Gaz normally loved chocolate chip pancakes. But she barely felt like eating as she slowly put piece after piece into her mouth, chewing softly as Dib sat across from her at the table. He bit his lip slightly as the light filtered in from the kitchen window onto the table, illuminating him in an almost peaceful, angelic sense, whilst Gaz laid in darkness, head slightly bowed, having barely touched her chocolate milk.
"Gaz, I'm sorry." He finally spoke up. "Sorry you've been through all this and that we have to keep relying on just holding them off. But the trap's laid. All we need to do is take care of the other animatronics and keep them away from Bloaty and you so they can't gang up on you and ruin it. After all, the wires are only built for one and we don't want Zim slashing through or BB fiddling about-"
"What would help is if we could get the ghost children back on our side. I think they do want to help, but Bloaty's amped up his control of them." Gaz mumbled, mouth half-full of pancakes as she leaned back in her chair, putting her fork down. She rubbed her eyes and moaned. "I don't know how we're going to do that, though. How am I supposed to reach them AND keep the animatronics away AND get Bloaty into the trap at the same time?"
"I think I might have a way. We need to trap the ghost kids. If we get them all together and far away enough from Bloaty, you may be able to reach them. And to add in some extra protection, we can use the runes." Dib offered, putting a hand on his chest.
"But we can't spend even more hours painting another room the way we did with the office. We don't have the time and it's Friday, one of the pizzeria's most busiest days." Gaz insisted as she shook her head back and forth, purple hair flopping about. "There's people there up until the very tip of closing time, we'd never get another room done by the time Bloaty does his rounds."
"I wasn't going to suggest we paint the room. I was going to suggest we paint YOU." He said, pointing at Gaz. "I mean, think about it. Why wouldn't it work? If it can protect a room from most spirits, why can't it protect you?" Dib wanted to know, Gaz raising an eyebrow up, tilting her head slightly to the side. She'd heard of odder things, surely. It couldn't really hurt. "We'll just need a portable lamp from the garage and then we can paint you in the glow-in-the-dark paint we used."
Gaz thought about this, arms folded across her chest as she looked across the table at Dib and how the light enveloped him. He looked so damn saintly right now, as if divinely inspired. Somehow...she had a good feeling about this plan. A hunch. And so she gave a nod.
"Alright. Let's do it. But I'm gonna take a looong nap first." She admitted, finally flopping her head down into the syrup, quite wiped from last night as a piece of chocolate pancake went flying and landed squarely on Dib's plate.
"...oh. Well!" He chuckled a bit and then began carving into it. Waste not, want not.
...
...
...
...within a few hours, Gazzy was awake again, and Dib was getting a portable lamp ready with the right kind of bulb as she painted her arms and legs and face with the special paint. It would, however, require some help when it came time to do her back...so after about half an hour she took off her shirt then her bra, whistling as Dib entered the room, then reeled back. "GAH! You coulda told me!" He exclaimed.
"Whiner. Get the paint onto my back. I already did my front." She said, rolling her eyes. "So you don't have to worry about being all creeped out by your sister's breasts, okay?"
"Sorry, sorry." Dib said, gulping as he took the paint bucket and the brush, and began to do the necessary swirls and curves of the runes as he slightly chewed on his lip. "I really hope this works. Just one more night."
"If this works out...and even if it doesn't? I'm gonna raze that place to the fuckin' ground. And dance on the ashes."
Dib gave a small grin. "I would have thought you'd be against that. I thought you swore after going to Bloaty World you'd never stand in another line again!" He remarked.
Gaz chuckled a little. "Heh. That's actually pretty funny." She admitted as Dib kept painting on her back before blinking. "Wait, so have you, like, been talking to other people about Bloaty's?"
"I know I said I doubted the church would believe me, but I went in to go see the priest in town. And he's Sara's dad."
Gaz blinked, mouth slightly hanging open. "Wait. Was Sara one-"
Dib sighed. "Sara wasn't. But her sister Haggy was."
In fact, she had been the one who was making fun of Bloaty's size, Sara had explained as her father sat nearby, squinting slightly at Dib, rubbing his own glasses as she held her head down, eyes closed as Dib listened intently in the pew. The light from the stained glass windows gently drifted through, dust motes swaying back and forth as Dib let Sara continue. "She was admonishing him for being a glutton." Sara mumbled. "Haggy really liked using the virtues she'd just learned in Sunday School. Liked talking about the virtues and the vices. We did a lesson on Lust and she'd complain about how awful Romeo and Juliet were being in normal school the next day. We did a lesson on Charity and she'd donate all her allowance that day to everyone she saw begging on the street."
"And Bloaty didn't much like a "stupid brat" making fun of his size?" Dib asked of her, Sara's father adjusting his glasses again, continuing to squint.
"Eh? Can you speak up? It's hard to hear you."
"I can hear him fine enough, Dad." Sara insisted with a look back at her father as her deep blue eyes looked back up at Dib. "Yeah. I suppose Bloaty didn't like it much. I didn't want to believe it was on purpose but when Torque said what he said and when I heard the rumors about other kids getting nasty looks and stuff from him, I started to think that he really did do it on purpose. And when other kids went missing, I began to wonder if he'd had anything to do with it."
"He did. He's still in there and I've got to put an end to him."
"Well, in that case...Dad, can't we just exorcise the place?"
Her father sighed as he took off his glasses and waved them slightly in the air. "I'd have to get it cleared with the Church first. But I can do something for you right now, and that's give you a blessing from the Lord."
"Well, I brought this." Dib admitted, holding out a large kitchen knife. "I know it ain't "traditional" but my Mom used it all the time to do all her cooking. It was Dad's gift, he had it finely-crafted with lasers to make it incredibly sharp."
Sara looked it over as Dib handed it to her and she then handed it to her father as he took it over to a nearby little podium that had a large bowl in it full of holy water. Closing his eyes, Sara's father began to pray as he submerged it into the water, Sara looking over at Dib as she held his shoulder. "Oh! You're cold."
"I've had a rough week." He mumbled out with a sigh. "...but it's almost done."
"I'm kinda glad you came." She admitted. "A lot of people would be happy to see that place torn down after all it's taken from us. We could never truly prove anything, but...well, losing my sister kind of changed my priorities on what I did and didn't believe."
"Losing family does that to you." Dib told her, giving her a gentle hug. "Grief gets great. So I guess we gotta be good to each other when we can."
"And thank God for that." Sara added with a small smile.
Gaz blinked a bit, Dib finishing up his story and the painting, putting the brush away as he stepped back. "All done."
His sister got off the bed, putting her bra and her shirt back on as she dusted herself off and turned back to look at Dib as he sat there. "So where's the knife?"
"I stuck it in withe the rest of your supplies in your backpack, wrapped up in a towel so you don't accidentally stab yourself." Dib informed her. "I hope it's enough."
"It's going to have to be." Gaz said. "All of this." She said, gesturing at herself, giving her brother a nod as she set her jaw and smiled. "It'll have to be and it WILL be. Tonight we end it. Tonight it's Bloaty who's going to be screaming in fear. Tonight, we put an end to our big, fat, porky friend and I send HIM into a nightmare world."
Dib smiled and smacked his fist into his palm. "I feel like BACON for dinner."
THAT NIGHT
It was 12:30 AM and Gaz was ready.
She'd calmly paced back and forth, twirling her knife in one hand as she glanced about in the dark of the diner. The pizzeria was as quiet as the grave for now, but she knew it wouldn't last. Any moment now, he'd be coming. And she knew how to set him off.
"Everywhere there's lot of piggies, leading piggy lives! You can see them go to dinner with their piggy wives! Clutching forks and knives! TO EAT! THE! BA! CON!" She cried out, singing loudly and proudly as her voice carried out through the diner. It reverberated off the walls as the unmistakable sound of the Hunter echoed back, his sword going SKRRRRRRKKKK across the wall as he dragged it. His faint, sinister giggling laugh wafted through the pizzeria as Gaz's amber eyes closed and she took in a deep breath.
"You think you're so funny, huh? My dear little Bloaty, would you be so kind as to blow away that salt ring once I get this closed door open?" She heard him say in a mockingly polite tone, Gaz clinging to the wall, bag of salt in one hand as she waited, waited...
"Okley-dokely-do!" The stolen voice of Minimoose proclaimed as the Hunter began jiggling with the door.
"Oooooh, I'm comin' in, Gazzy! I'm coming-"
He yanked the door open and frowned darkly. No salt. The lights were on, sure, and the runes were there but...the computer was off, and Gaz was nowhere to be found. Indeed, Gazzy was setting up an additional trap whilst the Hunter glanced about before letting out a yell. "BLOATY! She ain't in there! Get those ghosts to work or something, have them track her down so we can go and skin her!"
THRAHK THRAHK THRAHK.
"Really, must I do everything for you?" Bloaty snorted, rolling his eyes. So much so one almost popped out and he frowned, putting it back in with a squelchy "PLORKA-PLOP" before rubbing his hands together, then whistling sharply, loudly. Gaz could feel the air get colder, more bitter, she could now see her own breath in front of her as she exhaled. The ghostly specters of the children slowly emerged from midair around the diner, one appearing right in the bathroom where she was, Gaz looking squarely at the girl and immediately making a guess.
"You're Hagar, right? Sara's sister?"
Hagar quivered and Gaz could tell the kid was truly trying to hold back and not say anything, not give away to Bloaty where she was. Gaz sighed and stepped back, putting the bag of salt down as she knelt by the backpack. "Tell you what. Go tell the other ghosts I'm here and tell Bloaty you're 'taking care of me'." She said. "Will that satisfy that fat pig?"
Haggy nodded quietly, her little white form slightly quivering, Gaz briefly seeing a flash of whom she truly was before she turned back into the almost featureless visage of an empty-socketed spirit, the other ghosts beginning to sweep into the room through the opened doorway. Gaz waited, counting as they all filed in, her knife on the floor, hands around something smooth and firm in the backpack as she waited, waited, waited...
Then the last of them filed in, the Hunter smirking as he stood outside. "Go ahead, bring her to me so I can cut her into teeny, tiny little pieces. I'll stick little toothpicks into the quivering chunks of your flesh and I'll serve them around the diner as a reward once you're-" He began to remark, tone full of pompous arrogance.
"If you're gonna kill someone, DO IT, don't STAND THERE TALKING ABOUT IT!" Gaz yelled out, launching a baseball through the air. It smacked into the bag of salt that she'd tied up above the ceiling and the contents spilled out onto the doorway, keeping the Hunter from getting in whilst spilling some ONTO him as he reeled back, howling as the ghosts blinked, Gaz looking about at all of them.
"You all know who I am." She said. "And you all know that when you were alive, I was a complete, total, and absolute BITCH to all of you." She admitted straightly, giving them all a solemn nod as she held the knife up...and then put it down in front of her, head bowed. "I won't make excuses. I was a cunt. My mom dying and leaving us doesn't excuse that. My dad not being around doesn't excuse it. After all, Dib had to deal with that too, and he always kept trying to help people in his own kinda stupid way." Gaz chuckled, shaking her head back and forth. "So...I'm not going to do anything to you." The purple-haired teenager mumbled out. "I just want you to know I want to stop Bloaty from hurting anyone else...and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for what I did."
She closed her eyes. "I probably don't deserve your forgiveness. I'd just like to ask you to help me stop Bloaty so he can't keep killing kids the way he killed you. To get your vengeance. To get justice. Will you at least let me do that?"
The others were silent for what seemed to be a long time, the Hunter's swearing, furious voice drifting out from the next room. He was coming back with "Lil' Bloaty" to blow away the salt. But then Gaz felt the gentle, soft hands of over a dozen little forms on her as they lifted her up and Nicholas's ghost put the knife in Gaz's palm, calmly nodding at her.
"You've had so much taken already. We're not going to let anything else be taken from you. Tonight, the nightmare ends." He said.
Gaz nodded, standing up as she slunk behind the door, then looked at the ghosts. "Can you guys help lift me up?"
They all grinned.
...
...
...
...The Hunter himself grinned, his stolen face cocky and smug as he made his way towards the bathroom, Lil' Bloaty floating nearby, fan at the ready. "Oh, little Gaaaaz? We've got a present for you! A nice hot sword to the stomach." He said, holding his sword up as they walked towards the lady's bathroom. "We'd love to share it with you. Again. And AGAIN. AND AGAIN. First I'm going to take you to the kitchen. I'll heat the sword up and carve my name in your back so you'll remember who it really was that killed-"
But he stopped, gaping at the empty bathroom, frowning as he looked at the stalls. ALL of them were open. She couldn't be hiding in one of them, could she? Lil' Bloaty began to blow away the salt, the WHIRRRRR going through the air as the Hunter began to sharpen his blade on his clawed glove, eyes narrowing to dark, furious red slits. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" He hissed, the salt finally getting blown away as he entered the bathroom...
And Gazzy, who'd been lifted up onto the door and had wedged herself carefully in the corner of the wall thanks to the help of the ghosts, launched herself through the air, the knife held high. It sang as it whizzed down, stabbing into Lil' Bloaty's head as he immediately collapsed onto the floor, letting out a sudden gasping squeal as if a pig was having its throat slit. The Hunter wheeled around, Gaz holding the knife up as she got into a fighting stance and gave a proud smirk.
"Let's put an end to this dance, "lover boy"." She whispered.