Boys and girls of every age
Wouldn't you like to see something stange?
Come with us and you will see
This, our town of Halloween!

Hey guys! Okay, this chapter, things are about to get SERIOUS. 8| Also, I have now become an official crazed fan of TNBC. ALL HAIL THE PUMPKIN KING!

Ehem... anyway, I'm REALLY excited about these next few chapters! TENSIONNNNNNN YES. Let's take a dive into Gloomsville, and see what in the world is going to happen, yes? Let's go!

Rain, rain, go away, come again another day...

These were the words spiralling inside Elinor's head as she stood staring out the tall and skinny windows of the dining room. It was storming up a gale outside, the wind roaring, the rain pelting, and the thunder and lightning clashing. Normally, Elinor would have been hiding underneath her bed, or her sheets, in fear. However, her mind was occupied.

She had spent the remainder of the night previous pondering what in the world the mysterious 'friend' word meant. From what she could gather it had some kind of relation to family, so obviously it had some sort of sentimentality involved with it. But was it a noun? Adjective? Verb? So many questions buzzing around her confused mind... And that banging sound wasn't helping in the least.

Wait...

Banging sound?

Elinor whipped her head up to attention. She pricked her ears to listen in on her surroundings, silently scanning her perimeter. She waited...

Bang-bang-bang.

There it was again! It was coming from outside!

Elinor felt a frosty feeling creeping around the bottom of her chest, and warning bells were sounding in her mind. Why was that happening? She thought she had convinced herself that this WASN'T a trap...

But maybe that wasn't what was bothering her. Perhaps this was a new kind of threat—No, not threat. It was an unknown... thing. That was all. Now, if she could just learn how to quiet those warning bells...

Elinor walked over to the front doors of the mansion, intending to go outside and investigate. She reached her hand out for the doorknob, when she heard someone yelp;

"Elinor? What are you doing?!"

It was Ruby. Of course.

Elinor turned her head around to face the red headed girl. She was standing on the top of the staircase, her left arm resting on the railings. Her face showed utter shock.

"I was just..." Elinor thought of a good enough reason for her to go outside when there was a life threatening storm raging outside. Ruby beat her to it.

"Are you insane?" she accused, her eyes full of worry, "If you were out there for ten seconds the wind would rip your wings right off!"

'Well, I guess there is that...' Elinor pondered, feeling a little sheepish.

Ruby made her way down the staircase, "What in the world made you want to go gallivanting out there?" she pressed, visibly concerned.

"And tell the truth," she added.

Elinor remained silent for a few seconds. Who gave her permission to tell Elinor what to do? It wasn't like the girl was the boss of her...

Elinor felt annoyance bubbling in her like poison. Dangerous, uncontrollable, poison. Elinor looked at the ground for a few moments, then slowly looked up to Ruby, and glowered for a brief minute. Then suddenly, all these horrible thoughts flashed through Elinor's mind: Get her, rip her! Tear her apart! Make her sorry!

Elinor started hyperventilating. She hadn't thought such thoughts as this since... since...

"Elinor..." Ruby said slowly, "Why are you bearing your teeth?"

BANG!

The front door flew off its hinges in an eardrum-killing blast! The force of the explosion knocked both Ruby and Elinor off their feet, sending them flying across the room. The second the doors collapsed, ear splitting wind came screaming through the archway, along with rock-hard rain blowing hundreds of miles an hour.

Elinor looked up from her crumpled position on the ground, where she had crashed into the wall and made a rather large hole. Squinting her eyes as to not let them be stung by the rain droplets, she managed to make out a few blurry figures standing at the entrance to the mansion.

"Target has been successfully hit," she made out one of them say with a gruff Australian accent, "And now moving on to secure the rest of the perimeter."

If Elinor had been feeling insecure a few moments ago, it was nothing compared to how she felt now.

They'd caught her.

Skull Boy was in his observatory styled room, trying desperately to read his book over the raging weather. Unlike the rest of the Mansion's children, he wasn't into drama like books. No, he was more into encyclopaedias and text books. They actually made you smarter.* But they were a lot easier to read if you didn't have to put up with constant rumbling thunder...

Skull Boy sighed a little in exasperation and turned a page. He was about to continue reading when he suddenly heard an unearthly BOOM come from downstairs. The skeleton boy immediately snapped his book shut, jumped out of his coffin styled bed, and began to race downstairs. He swore, if this was another one of Iris' shenanigans, he and Ruby would have to fix it. Again.

However, when the skeleton boy did run down the stairs and through the hallways to find the source of the boom, he saw something that only made him wish it was one of Iris' accidents. The scene that he saw from his position from round the corner of the top stairs of the entrance room was chaotic. Not only was there wind blowing hard and rain whipping around in every direction, but the front doors had been blown right off their hinges. Strange men were investigating the room, upturning furniture and waving what looked like metal detectors around the room. Elinor was lying in a hole in the wall about three feet away from where Skull Boy stood, and right next to Elinor was—

"RUBY!"

As soon as he said it, Skull Boy slapped a hand to his mouth. All of the men in the room turned their heads in Skull Boys direction. If Skull Boy had blood, it would have turned to ice.

One of the men raised and arm and pointed to the skeletal child.

"Cease him," he ordered.

*-Oh, come now, Skulls! You'd LIKE Harry Potter! (I can sense my inner rabid fangirl going ballistic...)

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUN! Elinor has been CAUGHT! LEGASP! And now, not just SHE is in trouble! Talk about an unexpected turn of events! This is probably what her annoying little voice had been warning her about... *gulp*

Ruby Gloom DOES NOT BELONG TO ME.

But Elinor does, and so do the stange men with Australian accents. :3

See ya next time!