Sorry, I took so long.

Finn Ames and the Lost Lemon

"Where could she be?" Finn asked himself for the umpteenth time, he'd been around this exact corridor twelve times just today. Lemon hasn't answered his calls or even shown up to class in weeks, if it wasn't for the absolute fact that he knew she exited her dorm room every once in a while he would've assumed she disappeared with-

-with his friends.

Finn shook himself, he'd been over this! Lance isn't here right now, Daut isn't here right now, Mash. Wasn't. Here.

But Lemon was, she was still here, still kicking and he needed some comfort in the fact that at least one of his friends still walked with him.

He talked with Tom over the weeks but he was more of Mash's friend than Finn's. The friendly jock was much too energetic and enthusiastic about his passion. Where did he even get the bamboo to make his room into a forest?

Finn preferred the quiet but comforting presence of the tough and sweet Mash than the outrageous claims on the beauty of the stars and how they can spell victory in his dreams.

And Abel? Abyss? For the gods' sake, Love? His fear of losing his friends outweighed the fear of being turned into a puppet, sliced up, or thrown into a tornado. So he approached Magia Lupus in hopes of gaining some information on Lemon's well-being. It didn't help matters much but Abel, at the very least, assured Finn that Lemon was spotted leaving for Marquette Street a few times.

That's why he waited here, pacing outside Lemon's room on the off chance she'll open her door and… Finn didn't know what he would do but he hoped to at least talk to her before the day was done. He desperately wanted to see his friend alive and well.

So, he waited.

And waited.

And waited some more…

It was only when Finn could see the golden sunset out of the big window that overlooked Adler Dorm that he had enough! He didn't wish to be a bother, but he knew Lemon was in there! He could swear he heard some snipping sounds, muffled grunts, and quiet breathing coming from beyond the closed door of her room.

"Hah, bugger all." Finn knocked on the fine oak door, the sound reverberating throughout the empty room.

Nothing happened. The snipping sounds didn't stop.

Finn breathed in deeply, and let out a slow breath. "Lemon, are you alright in there?"

Silence, nothing but his faint breathing was audible. He frowned and tried knocking again.

As his fist barely scraped the wood, the door slowly opened up on its own with a high-pitched squeaking sound.

Finn gulped, his nerves lit like a jumble of magically enhanced wires. Sending signals to the wrong parts of his body because instead of backing away as he is supposed to when faced with creepy shenanigans such as this, he instead crept in shakily with his head in a panic.

"What am I doing!?" He harshly mumbled to himself.

His body just wouldn't stop moving forward, only shaking slightly as he delicately stepped into the darkness of Lemon's room.

As he walked in, Finn didn't know what to expect from the spooky atmosphere the room shrouded itself in. In fact, he really did not want to know.

From what he could tell near the entrance of her room, Finn made out bottles of black dye and eyeliner? He didn't take Lemon as a makeup-using gal, he always just expected her to look the same every day. Is that rude? It definitely feels rude of him to assume that.

The dim light of their dormitory coming into her room wasn't enough for Finn to see anything else of note, aside from the red-eyed vampire staring into his soul.

…hold on a moment.

As soon as Finn processed the fact that this strange raven-haired woman really did exist, and that yes, she currently is looking straight at him, he yelped. In fact, he might've screamed for a good few minutes before finally quieting down. Not because he wasn't still scared of her, even though he felt quite unnerved at how she hadn't moved at all since he started freaking out. No, he stopped screaming simply because his throat gave out at about the four-minute mark. A new record for sure, last time he could only scream for three minutes and forty seconds.

As he panted and coughed out his aching throat, the creepy girl still only stared down at him, due to him being hunched over. He noticed, from his terrifying angle, that she looked a little familiar. Wait, that wasn't important right now. What Finn really wanted to know was why this girl was taking up his friend's room!?

"W-Who," He rasped with a sore throat, "Who are you? Why are you in Lemon's room?"

The creepy girl didn't reply. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted her right hand, which had its nails painted black, flicking a black wand.

Finn tried to backpedal out of the spooky, and sticky, situation. Tried to, being the key phrase.

Materializing out of the potent magic aura of the academy grounds, metal chains sprouted from thin air and wrapped themselves around the too slow Finn. He gasped as those cold chains squeezed tightly around his thin, fragile form.

He desperately wriggled in her magical grip, but his bonds were literally ironclad. His frantic flailing only made the links of metal squish him more. "He-Hey! I don't know who you are, but this room isn't yours!" He grunted as she pointed her wand to the floor, a move that unfortunately reminded him of Lance.

His chains slammed him to the carpeted floor, driving the breath from his lungs. Now that he thought about it, these chains were similar to Lemon's personal magic. And that move she just did looked eerily like Lance's Graviole.

Straining his neck to look up at the red-eyed magic-user, Finn gasped as she had a red ribbon tied around her head. Just like Lemon.

In his head, Finn replaced the creepy girl's black hair with blond hair and her red eyes with blue. His breath caught at just what the image entailed;

This menace was Lemon!

"Lemon! Why are you so creepy now!?"

With an eye twitch, Lemon jerked her wand back towards her. Launching the chained-up Finn up and right up in front of her. "That's not my name." She spoke for the first time.

A chill went through Finn's entire body, goosebumps ran up his skinny arms and he swallowed involuntarily. Her voice was cold and as sharp as Abyss Razor's sword. "Wha-?

She gently grasped the side of his freckled face, caressing it almost. Finn shivered, her hands were cold as well. Moving her hand back around, she grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him closer. To the point where their noses almost touched.

"Finn…" She breathed, "You're a smart boy, tell me… who do you see in front of you?"

…Finn blinked, he felt plenty of things at this moment in time. Fear, confusion, terror, and other emotions he never thought he'd feel towards his friend. "I see… my friend? Looking like a vampire?"

Lemon giggled, a sound so like Lemon yet still so unlike her. It freaked him out beyond measure.

She kept giggling for a moment before settling with a sharp smile, "I'll take that as a compliment, you sure have a way with words." By the gods, she was practically purring those lines! Who is this… this creep and what did she do with the real Lemon!?

"Listen, Lemon you're starting to freak me out!" He hissed as soon he finished speaking, the freezing hand wrapped around the back of his neck dug its crimson nails into his soft pale flesh.

"The Lemon you know is gone." She half-hissed, half-growled. "Who stands before you in her place is who I should've been long ago."

She finally let go of him, allowing him a moment to breathe a sigh of relief. Grasping the side of her sneering face, Lemon spoke again, "I am the wrongs of Lemon righted, her weakness executed without mercy." She gestured with both hands as she raised them to the ceiling of her dorm room, "I am everything, the full potential of myself finally unlocked! No longer will I cower behind the strong, muscular back of my beloved late fiance."

Lemon shoved her mad face into Finn's, squishing his panicking face between her icy fingers as they looked into each other's eyes. Did Lemon hold her hands out the window or something? How in the many hells were her hands so cold?

Jerking back to the crazed smile of Lemon, Finn heard the rest of her impassioned speech, "Never again will I lower myself to care for those simpering fools beneath me, what good will that do for me? Bring me to ruin once again? Force me to watch my dear Mash be taken away from me again? Never! Never again will I be weak!"

Her eyes softened as she looked into Finn's yellow eyes, "Don't worry, you're different from the others. I can see this… curdling mire of deep, dark desire within you." Her smile turned sinister, "You feel the same way don't you? I know you want to be strong, to not be so helpless anymore. I understand, I was just like you just a little while ago."

Finn's heart began to race, she was dangerously close to suggesting things he didn't want to think about. Things he thought he left behind. She was bluffing, she had to be bluffing. He didn't feel those things anymore. He made sure of it!

Ignorant to Finn's internal hysteria, Lemon continued. "I won't let you go down my path, my path of worthlessness." She stroked his black and yellow hair as one would do to a pet. "You're all I have left."

"L-Lemon-!

Finn yelped as she yanked on his hair, silencing him. Lemon glared at him with barely restrained rage, her jaw shook as the seconds ticked by. It was a tense moment when Finn thought she'd finally lost her patience. He closed his eyes and braced for an attack, but soon opened them when he felt the harsh grip on his hair vanish.

Lemon backed away, forcing a whimsical smile onto her face. A far cry from how natural those smiles came to her back before her precious love disappeared. "How silly of me, I forgot to introduce myself!"

She twirled around in her Adler uniform, which she somehow managed to make the black uniform look even darker, and gave a cheery pose. "My name…" She pulled her gaze towards a dark unseen corner of the ceiling, "...is Passion."

Finn regretted getting out of bed this morning.