"Helloooo?" the voice of their littlest cohort echoed down the mausoleum hall.

"Down here, dumbass!" Lock called, and he and Shock quickly sat up and scooted just far enough away from each other to not look suspicious. Lock grabbed Shock's bag and put it on his lap to hide his still-raging hard-on and Shock giggled a little, then after a moment Barrel poked his head into the chamber, holding a flashlight and looking relieved.

"There you guys are! What the crap are you doing? Why didn't you come back after Halloween?" Then he saw the disaster that was Lock's leg as well as the huge pool of dried blood on the floor and his already wide eyes widened more. "Whoa, what happened?!"

"Lock got shot messing around with some crazy human's truck testicles." Shock said, and both she and Lock laughed at the utter confusion that spread across Barrel's face. "What the hell took you so long to come get us?"

"You better not have eaten all my candy!" added Lock, but Shock ignored him and continued her rant.

"We waited around out there for hours and left a note. Don't you know how to read? Or were you passed out on rotten beef for two days and forget that you have roommates?"

Barrel shrugged and decided to ask for more details surrounding Lock's encounter with a gun and 'truck testicles' - whatever those were - later. "For the first day and a half I just thought you guys were playing a trick on me or something. It wouldn't be the first time." he reminded them, and they had to concede he was right about that. "But then I came looking for you, I swear!"

"Okay great, but that was still a day ago! Again: did you forget how to read?" Shock said irritably. She was happy to be going home, but she was also cranky that her make-out session with Lock had been interrupted.

"No, I thought you guys were at the Oak Creek portal so I went there first and hiked around all night looking for you!" Barrel was generally pretty easygoing, but he was feeling a bit annoyed with how ungrateful they were being when he'd tried so hard to rescue them after they'd been dumb enough to miss the portal. He couldn't teleport like Lock or fly around like Shock, so tromping through the woods with his stomach still full of carrion had been extremely uncomfortable.

"Why the hell would we be there when all three of us came through the Oak Ridge one this year, moron!?" Lock snapped, feeling just as conflicted as Shock about wanting to go home versus wanting to see how far he could make it with her in the mausoleum just then.

Barrel shrugged. "I dunno, sometimes you guys do random crap and don't tell me about it." he said, though the truth was actually that he'd just forgotten. "Anyway, so then I tried that next and I saw your campfire and your note so here I am. The portal will only stay open for a few more hours, so you wanna get out of here or what?"

"YES." his older cohorts answered together.

"Help me get lard-ass off the floor." said Shock as she got to her feet, and Barrel hurried over and easily lifted Lock off of the floor. He had grown quite strong as he aged, and Lock was glad that Barrel had a considerably less-violent disposition than himself because he was pretty sure that Barrel could actually beat him in a fight nowadays if he really wanted to. Lock was also glad that his arousal had mostly waned at the interruption, but he still kept Shock's bag more or less where it was just in case, and fortunately Barrel didn't seem to notice anything amiss… but he was wrong about that. Barrel was more observant than anyone gave him credit for, and he did in fact think it was a bit odd that Lock was holding Shock's bag for her, and in that particular location as well, but he couldn't quite put together what exactly was so weird about it so he let it slide for the time being.

"That looks super gnarly." Barrel said in a very impressed voice as he stepped back and got a proper look at Lock's leg. There was a copious amount of dried blood covering his upper thigh to down below his knee and his pant leg was shredded all around where the bullet had torn through him.

"You should have seen it right when it first happened!" Lock said excitedly. "It felt like it blew my leg right off, and it pretty much looked like it, too!"

"His whole thigh was gaping open, front and back. It was crazy-awesome." agreed Shock, for it had been a wound that surely would have scared the pants right off of any human who'd seen it. "There's probably blood and chunks of Lock-meat all over that human's truck!" she cackled, and Barrel started giggling, wishing that he could have seen it.

"Good, gives them a little something to remember me by besides their slashed tires and broken windshield." Lock grinned wickedly, and suddenly all of the pain felt completely worth it. Not only had he most likely scared the hell out of that human and messed up their precious truck, but he'd gotten to make out with Shock - and it seemed certain that this wouldn't just be a one-time thing. Severe injury or not, this had turned out to be the best Halloween ever and he wondered if he could convince her to pick up where they left off as soon as they were back at home. "Alright, I'll see you two losers back there." he said, and Shock and Barrel both took several more steps away from him before he snapped his fingers and disappeared in a burst of flame.

Shock picked up her broom and she and Barrel walked out of the mausoleum together, Barrel holding up the flashlight to light their way down the dark aisle and into the night. She decided to walk with her littlest cohort rather than fly so she could fill him in on everything that happened - well, not everything that had happened - and hear about how his Halloween had gone as well. She put her arm around his wide shoulders and said cheerfully, "Even though you totally fucked it up, thanks for coming to get us, midget." Barrel may have been thick and strong now, but he was still the shortest of the three of them. He frowned up at her but she gave him a mischievous little smile and continued, "Actually, you did us a favor by fucking up, so thanks for that, too."

"What do you mean?" he asked, completely confused once again.

"Never you mind." she said even more mischievously, then patted him on the head. "So, how many cows did you half-eat and leave laying around?"

Clearly she wasn't going to be forthcoming about whatever she was cryptically referring to, so Barrel gave up on asking questions… but then suddenly it hit him like a ton of bricks and he began piecing together all of the little bits of evidence before him: Lock holding her bag in front of his crotch, the way Shock still looked a bit pink and flushed even now, the way both her and Lock's hair and clothing had been rather disheveled… that combined with what she'd just said and the way she had said it, along with the growing suspicions that he'd been having for well over a year now that she and Lock were getting a little extra-cozy (suspicions that had only strengthened after the ball two months ago)… well, it all painted a pretty clear picture. Barrel didn't consider himself to be a genius, but he definitely wasn't blind. It was going to be so much fun ribbing both of his friends about this later, but for now he decided to play dumb.

"A ton of them!" he grinned widely - for more than one reason - and his abnormally-high number of teeth glinted in the moonlight. "I left one in front of the school and all three churches, along with the gas station and a bunch of houses!"

"Nice!" Shock said approvingly. "Why the hell does a town this size need three churches?" Clearly the human with the shotgun and truck testicles needed to bone up on their ten commandments, and by the sound of it there was no excuse for them not to with three churches to choose from.

Barrel shrugged. "Who knows? But they're probably gonna wanna build a fourth one now because I put some of the cow bones and guts in pentagram shapes and spray-painted a bunch more pentagrams and evil-looking goat heads and 666's and other stuff humans think are scary all around."

"Nice work, they're all going to panic thinking their kids are in a cult or something." Shock cackled, and Barrel laughed along with her. She only half-listened to him chattering on about all the details as they made their way to the portal tree, for the other half of her mind was wandering back to those few precious moments before he had arrived at the mausoleum. Oh, what a Halloween it had been, and she couldn't wait to look up some proper healing spells and potions to heal Lock's leg completely - or maybe they would even go to Dr. Finkelstein to make absolutely certain it was 100% fixed. She had a raincheck for sitting on that lap of his, after all, and she intended to cash it as soon as possible.

They found Lock leaning against the portal tree waiting for them, and his eyes flashed when Barrel unintentionally shone the flashlight in his face. "Did you manage another glorious and graceful perfect landing?" Shock smirked as they walked up to him.

"You know it." Lock smirked back, and she rolled her eyes affectionately.

"You ready?" she asked, placing her palm against the tree trunk.

"More ready than you can imagine." Lock said, giving her a look so steamy and sexy that it sent a rush of heat right between her thighs.

The portal opened up and Shock looked over her shoulder and tried to give him an equally sexy look. "I think I have a pretty good idea... you're not the only one with a good imagination, you know." she teased, then stepped through the portal and vanished.

Barrel raised his eyebrows as he watched all of this - they weren't even being subtle now, and he was partly amused and partly grossed-out… but mostly he was amused. "Wow, it looks like you had a happy Halloween." he said lightly as he helped Lock hobble over to the portal.

"Are you insane? I got shot!" Lock huffed. He'd kind of forgotten that Barrel was standing right there there while he and Shock were flirting with each other.

"I'm not talking about the gunshot." Barrel said in a sly tone of voice, looking up at Lock with a mischievous little smirk.

Lock was about to protest again, but then he decided it was pretty pointless to keep trying to hide what had happened from Barrel - he was going to find out soon enough anyway, so Lock looked back at him and a wicked smile spread across his face. "Alright, it was pretty much the best Halloween ever."

Barrel grinned back at him as they stepped through the portal together. "I had a pretty great Halloween, too." he said happily. While he hadn't gotten to make out with anyone, he had enjoyed having the house all to himself for a few days - and he was glad that Lock wasn't able to run at the moment because he was definitely going to be pissed when he got home and saw that Barrel had eaten all of the candy. Or maybe he wouldn't… it seemed likely that Lock would have other things on his mind and other ways to spend his time for awhile, and Barrel could only hope that Lock and Shock didn't make out with each other as loudly as they fought with each other, or else he'd be the one taking up residence in a distant mausoleum. But really he was happy for his friends, and frankly, he was rather glad that they'd finally gotten it over with. Now that Lock had pretty much outright admitted what Barrel suspected to be true, he decided it was time to start the teasing. "Just do it in Shock's bedroom, okay? That way I don't have to hear it as much." He was hoping that Lock would be embarrassed by this, but he really should have known better by now.

"HA! What makes you think we'll be keeping it to the bedrooms?" Lock said evilly as they stepped back into their own world. They found Shock waiting for them and she raised her eyebrows at Lock's words - she would be perfectly happy to 'keep it to the bedrooms', but she supposed that being with a devil whose entire purpose in life was to think up sinful things would probably turn out to be a hell of a ride. Now that Lock had apparently let the cat out of the bag, she took his hand in her own as Barrel continued to support him and the three of them headed through the streets of Halloween Town and back to their home. "So, how much candy did you swipe?" asked Lock, and Barrel had to work hard to hold in his laugh.

"Tons!" he answered, and it technically wasn't a lie. He had indeed stolen a very large quantity of candy - it was just that he'd also already eaten it all.

"Excellent." said Lock as they turned down their street.

"Now what the heck are 'truck testicles'?" asked Barrel, and Lock and Shock started laughing so hard that Barrel couldn't help but join in. This was a Halloween that all three of them would definitely never forget.

...

The end.

...

**Author Note** OMG, rathernotmyname, you are the best! I can't believe you followed along with me on this story despite the subject matter not being your favorite! I had a terrific time writing this one, and it was even more fun to wake up and see that you'd left me a little note after each chapter, so thank you! Even though you don't ship Lock and Shock, I hope that after this story maybe you can at least sort of understand why I love them together so much - honestly, they are just soooo much fun for me to write playing off one one another, both romantically or platonically, young or old! :D And lord knows I love Barrel, too, so I definitely had to give him at least a little bit of an appearance. I imagine that he really wouldn't mind if Lock and Shock got together, and he'd be happy for them, and they love Barrel so much that they would make sure he never felt like a third wheel or left out. In my mind, NOTHING will ever, ever break up the trio!

As a thank you for your unwavering support, is there anything you'd particularly like for me to try and write next? An idea for the next Continuing Adventure, either a new one or one of the older suggestions that others have made? Think on it and let me know, and I will try my best! :D