Note: I just wanted to thank everyone for the incredibly sweet reviews so far! It means a lot to me, thank you so much :) It motivates me to keep on writing!

The arena parts are coming after the next chapter or two, if all goes according to plan writing-wise. They're my favorite part of this entire story, it was just a matter of getting to them!

Sure enough, Cleo's suggestion worked. Next time the ghouls met, it was in the basement that was typically used for science lab sessions.

They had to be careful about when they used the room, since the other classrooms all took turns with it, but there were a good few days it wasn't used at all, and even on the days it was in use, they were done by lunchtime anyway.

Cleo and Deuce were invited this time too, but Cleo had agreed with great reluctance only when Frankie had asked her a second time just to make sure. This didn't bother Frankie; she was just over the moon that the mummy seemed to be wrapping her wraps a little less tightly. She wondered why the change was.

A few days had passed since the library, and they had now all managed to sneak into the basement. Deuce announced to the others that he had the key before he let the door close behind him; he made sure he was the last one in, for some reason.

Everyone had taken a seat except for Cleo, who was standing with her arms crossed and her shoulders tense.

Clawdeen broke the silence after the door had shut, an edge of uneasiness in her voice. "We've gotta be desperate to keep meeting like this, and in one of the classrooms, no less."

Cleo mumbled, "Tell me about it."

Frankie flicked a dust bunny off the teacher's desk. "I don't think it's desperate. And if it is, what's so wrong with that?"

"It's kind of nice, you know... not calling ourselves and everything else worthless and hopeless for once." Lagoona winced. "Is that selfish?"

"I think we all deserve to be a little bit more selfish." Frankie's neck bolts buzzed. "Plus, we have to stop thinking of fighting for our lives as a bad thing. That mindset isn't gonna get us anywhere."

"And where IS it going to get us? What makes you so sure this is going to work? I need evidence if I'm going to be down here with the freedom fighters." Cleo said.

"Aw, come on, Cleo! Who's the one who secured us this very meeting spot?" Frankie paused and raised her eyebrows, and when the other ghoul just stared at her, she continued. "It was you! You are smart and resourceful, and you were kind enough to share your info with us, and in my opinion, that definitely sounds like something that a good person would do. We're all good, smart, resourceful people, really, we just have to work on getting out of the old mindset."

Frankie grinned at Cleo's expression not looking so sour anymore after she said that.

Draculaura chimed in. "What else do we do until the arena day arrives? What can we do until then?"

Ghoulia said, "Have any of you been taking notes every day in class?"

The answer was a regretful "no".

"Lucky for us, I've been doing just that since I was young. I bet at least a little of the knowledge imparted to us in the classroom would come in handy in our stories. I'm not sure how much, but it couldn't hurt to review stuff."

"Great idea, Ghoulia!" Frankie patted the beaming zombie's shoulder. "We'll try and do that. Any other ideas?"

Clawdeen raised her hand. "What about looking at more tapes? Knowing what we're getting into beforehand is gonna be our greatest asset."

Lagoona shook her head. "If they've got our dorms on lockdown during lunch, they've probably got Helsing's office on double lockdown. We'd never get in again."

"Ugh. You're right."

Deuce tilted his head. "Tapes?"

"Yeah, they've got all our parents' stories recorded and kept in a storage closet in the administrative office." Clawdeen's eyes dropped to the floor. "We saw Draculaura's dad last time, but didn't get to anyone else before it got to be too much."

"Oh." He rubbed the back of his neck.

"What, something wrong? Other than the obvious."

"Nah, I just... I think I may know a little bit about what happens in mine. It'd be hard to watch, and I just got to imagining it, since that reminded me."

"You know something about your story?" Ghoulia leaned forward. "This could be useful, Deuce. What is it? How did you find out about it?"

"Uh, I can't remember, exactly. It was some comment a guard made once after I bumped into him on accident." He paused and his voice got quiet, trailing off before he could finish.

Cleo stepped a bit closer to Deuce, who was twiddling his thumbs nervously now. She shot a sideways glare at the zombie. "Could we talk about this another time?"

Ghoulia squinted her eyes a little, sensing the change in mood. "Sure. Besides, I wanted to mention some stuff I learned about the arena itself, anyway."

Clawdeen's ears perked up. "The arena? Where'd you get info on that?"

"There's a thin book about it in the library; it was sort of hidden between two other much bigger ones. Personally, I don't understand why they'd allow something like that in the library, but not fictional stories that have monsters in them. Anyway, the arena is really remarkable, looking at it from an outside standpoint..."

Ghoulia shuffled over to the whiteboard, picked up a dry erase marker and found a blank space to draw on. As she talked, she drew diagrams to illustrate her explanation. "It's big, but not nearly as big as you think it would be. What it does is it generates an artificial environment in a large dome for the stories to take place in. Everything inside the environment appears real, and is custom-tailored for each destiny. This is why we need to know as much about our own destinies as we can, since none of us are going to have the same experience at all."

The zombie didn't seem to notice the nervous reactions, and continued drawing arrows. "The audience is in stands surrounding the dome, and they see everything that happens as if it's a movie."

Draculaura leaned towards her. "You mean, it like, edits stuff as it goes along?"

"More or less. It knows how to pick cinematic angles and things like that, and when to focus on certain things. And that's not even the most intriguing part; it also has some sort of disposal system implemented, so that no cleanup afterward is necessary. It just wipes itself after the story is done and the hero has exited, and it begins preparing itself for the next story."

Cleo pursed her lips. "The way you just phrased that isn't exactly promising."

"As long as we exit with the hero, like Frankie's plan says, we should be fine, if that's what you're worried about."

Lagoona raised her hand, and Ghoulia nodded to her. "I think class is about to start again, love. We're about out of time for now."

"Oh, of course." Ghoulia erased her arena diagram. "That's about the gist of how the whole thing works, anyway."

Draculaura chewed on her naturally-pink nails. Her voice was wavering. "We have to go in there soon. It's only a couple weeks away now!"

As they began heading upstairs, Frankie gave everyone her usual reassurances that everything would be fine and that they would make it out alright, but she couldn't hide the apprehension in her own voice.

She tried not thinking about how they had no plan for what they would do afterward if they actually did escape, and told herself they would cross that bridge when they came to it. They just had to focus on surviving for now. There wasn't much else to do now except wait.