AN: I'm so sorry for the wait between updates! New chapters on this fic may come slowly, but I really do have a plan for it; it's just a matter of being in a mood to write for it. I hope you guys will forgive me for the wack update schedule!
The weeks that followed were fraught with anxiety and uneasiness.
Classroom One tried meeting up again in the basement, but the key that had been hanging on the wall was gone now, leaving the lab permenantly locked to everyone but the staff.
This led to a panicked exodus by the seven teenagers from the hallway leading to the room, after which they sullenly returned to the lunchroom one by one. None of them looked at each other, terrified they would arise suspicion again.
Meetings were ruled out once again (which didn't really affect much, since they had talked about everything they could possibly talk about), so they stuck to Frankie's words about being kind and Ghoulia's words about paying attention in class. They had no other option during what would be their final days.
Big changes weren't happening yet, but the other students were noticing the little changes. Like how when someone bumped into a member of Classroom One, they would apologize instead of simply walking along like everyone else.
No, nothing big. Not big by a hero's standards, anyway, but to a school of monsters, it was huge.
Operetta stared at herself in the mirror for ages after Draculaura said her scars were pretty cute in the library one day. She had never before noticed how much they looked like music notes; beforehand, she ignored them as much as possible.
Spectra felt a warm sense of pride after being thanked by Lagoona when she helped her reach a book on the top shelf. After that, she floated a little higher along the halls instead of keeping at the same level as everyone else.
Abbey didn't feel as huge and intimidating anymore after Frankie had told her a joke in the lunch line. The petite green girl giggled while the yeti chuckled quietly, and she hesitantly cracked a joke right back. The guards had to shut them up.
Little boosts of confidence like this were happening every day, and Frankie noticed a change in the atmosphere. It was subtle, but it was there, and it gave her a burst of hope.
Cleo and Deuce continued their library visits, always daring to sit closer and closer each time. But, the closer they sat, the less they talked.
Deuce tried telling himself it was so they'd look less suspicious, but he didn't believe it. He seldom believed things he told himself. He thought he could make himself feel better with self-reassurances, but they only served to make him second-guess himself.
Therefore, he elected to bring it up in hushed whispers the day before the games started. He figured if he was gonna bring it up, it was now or never.
That Thursday, he planned to do just that as he stared blankly at a plant encyclopedia, one seat over from Cleo. It was the day before the final day, and their visit was much more strained than usual.
After a good twenty minutes of working up the courage, he finally spoke up beyond a small comment. "Hey, are you mad at me or something?"
She blinked, but didn't look up from her book. "What? No."
"You haven't talked to me much the past week."
"We didn't talk much before."
"Well, yeah, but I figured we–"
"We're friends? We are."
Deuce glanced over at her, and her fingers were gripping the corner of a page, but she wasn't turning it. "Yeah, we are."
"Then what's the problem?"
"I dunno, I just... wanted to make the most out of the last few days."
Now Cleo looked at him. Her eyes face was level, but her eyes had a softness to them. "I'm just appreciating the company."
Deuce adjusted his foot, and quickly retracted it when it nudged Cleo's on accident. They both looked back down at their reading material.
Cleo cleared her throat daintily. "It's not that I don't want to talk to you. I want to. I'm…I'm sorry. If you thought that I didn't…. I'm sorry. I'm just scared by all this."
"You mean the stuff that's been happening, or me?"
"Both. It's odd feeling emotions that aren't horrible, and that's what happens when I'm around you. It's odd talking about it, especially with the big day so close."
"It's weird for me, too. But I figure having people to talk to about it will make it less weird, for all of us, you know? That's kind of the point of what we're doing. You know... friendship."
Cleo nodded, looking a little distracted. She hesitantly put her hand on his arm, and didn't retract her hand when his arm slightly twitched as a reflex. Neither of them were used to giving or receiving friendly gestures, but she figured this was in line with what they had been discussing. She figured, anyway.
They quietly returned to their original sitting positions as a staff member passed.
The sun rose on the final day before the monsters began entering the arena, and nobody acknowledged it. Nobody wanted to. The students were too close to falling apart, and the staff simply didn't care (aside from Headmistress Bloodgood, who stayed in her office).
Classroom One could hardly look at each other throughout class. Ghoulia alone tried to focus on class on that particular day, but not even she could make herself pay attention.
After class was over, they dispersed for the most part, but Cleo and Deuce kept to their regular library visit. Today, though, it felt much more strained than usual, especially after the conversation they shared the previous day.
The other ghouls stuck to their dorm room, watching the hours passed as they performed their usual routines. It could have been any other day to an outsider, but the sickness in the school was palpable to the monsters.
By six o'clock, everyone was back in their quarters, and lights out was at seven instead of eight like usual.
Frankie thought she would be too jittery to fall asleep, but she felt her body ache for sleep the moment she laid down. Before she fell asleep, she wondered if she had been fed something to force her to sleep in the food at lunch, but she didn't know any kind of sedative that could do such a thing. Not with such impressive timing, anyway.
She didn't try and resist as she felt herself slipping into dreamland, and she hoped her friends didn't, either. It was only helping them fall asleep, after all; it was kind of the least the staff could do.
When Frankie woke up, she heard low murmuring by voices that didn't belong to her roommates. She was also lying on a cold stone floor.
It took her a moment to absorb the second fact; she had been in such a deep sleep that she didn't notice she had changed locations, even though it was significantly less comfortable. As soon as her brain began waking up, she groaned.
Just then, she was shushed by Draculaura's squeaky voice. The vampire whispered, "Frankie!"
Frankie opened her eyes, and was met with Draculaura looking down at her with worried eyes. Behind her was Clawdeen leaning against a nearby concrete wall, Cleo still laying down, and the rest of her class otherwise milling around or otherwise wringing their hands.
She looked behind her, and her heart began pounding as she saw the gray, stone room reached farther than even the lunchroom did. But the even more shocking sight was the immense amount of other students scattered throughout the prison.
It wasn't just Frankie's class in this mystery place, it was everyone, and everyone looked as confused and frightened as Frankie felt.
Two staff members stood on either side of the only exit, their arms holding stun weapons and their faces hidden by goggles. They were surveying the students, and they didn't look like they'd be very friendly if anyone tried anything out of the oridinary.
Frankie's silent staring was interupted by Draculaura speaking to her again. Her voice was low, which sounded odd with its natural pitch. "Frankie, we all woke up here. I think they took us here while we were asleep."
She looked back at her friend and furrowed her brow, looking at Cleo. "Is Cleo still-"
"She's awake, I think. Just shutting her eyes."
Cleo's face stayed eerily still as she responded. "It's better than looking at this room."
Ghoulia was to the mummy's right side, and she was studying the area with an intensity that was both curious and fearful at the same time. "We've been taken to a room under the arena. I remember reading about it. This is where we're kept until it's time for our individual stories."
Clawdeen ran her claws through her hair, trying to fix it to no avail. "How long are we gonna be down here?"
"It's hard to be certain. Finishing everyone's stories could take weeks; the heroes make a whole event of it." Ghoulia's eyes were staring at something that wasn't there; she looked as if could have been solving floating math problems. "The entire arena is a technological marvel when you think about it. I still haven't been able to figure out how it cleans up after itself, how it chooses what angles to show-"
"Would you shut up?" A werecat named Toralei hissed at Ghoulia's musings. "It's bad enough we're stuck down here, I don't wanna think about what's waiting for me."
Lagoona glared from her position beside Clawdeen. "Leave her alone, mate. We've all got our own ways of coping."
Ghoulia shrugged. "Deconstruction of the problem helps me, but I'll stop if it's distressing others."
Deuce, who was to Cleo's left, ran a hand through his snakes, which were much less active than usual. "I'll try any sort of coping at this point."
Frankie pursed her lips and glanced back at the guards, the pit in her stomach worsening.
The monsters were left in the room long enough to fall asleep again. Cleo griped about how the humans had brought them to an empty cube without plans to immediately get the show on the road, but there wasn't much else left to talk about.
So, they slept. They didn't know what time it was, but they weren't concerned about that.
And, at noon, Draculaura was awoken from her already uneasy sleep by two pairs of large, beefy hands pulling her up by her arms.
It took her a moment to register what was happening, the hands gripping tighter and tighter as she blinked awake. It wasn't long before she started shrieking, and a third pair of hands tied a blindfold around her eyes with alarming quickness.
She tried twisting her arms and kicking her legs in an effort to escape, but every time she moved, they gripped even more violently. She began to hear others shouting and protesting to be more gentle, but she couldn't see anything.
She felt her feet dragging on the floor as she struggled, so she knew they were taking her somewhere. After a moment, she heard a deafening slamming noise, and her classmates' screams were cut off. Her own screams, however, continued. She knew what was happening, and the thought of it sent her into flight mode.
Her urge to fight back died as someone grabbed her lower arm and forcefully held it out in front of her. She felt a sharp pain in her skin where what felt like a needle was being stuck in.
She immediately began feeling drowsy. Tears began to stop flowing behind the blindfold as she fell to her knees and her muscles went limp. She felt the hold on her arms loosen as she passed out.
