(There is no Day 4 in Ba Sing Se.)


Free hadn't exactly been up to date on human culture even before the locked-in-Witch-Jail-for-two-centuries thing. And back then, it hadn't really been an issue beyond worrying about whether people were going to chase him down with pitchforks. That was never a good way to start a day.

For the most part, Free was content to learn about things as they came up. If you waited long enough, most of them stopped mattering. (This was one of his best strategies for dealing with his problems, really.)

But every now and then, he encountered a human idea that was actually worth exploring. It was bound to happen because of statistics, or something.

It was because of one of these discoveries that he was currently lined up in front of a suburban house, accompanied by an unimpressed Eruka. "Remind me why we're here, again?"

"The wait is part of the fun! You have to let the excitement build." He bounced on the balls of his feet. "Are you scared yet?"

"No," she said flatly. "And that wasn't what I meant and you know it. What are we doing at this miserable human excuse for a haunted house?"

"We're here to get scared, of course." He made his best puppy face that didn't involve actually becoming a canine. "It's been so long since I had a proper Halloween."

"You do realize we've been face to face with an actual embodiment of fear, right?" She crossed her arms but didn't pursue the subject. Free chose to interpret this as her realizing how awesome this was going to be.

The line crept closer to the house, Eruka occasionally making snide comments about the decorations. "They're totally stereotyping witches," she said at one point, conveniently ignoring the fact that she owned a hat just like the one she was complaining about.

Privately, Free had to agree with her. The decorations were incredibly cheesy, and the house clearly had not been designed with magical beings in mine. But that didn't matter, because he had ulterior motives!

That's right, he was being sneaky. Just another of his hidden talents.

The point was, he was lulling her into a false sense of security. They'd laugh at the ridiculous attempts to frighten them, possibly show some of the attendants what real monsters were like. Then, when she wasn't expecting it, he was going to transform and scare her! It was the perfect plan.

Admittedly, the inside of the house was slightly darker than he expected. Not that it mattered to him, because he did have a magic eye, but Eruka might miss the full effect. For that matter, the space was much smaller than he'd expected. He kept having to duck to avoid dangling spiders, and that was before he transformed.

He was so busy trying to figure out the logistics of the space that he was completely unprepared for the first actor to jump out.

… He may have yelped and grabbed for Eruka. Unfortunately, he wasn't exactly paying attention to what he was doing, and ended up grabbing her around the neck. This of course startled her, and she jumped a foot into the air. They ended up with Eruka dangling awkwardly from Free's arm, both feeling silly. The actor who'd startled them nowhere in sight, which was probably the best thing for his future wellbeing.

Needless to say, that kind of put a damper on Free's plans for the evening. He was having trouble feeling enthusiastic about scaring her after that embarrassment, and besides, she'd probably hex him into next week. They made it through the rest of the house in silence, tacitly agreeing not to speak of this again.

And that would probably have been the end of it, had they not exited the house to find the least flattering photo of them possible up on a screen with the caption "I survived Death House… Barely"

It wasn't the first time she'd threatened to have Tadpole Jackson take his side of the bed, but it was the first time she'd gone through with it.