Chapter 10 and things are going to get just that bit more interesting, enjoy.

"Muh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha." The headless, floating overcoat laughs evilly as it reaches for the gold, diamond necklace that Blossom is holding. Blossom is too stunned to move at the moment and offers little to no resistance when the ghost takes it from her. The ghost raises it up to 'look' at it and says, in a deep gravely voice, "Abigail Harlot's necklace, I haven't seen this since before the Boston Massacre. As for you trespassers," as the ghost points one of its boney fingers at them, "leave this place, or you will wish you were never created." The ghost finishes in an evil tone. Blossom gulps and Brick is still rooted to the ground.

Meanwhile, Butch is a few feet behind Brick and Blossom and is watching as the ghost takes the necklace away from Blossom and then outright threatens them afterward. Ghost or not, he hates it when someone else tells him what he can and can't do. The only one he listens to at all is Brick and even then it's only because Brick can beat him in a fight. Butch glances at Buttercup and sees she is having a similar internal debate with herself but hasn't decided what she's going to do yet. He, however, has decided what he's going to do; consequences be damned, he's going to show this ghost that if it wants that necklace, it's going to have to earn it.

"Grrrrr, you know what, screw it, YOLO!" Butch cries out in determination. He jumps the ghost and clings onto it from the back, grappling it around the waist.

The ghost, surprised by the sudden attack, cries out, "Ahhh, let go!" The ghost flies around the attic with Butch hanging on with a death grip, refusing to let go. "Get off me, get off!" The ghost cries out again. Back on the ground, the others are watching with wide eyes as Butch rides the ghost around the attic. Brick always knew Butch was crazy but to grab a ghost and ride it around like this was just insane.

As they fly by again, Butch punches the ghost in the stomach and everyone hears the ghost go, "OOF!"

Everyone in the room blinks, why, and more importantly, how, would something that is already dead have the wind knocked out of it when you punch it? Realizing that they can fight this ghost, and that it is obviously nowhere near as dangerous as the skull ghost, everyone starts to come towards it with the intent of bashing it into submission.

However, the ghost 'sees' this and decides it's time to leave. "Away, I say. AWAY!" Suddenly, the overcoat just falls to the ground and Butch falls along with it. Butch jumps up ready to tear it apart but realizes that the ghost has actually left.

"Huh? What the...where'd he go?" Everyone else blinks in surprise.

"Wait, so, it's just an overcoat now?" Bubbles asks.

"Yeah, it is." Replies Blossom after she walks up and inspects the coat. Buttercup actually flies over and lands on top of it to see if it really is just a coat now but ends up falling into it and through the floor. "Buttercup!" Blossom screams. Everyone races up to where Buttercup fell through the floor and discover a trap door.

There is a loud crash at the bottom of some stairs and they hear Buttercup moan in pain, "Owwwww."

"Buttercup, are you ok?" asks Bubbles.

"Yeah, I'm fine." Buttercup replies. She flies back up to the trap door while rubbing her head and says, "Don't try flying when you're blindfolded. Trust me, it hurts." Everyone but Butch chuckles at that.

"Yeah we can tell. You're developing quite the bump on your head." Says Brick, grinning.

Boomer then says, "What do you know, a ghost with a trap door."

Butch angrily replies, "Ghost my foot!"

Everyone turns to Butch in surprise and Buttercup asks, "What do you mean by that Butch?"

"That 'ghost' felt pretty solid to me."

Everyone exchanged a glance and Brick asked, "So, what are you saying bro?"

Butch turns to Brick and says, "What I'm saying Brick is that, I don't think we're alone in this house."

Brick blinked. "You think there's somebody else here?"

Butch nods.

"Why though?" Brick asks.

Butch continues, "Who's to say we're the only ones who know about the treasure?"

"But, we found the first clue in the ice box. If someone else had found it first-" Bubbles started.

Butch shakes his head, "That doesn't mean there can't be someone who had heard rumors of a treasure being here. Maybe someone has been here for days but found nothing, then on Halloween night, the Powerpuff girls and the Rowdyruff boys come by, and by some twist of fate, find the first clue in the ice box. So now, all they'd have to do is get their hands on just one of these clues and they have a chance of finding it themselves."

Everyone ponders what Butch has said. Blossom turns to Brick, "Brick, Butch is right."

Brick sighs but nods his head, "I hate to say it Pinkie, but I have to agree with you, that is a very likely possibility."

"So, the ghosts are fake?" Boomer asks.

"That one was." Butch replies, pointing down at the overcoat. "I don't know about the skull ghost or the British soldier but there is at least one other living person in this house with us."

Everyone exchanges glances again at this, then Blossom says, "Buttercup, Butch, do you guys still have the clue?" The greens nod and Butch pulls it from his pocket. "Ok, here's what we're going to do; we're going to go back downstairs and continue hunting for the treasure, but we're also going to keep our eyes open for anyone or anything suspicious. We are NOT going to let them scare us out of the house. Agreed?" Everybody narrows their eyes and nods determinedly.

Blossom smiles and says, "Alright, let's go."

Back downstairs, the kids go into the den and turn on a small lamp so they can read the clue. Brick takes the clue from Butch, opens it, and starts reading, "Alright, it says, 'For this next clue, don't look any higher, just think what you're called when you're not the buyer.'"

"Not the buyer?" Bubbles asks.

Brick rubs his chin in thought, "Hmm, if I'm not the buyer, then I'm the guy who sells something right?"

Blossom nods, "Yeah, that's right."

Suddenly, a knocking noise is heard from somewhere in the house. The kids look at each other before Boomer asks, "Where's that knocking sound coming from?" They follow the sound back to the front foyer but when they get there, nothing seems out of place.

"Ok, that was strange. What was making that sound?" Brick asks.

Blossom responds, "I'm not sure," she starts to turn around to face Brick, "but it's go-" Blossom's words die in her throat when she sees the British soldier standing behind Brick with its pistol aimed at the back of his head. Acting on instinct, Blossom grabs Brick's arm and yanks him towards herself as hard as she can, "BRICK, LOOK OUT!"

*BANG!*

Brick and Blossom hit the ground just as the gun goes off. The others scream at the sound of the gun shot and jump away. When they look back, they see the British soldier holding a smoking pistol and Brick and Blossom lying on the ground a few feet from the soldier looking up in shock. The soldier glares at them with its one good eye, puts its pistol away, draws its sabre, points the blade tip at Brick and Blossom, and then charges at them with the intent to run them through. Just before the soldier can however, Brick fires an eye-laser at the soldier and hits it, making it stumble and veer of course but the ghost's momentum carries it through and the sabre partially cuts through Blossom's left arm. Blossom stifles a scream of pain while Brick grabs her right arm and jumps back with the rest of their siblings.

"Pinkie, where are you cut?" Brick asks while checking her arm.

"Right here." Blossom points at where her arm stings without looking because she doesn't want to see how bad it is herself but Brick doesn't see any blood.

"Pinkie, I don't see any blood. Hell, I don't even see a cut."

"What? But it hurts, I felt it slice through. Are you sure there's nothing?"

"Look for yourself. Do you see any blood?"

Blossom hesitantly checks her arm but, to her amazement, doesn't see any blood or even a cut, despite her pain.

"I don't understand, why does it feel like I'm hurt then?"

"Uhh, we can figure that out later Blossom. Look." Says Buttercup pointing at the ghost, who has gotten back up and is currently advancing toward them all again.

Brick zaps it again with an eye-laser and again it makes the ghost stumble. Brick grins and says, "It can be hurt with energy attacks, blast it!"

Everyone fires at it with their eye-lasers but the ghost dodges right, does a combat roll, and sweeps its sabre from left to right letting out an energy wave pushing all six kids back several feet. The ghost pulls out its pistol again and takes aim at Boomer who is trying to regain his balance after the ghost's energy wave knocked him back. The ghost fires and hits Boomer square in the chest; Boomer has the breathe violently knocked out of him and he doubles over in pain before he falls down.

"BOOMER!" Bubbles shrieks at the top of her lungs as he fell to the ground right in front of her. Brick and Butch see it too and shoot a look of pure rage at the soldier before blasting it with two energy balls each, one from each hand, and knocking it through a wall and into another room. After making sure the ghost wasn't going to come back through the wall, they both rushed to their brother's side.

"Dude, are you ok?" Asked Butch.

"Boomer, say something man. Let us know you're alive." Said Brick.

The girls were slightly caught off guard by this sudden show of compassion; they didn't think the boys were actually capable of expressing it. After a moment of torturous silence, Boomer spoke.

"I'm...ok. I just...hurt." He said breathlessly as he slowly pushed himself into a kneeling position while clutching his chest. Blossom looked at Boomer's chest to assess the extent of the injury but, just like her arm, there didn't seem to be any blood.

"He's not bleeding. There doesn't even seem to be any damage to his costume."

Brick and Butch look at Blossom for a moment before looking back at Boomer and seeing she's right; there isn't any sign of blood or damage.

Brick turns back to Blossom, "What the hell is going on Pinkie?!" Brick asked. "First, you say you felt the blade of the sabre slice through your arm but there is no sign of damage and now we all saw Boomer get shot but he isn't injured either. I don't get it."

Boomer is shaking his head, "But Brick, I felt the bullet go through me, there has to be some kind of damage done to me." Boomer staggers a bit when he finally stands up but Bubbles supports him so that he doesn't fall over again.

Brick shakes his head, "Boomer, there's no blood, no injury, hell, there's not even a hole in your costume."

Boomer feels his chest. "But, how? I felt it pass through me."

Blossom is looking over her own arm searching for anything that even remotely looks like a cut when she realizes something. "Hey hold on, I think I know why we're feeling pain."

Everyone turns to Blossom and waits as she puts her explanation into words, "Under normal circumstances, neither the sabre nor the pistol would've been able to hurt us in any way. But since the soldier is a ghost, and is technically a form of energy, and since energy is one of the few things that is capable of causing us actual harm, that has to be why Boomer and I are feeling pain."

"But, a sword and a bullet aren't made of energy Pinkie. They're a physical force and we can withstand physical forces easily." Brick argued.

Blossom nods patiently and says, "Yes, I know Brick, but the soldier must have had his weapons on him when he died, so the weapons are ghostly as well thus making them energy."

Everyone stares at Blossom in shock. Boomer feels his chest once more before asking the obvious question, "But, we've all been hit by energy before, both from each other when we've fought and from either monsters or from some sort of gadget or weapon but the energy never went through us or hurt us like this. I mean, it really felt like my lungs exploded."

Blossom nods, "Yeah, and it felt like my arm was nearly lopped off." Blossom thought about it some more and came to an unsettling conclusion. "Maybe," she began in a disturbed tone of voice, "because it's ghostly energy, we are able to feel real human pain. The kind of pain a normal person would feel if they were hurt in that way but without the permanent after effects like, being dead." Everybody shivered.

Brick shakes his head, "Pinkie, that doesn't make sense. How is it that just because it's a ghost, it's able to hurt us?"

Blossom sighs, "Brick, the paranormal, and other ghostly occurrences, are very hard things to study. Unlike other fields of scientific research, you can't expect paranormal activity to occur with the same consistent frequency as say, the tides rising and receding or how diet coke and Mentos react to give you a soda geyser. Heck, you have a better chance of predicting when a volcano is going to erupt to the minute a decade from now than predicting paranormal activity to occur on any given night in a place that is supposedly haunted." Blossom rubs her temples to ease a headache that has started, "In other words Brick, the ghosts can hurt us through means that we can't begin to understand yet."

Brick gives a dry laugh but still manages to say with confidence, "Well, at least we're able to fight back with our own energy. The soldier still hasn't come back through the wall to attack us again."

Blossom nods, "Yeah, you're right about that."

Brick smirks at Blossom admitting he's right about something again but then his eyes widen suddenly. Blossom sees this and asks what's up. "Brick, what is it?"

"The clue, I think I got it." Brick states with a genuine smile.

Blossom blinks at seeing Brick smile like that but quickly asks what the answer is, "Y-you do? Well what is it?"

The others also listen to what Brick has to say. "We're going to the basement."

Bubbles and Boomer say in unison, "The basement?"

Then Butch asks, "Dude, what makes you think we need to go to the basement?"

Brick turns to Butch and explains, "Remember what the clue said? It said, 'what are you when you're not the buyer?' You're the seller. Get it?"

Butch struggles to connect the dots until Blossom states, "I get it, 'cellar' is another word for basement."

Brick nods, "Right, so we're heading for the basement."

Everyone blinks in confusion at first but it clicks a moment later and a resounding "Ohhhhh" is heard. Brick and Blossom shake their heads, slightly amused before Brick says, "Alright, let's go." Everyone heads for the basement door but Brick grabs Blossom's arm and holds her back for a moment.

"Pinkie, hang on a second. I need to ask you something."

Blossom turns to look at Brick and asks, "What?"

Brick glances over her shoulder to make sure their siblings aren't listening before he continues. "Why did you...you know...save me from getting shot by the ghost?"

Blossom's eyes widen at the question before she looks away while rubbing her arm and replies, "Well, I...it's just...*sigh* nobody deserves to suffer like that." Blossom turns back to Brick and looks him in the eye with a small smile, "Besides, the thing you said about, sometimes it's better to just go with the flow. Well, aside from the dangerous situation we're in having to deal with a couple of ghosts, you were right about it; it is getting interesting."

Brick blinks in surprise at Blossom's admission but smirks a moment later. "Hmm, I've been right quite a bit tonight haven't I Pinkie?"

Blossom gapes at Brick for a moment before rolling her eyes good naturedly and lightly hitting him. "And there's the ego-maniac I'm used to dealing with." She shakes her head in amusement, "Come on, let's catch up with the others."

Brick chuckles and says, "Heh heh, whatever you say...and thanks for doing that, I guess."

Blossom nods and she and Brick head off to join their siblings, having a new-found respect between them.

I don't know if it's obvious yet or not but I'm trying to write the story in such a way that it shows the girls and the boys slowly start to respect each other as the night, and the danger, goes on. Case-in-point, Blossom and Brick's moment at the end there. I hope I'm doing this correctly and not moving too quickly with it.