"Ooh! Candy!" Caleb rolled his eyes and looked down to Blunk before realizing that the candy wrapper the passling had picked up could've been picked up by the Lurdens; idiotistic, greedy creatures that were, unbelievably, less intelligent than passlings, who at least had the initiative to sell what they stole. A Lurden would grow bored and throw anything they'd taken away. When Blunk chewed a bit of the candy, the sniffing and scrutinizing told him that a Lurdens' salty saliva had probably infected the taste. Caleb bent down and looked seriously at the creature, who was eating the bar anyway.
"You think you can follow the scent of that?" Blunk nodded and started sniffing, while Will transformed the girls. Then Caleb ushered the girls after Blunk who step directly into the portal, but Caleb stopped when the transformed Will only looked at him. "What?"
She opened her mouth slightly then, and closed it again and he wondered what she was finding so hard to say. He'd noticed that she seemed to refuse to look at him, and Caleb felt his skin prickle with goosebumps where she'd focused her gaze, somewhere on his middle section. His hands, he realized, as he went to awkwardly scratch his head, and Will's soft, almost watery brown eyes met his gaze at last. "It's.. Nothing."
"Wi-" He stopped short when she took flight, directly into the portal; leaving him alone, standing in a bedroom covered in far too much pink. He highly doubted nothing could make her act up, and there was always a reason and it was usually to do with him, and he never found out before it went away by itself. But he refused to let it lie this time and knew exactly where it had happened. It was in the castle, once he'd left her; that or somewhere between then and meeting her at the portal, and it wasn't fear.. Nor anger.. Will just seemed.. Sketchy. It was like her usual self had been disjointed and he didn't like this Will who didn't feel that she could trust him enough to say. Caleb sighed, deciding upon tackling the daunted redhead later; he'd apologize perhaps, though he wasn't sure what he'd done wrong this time.
...
"Chocolate! Chocolate!" After tracking up a mountainside, coated in thick, heavy snow, Irma did not see the funny side of Blunk licking the boulder in front of her. She walked a little fast; striding towards him.
"Uh.. Blunk?" The passling looked at her and Irma bent down, smiling tensely. She was cold. Her feet were sore. And she wanted to go home. "I've trick or treated enough to know.. THAT'S A ROCK, BLOCKHEAD!"
Hay Lin giggled, and Caleb stepped forward, "No, wait! I've heard stories about Phobos having an underground bunker.."
Caleb stepped forward then and looked like he was about to kick the rock, but Cornelia stopped him and Irma raised an eyebrow - not at the blonde cracking the rock in half (in the most flirtatiously womanly manner), but at the slightly shorter redhead who'd looked up at the mention of Phobos and now appeared to have very quickly sidled up toward Caleb, as though she were almost hiding behind him, though Irma knew it was probably just Will being.. Well, Will - Caleb said often enough that Will was crazy; always making sure that she wasn't around, because Irma knew better than the other girls that he meant it in a 'good' way, and that Will would only be hurt by the sentiment. Cornelia blew the rock at the final stage and it collapsed behind her, "Glad I saved your foot?"
Caleb almost backed away at that and Irma had to bite away a laugh when he bumped into Will behind him and Caleb looked from Will to Cornelia before saying, dryly, "Ecstatic."
"Let's split up inside." Irma gave a look to Cornelia, who'd apparently taken leadership role again, but was glad to see the tall blonde look apologetically at Will for having blurt it out. Will nodded and Irma frowned, wondering if Will had always been so pale, but Will stepped forward tall, ready to lead them in.
"Five minutes max.. Then we meet. Right back here."
Irma followed in, realizing it was, if possible, colder inside the evil mountain-home.