that a question? Was he being given an option? "Uhh, treat?

At his answer the three children before him held out their bags, and Sora raised his eyebrows. What did they expect? He didn't have anything on him.

As the seconds passed, the masked children seemed to get more and more impatient, and just as the girl of the trio began to hop around, Riku shook his head. "Here." The mage reached down picking up three pebbles. He tossed them, caught them, and gripped them tightly in his hand. As Sora watched a darkness swirled around his fist and then, as soon as it had appeared, it dissipated, and Riku unfurled his fingers, revealing that instead of pebbles there were three crystal-like forms there. "Rock candy. Take it."

"Neat trick!"

"Without any words!"

"But we would expect no less from his son!" The three children held out their bags and one piece of rock candy was dropped into each bag.

"That's for both of us. Now leave us." Sora looked at Riku's face, and it was not happy. The joy at the simple song and conversation they'd been sharing was gone, left with an angry expression. What was it that had angered him? Had the children said something wrong? Was "trick or treat" not something they should have been bothered with? Or was it something else? The compliment to his magic? Surely not. It was a nod toward his power. Maybe...they had said 'his son.' But Sora didn't know anything about Riku's father, and he had always assumed Riku didn't either. Maybe that wasn't the case. Or perhaps even worse, it was, and they were taunting him with a carrot right in front of his nose.

Though Sora could not see their faces, he was sure that the three children were grinning as widely as they could as they giggled to one another and retreated. Sora watched them a bit of a frown on his face before he turned to look at his friend. "Did I give the wrong answer?"

"No," Riku's aqua eyes continued to watch the children. "Trick or treat is just as it sounds. Either you give them a treat, or they give you a trick. Normally I'd take the trick from them, but today we don't have time to deal with them. What's more..." Riku sighed. "They are Oogie's little goons. Besotted with him, for some reason for another. I'm sure he asked them to watch us. I don't want to give them reason to be closer to us than absolutely necessary. Saying trick would have invited them closer. I'm sure that's what they wanted." The mage took his eyes away from the children at last, and he continued down the sidewalk.

Sora had thought that Riku's mood had been ruined by the trick or treaters appearance, but he was wrong, and for the next several hours Riku showed him around town, buying small treats from stands that he thought Sora could stomach, and explaining everything as they came face to face with it. Sora loved it all. He couldn't understand how something so fun was of the Dark. Everything was so whimsical, and yes, a bit scary, especially when something jumped out suddenly, but Sora found that being scared was only part of the fun. All too soon he noticed that the sun was starting to lower into the west, and that Riku was gradually guiding him toward a less populated part of town. "Is this the way to Oogie Boogie's?"

"Yeah," Riku said with a nod. "But we need to be quiet." Sora was not very good at quiet, even when he wasn't thinking up ten questions per minute, but he took in a deep breath, held it, and followed his friend as he led him along the path toward the edge of town.

As they went along, the houses thinned out, and the eerie, this-is-not-a-good-place-to-wander feeling that had been absent from the rest of Halloween crept up on him. The rest of Halloween wouldn't hurt him, but this place would, Sora was sure of it.

They made their way along an increasingly narrow walkway, up a hill that seemed to hang out over nothing. Riku kept them to one side as much out of sight as he could, but when there was suddenly a huge boom from within the mansion they were creeping up on, and the three trick or treaters from earlier ran out screaming in high pitched voices, there was no hiding anymore, and with a nod toward each other, the pair of them began to run for the front door.

Just before Riku's fingers grasped the elaborate door handle there came another boom, and Sora felt a force so strong that it could have knocked them both over come from within, but it wasn't a physical thing. It was the sense...the danger, and Sora knew Riku felt it too. "We're too late," the silver haired mage stated with a look of horror on his face. "They started early."

Sora's mouth fell slack, "I thought you said they couldn't start before a certain time!"

"They can't! Not without..." Riku grit his teeth and wrenched the door open, the last unspoken word completely understood. Consequences. There were always consequences when you broke the rules, whether you belonged to the Light or the Dark. Rules were rules, they were meant to be bent, but not broken.

Sora followed his friend into the house, which at a glance seemed much smaller inside than it appeared to be outside, but Riku figured that puzzle out before Sora could even start to look for an answer. There was a lever to one side of the room, and when it was pulled, a trick door of sorts activated. Once it was opened, both he and Riku dived for it, throwing themselves down a hatch. They landed in a huge room that was dimly and creepily lighted. The decorations that made up the room were beyond the things that Sora knew, but he assumed that they tied in with Riku's statement of the house's owner liking to throw dice.

In the center of the room there was a huge circle that had obviously been both crudely and recently redone, the worst part of this circle was not that Sora could not recognize any of the symbols in it, but that it was glowing. It was magic, and it had been activated. Even worse was that nearby there were bones, even complete skeletons. They looked old, but Sora suspected that the people they had once been were dead only as long as the first or second boom they'd heard, and, as though to prove it, the bones eroded into dust before his eyes.

The sound the circle made were nothing awful, just loud, like a storm in his ear, but above the "winds" he heard a loud, guttural laugh, and it drew his attention upward. It was the most disgusting boggart Sora had ever seen.

Objectively, it wasn't really that bad, it looked like the biggest burlap sack in the history of creation, crudely sewn together, with eyes and a mouth, and that wasn't bad, but looking at it...there was just something about what he was looking at that sent shudders of disgust down his spine. There was something there, his senses told him. Something he wasn't seeing.

The burlap creature guffawed for several seconds more before it pointed one of its points, that Sora supposed was supposed to be a hand, down at Riku. "Riku, my boy! I thought you were enjoying the festivities! What are you doing here?"

For the first time since they'd met up, Sora saw Riku take what he knew had to be Riku's stance of attack, his hand wrapped tightly around the hilt of his sword, his entire figure wound up, clearly ready to strike at any moment, and it was looking at Riku that Sora realized his own hand had gone to Oathkeeper, ready to defend himself or his friend in an instant. It was the air. It was charged with energy. "You know very well what I'm doing here," his voice was soft, so soft that Sora wasn't sure the burlap sack could hear them. "What were you thinking? Starting early? It's dangerous, you know, to open portals at the incorrect times."

Despite the noise the opening portal was making, Riku's words were apparently heard by the boggart, and it grinned. "Dangerous?" Oogie Boogie laughed that creepy and obviously evil laugh. "Sure, it's a gamble, but the payoff is very nice."

"Payoff?! I'll show you payoff!" Riku drew his sword in one fluid motion, and then dashed forward. "Riku, no!" The words flew from Sora's mouth before he could stop them. He understood Riku's desire to cut it down, Sora didn't need to spend time here to know that this creature didn't deserve to stand on its burlap feet, but Riku's sword...Soul Eater. Using it's ability would be a huge step toward the Dark, the very place Sora didn't want Riku to go. "Wait!"

His words seemed to fall on deaf ears, and before he could even take three steps after his friend, Riku had leapt up onto the stage where the boggart stood, and another step later, had slashed his sword downward, and Sora came to a halt. The opening Riku's blade made told him exactly why this was the most disgusting boggart he'd seen.

Bugs.

Inside the sack was nothing but creeping, twisting, insects, and as soon as that fact sunk into Sora's brain, as Oogie Boogie screamed they came pouring out. As the bugs poured out onto the ground and into the air, the scream became more and more high pitched, until it was completely drowned out by the sound of wings buzzing and legs crawling.

Instinctively, Sora put a hand over his mouth and nose, and he was glad he did. The insects swarmed, many of them momentarily landing on him, their little feet prickling over his hands, their wings tickling and teasing his ears. It was disgusting, but they crawled and flew away as quickly as they had poured out of the sack suit, and Sora lowered his hand, making a noise that took all the disgust he felt along with it.

Up on the stage, Riku still stood, Soul Eater in hand, the burlap sack that had been Oogie Boogie empty on the ground. The mage took in a deep breath and then turned, stepping off the stage, and landing on his feet. "Riku..." He'd done it, he'd used his sword.

"Don't worry, Sora." Though he wasn't smiling, Sora didn't think that Riku's expression looked any darker than it had before. "Soul Eater can't eat a soul that doesn't exist."

Hearing that was a relief to Sora, but while it answered one question, it only brought up another question. Were all boggarts soulless? Or had Oogie just sold his away a long time ago? There were creatures that did that, sold their souls, hearts, spirits...but now was not the time to wondering such things. They had a bigger problem on their hands. "What do we do now? Can you close the portal?" Maybe Riku could. He'd never met anyone whose magic felt so strong, except for maybe Maleficent, but even then, Riku was younger, and Maleficent had hit her stride. Who knew what Riku could really do?

"No." Riku shook his head, turning his head to look at the portal that was starting to get louder again. "It can't be stopped now. All we can do is try to force him back through before the portal closes."

"Riku...who are we facing?" It didn't matter anymore, right? They were here, it was done, even if he could hear someone speak his name in the Dark, he was already coming. He needed to know what they were going to be fighting.

Riku furrowed his brow as though bracing himself for the name he was about to speak. "We are facing Ansem."