Chapter 37: A Healer and a Mind Reader
Disclaimer: I own nothing except for my OC.
It was the fourth evening of the gala. For this night, Lauren selected her dark blue, sleeveless dress that hugged her waist before turning loose and covered in ruffles that extend to her ankles. With it, she wore a pair of silver high heel sandals. Straightening her hair, Lauren put on silver eye shadow, blush, and a nude shade of lipstick. In no time at all the ghouls were all ready to go downstairs. They sat down at their usual table with Leon, Eno, Reef, Marina, Blaze, and Billy, and were listening to Pitch make his announcements, eagerly awaiting dinner to be served. But they weren't disappointed. In a little over half an hour they were all filling their stomachs with every kind of rotten meat, cheese, and vegetable you could imagine, and washing it down with sparkling sodas.
Sibella was reaching for an extra rotten crab apple when something fell from the sky, landed on the apple, picked it up, and threw it at her. Reflexes taking over, Sibella ducked just in time to avoid being hit. But the creature had friends, hundreds of friends, who were attacking every table and monster in sight. Lauren shut her eyes for a moment before her bow and arrows magically appeared. She strung one as a burst of bright light appeared in her peripheral vision.
Looking over she saw Blaze burst into flames. But he didn't seem to be in any pain. "Blaze, are you alright?" She asked, immensely alarmed.
"Alright? Things are only beginning to get hot! Sweet bow and arrows by the way!" Blaze replied as he began launching fireballs at the intruders.
Lauren gave him a salute when she suddenly heard sloshing noises. She saw Reef and Marina creating balls out of the surrounding liquids and pelting them at the pests.
She heard Eno shout "Nobody look at me!" Because he said this, Lauren felt a great urge to do so. He'd taken off his glasses and was turning the pests to stone.
One collided with seemingly nothing, which became Billy's head. "Hey, element of surprise ring a bell to anyone?" he asked before disappearing again.
"Is everyone around here's name a pun?" Lauren muttered to herself, stringing an arrow.
"Hey, whoa, what are you doing?" Leon asked, putting his hands on her shoulders.
"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm protecting my friends from... whatever these things are." Lauren replied, pulling back on the bow string.
"Those things aren't hurting you, are they?" Leon argued, gesturing to the flying balls of fluff with with hands.
"I'm not going to give them the chance. Just look!" Lauren told him, pointing to where one had just bit the eyeball out of a man who had currently been playing the violin. Lauren quickly pulled back the arrow and fired, taking the thing right out of the sky. She then teleported over to the monster, placed his eye back in his head, and used her healing powers to make the pain go away. Not giving him a chance to thank her, Lauren teleported back to the other ghouls and continued fighting with them.
Lauren jumped into the air, landed on the table, and shot at anything that neared it. What she missed, Sibella attacked in her bat form, Tanis snatched with her bandages, Winnie, Elsa, and Phantasma smashed, Marina and Reef drowned with amalgamated liquids, Eno turned them into stone, Blaze turned to ashes with fire, or Billy snatched out of the air and threw them at Blaze where they shortly turned to ash. Leon had disappeared. He was probably hiding somewhere. Lauren didn't pay him any mind. He'd left and that was on him.
Deciding her friends were handling the situation well enough and the ghouls were safe, Lauren jumped into the air. The monsters had begun fighting back. The pests were being frozen, melted, beaten, knocked, stomped, crushed, and a thousand other things. One flew at Lauren put she caught it in her hand and examined it. It was solid black with gaping jaws that could easily bite her entire hand off, claws, and a pair of wings. It was about the same size as a softball. It didn't resemble anything she'd ever seen before. Suddenly a black arrow shot through the creature. Startled, Lauren turned to face the person who'd shot the arrow, which was her father.
He looked extremely angry. Holding up his hand, he snapped his fingers. For a second, it seemed like nothing was going to happen when suddenly the ground shook and hundreds of Nightmares flew into the air from seemingly nowhere. They seemed to know exactly what to do and went after every single one of the little ball shaped pests. With the Nightmares in action, it was just ten minutes later when they were all lying dead, destroyed, or unrecognizably mangled. The only sounds were the heavy panting of the people who'd been fighting and the cries and moans who the injured.
Lauren went from injury to injury, healing it. As she was fixing a particularly nasty bite on a little ghoul's arm, Pitch said quietly "I want to know who's responsible for this and I want to know it now. If you don't come forward right now and I find out about it later, you will regret it. Those who know the culprit or culprits but don't come forward will be treated as equally guilty. This is the last time I'm going to ask nicely. Come forward now." When no one said anything, he said "Lauren, come here for a minute."
Lauren looked up from healing a zombie and flew over to Pitch. "Yes, father?" she asked, a foot from him.
Pitch closed the distance between them before whispering "If you see anyone, anyone at all, making a run for it I want you to teleport over to them and stop them by any means necessary. You may continue healing people." Pitch waved her away.
Lauren gave him a mock curtsy before flying back over to the zombie. Still, no one had stepped forward. With a little smirk on his face, Pitch snapped his fingers. Two of the Nightmares beside him parted to allow a woman to walk through. Once she'd done so, the circle was reformed. "Cassandra, thank you for accompanying me up here. For those of you who don't know, Cassandra is an extremely powerful mind reader. Not only can she read what you're currently thinking, but every thought you ever had for any certain time length. She could see every thought you've had since birth, or more conveniently, every thought you've had in the past hour. If she checks you and you're clean, you may step out of the circle of Nightmares. If she checks you and you played a part in this, well, you'll just have to wait and see. Cassandra, you may begin."
She turned to Pitch and stared, her pupils dilating in the process. After a moment she said "You're clean." Pitch stepped outside the Nightmares and began walking around, making sure there was no one outside the circle. After about twenty minutes, half of the monsters were on the outside of the circle, the others on the inside. Cassandra walked up to a teenage boy, probably the same age as Lauren. He was wearing a torn tux, his hair was disheveled, part of his bow tie was missing, and his glasses were askew on his face. He was also shaking. Cassandra smiled sympathetically and said "It won't hurt, I promise. The worst that'll happen is a slight pang of nausea, but that's extremely rare." She fixed her gaze on the boy's head. It stayed like that for a minute, then two. She stared transfixed at him for over five minutes when she whispered "He's one of them." The boy freaked then. He pushed people out of his way and ran towards the Nightmares which quickly surrounded him. The boy put his hands against his temples, his body writhing as the Nightmares closed in. Suddenly, the Nightmares flew backwards as the boy shot into the air, increasing his size by tenfold.
Lauren slowly rose from where she had been kneeling, healing a bitten finger. The angered boy looked down at the Nightmares before beginning to smash them with his fist, which was now the size of a washing machine, reducing them to sand. It was at that moment when three other monsters, two male, one female, jumped up and ran in separate directions. Lauren's face hardened as she teleported, grabbing one after the other. She placed the stunned monsters in a tightly knit circle made of Nightmares. After dusting her hands off, she teleported over to the enlarged and enraged boy, and moved in front of him. "Hey, you! You need to calm down now!" Instead he swiped at her. Lauren jumped to the side, rolled, and ended up on her feet. "Listen, it'll be alright! Just take it easy and shrink back to normal!" This time he kicked at her. Lauren simply dodged him. "It's going to get worse for you if you don't turn back to normal right now! If you do, we can work something out! If you don't, things'll get real ugly real quick! Turn back to normal! Please!" The boy stopped swinging his fists and slowly began to shrink. Lauren ran forward to catch him as he swayed. He fell into her arms and she carried him over to Pitch who immediately had him removed from his daughter's arms.
All was looking well when suddenly one of the males who'd been captured by Lauren and left with the Nightmares slashed a Nightmare with a knife and took off running. Angered by this, Lauren didn't teleport. Instead, she produced a ball of fire in her hand and threw it at the monster. However, it didn't hit him, rather it formed a ring of fire around him. The boy began screaming. Rolling her eyes, Lauren shouted "You're not going to be set on fire, but after what you did tonight, you deserve to be!" His screaming died down just a little. Pitch gave Lauren a look and she flicked her finger ever so slightly. The flames were instantly put out but the boy didn't have a chance to move because monsters were already there to grab him. Him and the other three were escorted from the ballroom.
Once they were gone, the remaining monsters looked around. They themselves were disheveled. Most had torn clothing, some were bleeding, and a few were scraped and bruised. The room itself was in shambles, and it hadn't helped when that boy turned into a giant and began smashing things. Lauren walked over to the ghouls who she'd been happy to see were unscathed. Lauren threw her arms around them, ensuing a group hug between the six of them. Suddenly, music filled the air. Lauren, Winnie, Elsa, Tanis, Phantasma, and Sibella all turned around to see the band had picked back up from where they'd left off. The friends decided to dance and were soon joined by Marina, Reef, Billy, Eno, and Leon. They spent the rest of the night dancing as friends, trying to forget what they had just been through, and instead on being together.