Author's Note: I know. There are more stories I need to update than I have time for, so why waste time with this one-shot instead of updating one of the badly needed ones, like Blood Innocence or The Little Mermaid? The answer is I am working on those. However, since I've wanted to post this for three years but never found the time, I'm determined to post it somewhere near Halloween, which is now.
Disclaimer: I do not own or make money off of Hellsing or The Nightmare Before Christmas.
The sun hung low and orange over the dead forest. The autumn chill had long shed the trees of their leaves, exposing branches as pointed as witches' claws. They twisted and gnarled, and seamed to reach for anyone that ran through this treacherous forest.
A small group of children in Halloween costumes crunched through the fallen leaves as they ran through the reaching branches beneath the orange sun. The leader was a young tomoboyish girl with large blue eyes and short messy blonde hair. She wore a police uniform, with auspicious (and out-of-place) vampire fangs. The next was a much taller boy, almost to his teens, with freckles, copper hair, and green eyes. He was dressed as a soldier, complete with a plastic rifle. Since he was older and had longer legs, he could keep up.
The three others lagged behind due to their size and costumes. The tallest was a very androgynous child with short blond hair and round sunglasses, dressed as a deadly priest with two plastic pistols. The next was a young Japanese girl with long curly black hair and round glasses, dressed as a nun with a wooden katana. The last was a very pale, pointed-faced boy with a very unpleasant disposition. He had silver-blonde hair slicked back with gel, deep blue eyes that looked almost violet, and he was dressed in rich white and purple robes. No one could tell what he was until he told them.
"Oh, you're some sort of religious figure, right?"
"I'm an arch-bishop!"
"Oh, you're an arch-deckon, right?"
"I am an Archiepiscopal!" he said obstinately.
He was currently lagging behind, which wasn't surprising since he was the smallest and scrawniest next to the leader, but he was also very spoiled and pampered. One got the distinct impression he was a tattler and a teacher's pet at home, and was now put out since he was out of his element. He no longer had any adults to tell-tales to, since they had shaken their chaperoned to be here, and he did not much like his fellow children.
"Would you slow down, you filthy heathan?" the boy said, "You don't even know where we're going!"
"You pipe down! I know exactly where we're going!" the girl in the front said, but she looked around worriedly.
"Ja, ja, we know," the priest said. " 'Follow the jack-o-lantern sun as it sets und find the circles of trees painted with holiday doors. We've been searching forever."
"It should be around here somewhere..." the Police Girl said.
Pip tried to reason with her a little more diplomatically. "Seras, we've been running around these woods for ages and we haven't found it yet."
"We've only been searching for ten minutes!" Seras snapped.
"Ja, but that's ten hours in trick-or-treating time," the priest, Heinkel, said.
"I could have gotten seven handfuls in this time!" the nun, Yumiko, said with genuine tears in her eyes.
"We'll be there soon," Seras said, still looking wildly around. "This will more than make up for it, I promise!"
"That's what you said twenty minutes ago!" the pointed youth, Enrico, shouted snidely in the background.
"Seras..." Pip said a little gently. "Be reasonable..."
But Seras wasn't listening. She looked around some more, then her face lit up. "There it is!" she cried, and ran up to the circle of trees.
The other children brightened when they realized this fabled grove of holiday trees did exist, and they ran to catch up. Pip alone looked disheartened. On some level, he had hoped it wasn't real so they could go back home and go trick-or-treating. Seras had said they could go trick-or-treating where she was taking them, but that wasn't Pip's reason. She had been slipping away from him ever since she had met her "Master," and one of the few things Pip and she got to enjoy all to themselves was their tradition of trick-or-treating together on Halloween night.
Presently, the children all stumbled within the circle of holiday trees. All but Seras gasped and marveled at the decorative doors painted on the trunks. One was a great pink heart, another was a giant green four-leaf clover, another was a decorated Easter egg, another was a giant brown turkey. ("What holiday is that?" the nun asked the priest. The priest shrugged.) Another was a very splendidly decorated Christmas tree.
"I want to go in that one!" Archbishop Enrico Maxwell declared, and went to grab the bauble doorknob.
Seras grabbed his wrist. "No, stupid! You can't go in there. It's not Christmas yet!"
"Well, Christmas is a sacred holiday..." he began in his snooty way.
Yumiko and Heinkel each lowered their heads in shame, and Heinkel raised a palm to her face. "Oh, here we go..."
"Not a blasphemous, heathenish holiday like yours."
"No one said you had to come!" Seras snapped.
"You're in costume too," Heinkel and Pip reminded him.
"Yes, well, I wanted to add some culture to this holiday. A little holiness to remind people this is pagan nonsense," Enrico said snootily.
"Yeah, and you told every house we went to visit," Pip said irritably.
"Ja, you even got us egged some of the people handing out candy. Egged by some of the people in one of the houses!" Heinkel shouted incredulously. "Usually trick-or-treaters who egg houses, the other way around!"
"Well, it's not my fault they won't accept the Word of God," Enrico said haughtily. "Here I am, trying to save their immortal souls by telling them of the Hellfire they're playing with by celebrating this brutish holiday, and if that's the way she'll act..."
"If you don't like it, you can just stay behind!" Seras snapped.
She'd been actively trying to ditch him all afternoon, and only didn't because Yumiko and Heinkel were too nice, and kept hanging back so he could keep up.
Yumiko was currently looking around the trees. As well as the large painted symbols on each trunk, there were also mushrooms shaped like holiday themes at the base of each trunk, presumably to act as stepping stones. The large heart had a red and white present at the base, the large four-leaf clover had large normal mushrooms, the Easter Egg had oval, brightly colored stones that looked like Easter eggs themselves, and so on. Yumiko looked up at the doors with wonder, and placed her hand delicately upon the painted door.
"What kind of place are we going to, anyway?"
Seras' eyes lit up. "We're going to the place where holidays are invented!"
The others looked a bit doubtful.
Enrico sneered. "Uh huh."
"It's true!" Seras snapped. "I've seen it myself. I was even there last week. I know it's real, and I know it's safe." She'd had enough of this. "If you don't want to come along, you can wait out here! I'm going in. Anyone who wants to go in is welcome to it!"
The others hesitated.
Pip stepped forward. Though he was worried about what they would find, he wanted to be with Seras. He would have followed her to the edge of the earth to remain with her.
Seras smiled.
Yumiko and Heinkel smiled much more confidently too. They had already blown off their chaperon and run all the way out in the forest here. Might as well come along, if just to get this amazing trick-or-treating experience Seras promised.
Enrico scowled and crossed his arms. He was determined to be as difficult as possible, but it was clear he was coming.
"So, how do we get in?" Yumiko asked.
"Oh, that's easy. You say the magic incantation."
Seras stood next to the large Jack o' Lantern tree, faced the other children, cleared her throat, and then said in an important voice:
"T'was a long time ago,
Longer now than it seems,
In a place that perhaps you've seen in your dreams.
For the story that you are about to be told
Took place in the holiday worlds of old!
Now, you've probably wondered where holidays come from.
If you haven't: I'd say it's time you've begun!"
With that, the triangle wood chip that acted as the Jack o' lantern's nose turned, and the huge painted Jack o' lantern swung open.
The children all gasped and backed away. They didn't expect this to actually work.
However, Seras did not wait to explain or coax them into it. She hopped onto the little pumpkin at the base of the trunk that acted as a foot stool and hopped into the dark, hollowed out tree. If the others wanted to follow, they had better to it now.
At that moment, Pip threw caution to the wind and jumped in to follow Seras.
Pip half expected to bump into Seras inside a warm, dark, stale, hollow tree. He almost hoped that was the case so they could call it quits and go home. It was certainly what he expected based on what he saw on the outside. However, he was greeted with cold air, wide open space, and endless darkness. He heard the wind whistle as it did . He was jolted by the sudden reality that was different from the expectation, like when you're climbing stairs in the dark and expect to feel another step below your feet, only to feel the shock when you step on empty space.
He heard the religious children hop in from behind them, and heard their shocked yelps and cries of consternation as they went through exactly what he went through. He also heard Enrico suddenly cry, "Wait for me!" then fall in with an audible "Oomph!" then holler in rage and indignity as he experienced what the rest of them already went through. Pip could just see him standing there with his arms crossed, determined that he would not go in and thus the others would stay behind with him; only to see them go in, suddenly realize he'd be left in that creepy dead forest all alone, then suddenly scramble to follow before the door closed.
And the door did close, because the darkness then seemed that much darker, and it was all Pip could do to reach around in the dark.
He then realized he had no idea where Seras was. While he could hear the others fussing and hollering behind him just fine, Seras had not made a sound since she came in.
"Seras!" he cried.
The others caught up to him by following his voice in the dark, and for a while moment he was terrified - until he found a small orange light glowing in the distance. Flooded with relief, Pip and the children stumbled in the dark to get to it. The wind whistled around them, so acute it blew through their costumes. From the small orange light getting closer, they could see the wind blowing dead autumn leaves in circles around them. An impressive orchestra of creepy music played in the background, and Pip wondered where that music was coming from.
As they drew closer, he realized it was the light of a Jack o' lantern. And as they drew closer to that, he realized with horror that the Jack o' lantern was supposed to be the head of a scare crow. No, not a scare crow, the children realized with terror when they drew close enough. A tall, lank, broken down man in a tattered red coat hung impaled on a wooden pole. They could see and smell the fresh blood. Jack o' lantern covered his head, and a large wooden sign that read "Halloween Town" was above that.
Feeling both horrified and ill, the children could now see something of a winding dirt path, and tried to tip-toe around the dead man. The impaled Jack o' lantern man then seemed to swing toward them - though it could have been the wind - but then swung the other way as they passed.
The children gasped and screamed and made tracks. At first they searched blindly in the dark, until they heard Seras cry, "Hey, guys! Over here!"
Relief flooded Pip, and they followed her voice in the dark.
Then, they very suddenly came upon a cemetery by the light of the full moon. They came upon a whole grove of chipped, tilted, Gothic tomb stones of all shapes and sizes.
Seras was waiting at the edge of the cemetery, and smiled as they drew near her. "See? That wasn't so bad, was it?" She said as she took Pip's hand.
Pip did think it was so bad, but he squeezed Seras hand; instantly relieved by contact with her.
"No it wasn't! I almost died!" Enrico cried.
"Shh!" Seras hushed, then listened to the swelling music that surrounded them. "The tour's about to start!" she said excitedly, and led Pip over so they could walk around the twisting, winding path among the tomb stone.
Right on cue, the shadows of various monsters fell upon the Gothic tomb stones, and a very creepy yet soothing chorus sang:
"Boys and girls of every age,
Wouldn't you like to see something strange?"
The shadow of Siamese twins fell upon a double-tomb stone, and their sweet, high, somewhat shrill voices joined in to sing:
"Come with us, and you will see:
This, our town of Hallowee-een!"
Seras led the others quickly through the cemetery and up to the crooked wrought-iron gates that led into the town of Halloween.
The others gasped at what they saw, while Seras grinned and looked between it and them. The town of Halloween, like the cemetery they just emerged from, was a tall Gothic town with twisted angles, jagged spires, sharp edges, and other weird, pointed, twisted features. The children walked along the field toward Halloween beside a wrought-iron fence.
Just then, a number of ghosts burst into view to sing:
"This is Halloween!
This is Halloween!
Pumpkins scream in the dead of night!"
Several jack o' lanterns with various expressions fell from the sky and were impaled upon the spikes of the fence.
"This is Halloween!
Everybody make a scene!
Trick-or-treat, till the neighbors gonna die of fright!"
The ghosts drifted through the bars of another closed, crooked, wrought-iron fence. The children had to push it open with a screech, then tumbled into the middle of the spooky town square. Seras looked like she was on cloud nine as she looked up at the tall, thin, jagged, crooked towers and spires all around them, and followed the ghosts like she was following fairies in spring time. Her confidence rubbed off on them, as it was the only way they could keep from being frozen in terror.
The ghosts exclaimed:
"It's our town!
Everybody scream!
In this town of Halloween..."
The ghosts led the children over to a house and drifted through a broken window, beckoning them to follow inside. The others stopped to stare in trepidation, but Seras climbed right on through and disappeared inside. Not wanting to get separated or stay alone in this scary town without their fearless guide (somehow, being near the girl that wasn't scared made them all feel like they had protection against the dangers, like huddling around a light in the dark), the others followed her through.
They first found themselves in a small, empty bedroom. There was almost nothing but yet another wrought-iron bed with a black and white checker sheets. From under the bed, they heard someone with a shrill, high voice sing:
"I am the one hiding under your bed,
Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red!"
The children then spied a monster of that description poking out from under the covers. Yumiko screamed.
Seras quickly led them out of the room, and the others spilled out into the hallway. After trying to presend they didn't notice the doors rattling like someone was trying to get out, they found the stairs that led down. They descended a thin wooden staircase into a hallway between the kitchen and living area. The floor was also of black and white checker tile. From under their feet, they heard a deep baritone of a voice sing:
"I am the one hiding under your stairs,
Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair!"
A great arm with a hand of that description reached up for them. The children screamed and scooted away. As soon as they were safely on the floor, a large monster with, indeed, spiders in his hair
The children eventually came into the main living area, where they found a black couch, a black grandfather clock, and black wardrobe pressed against the wall. They also found a large desk with a bowl of candy at the edge, and a large leather-bound book with ominous writing flip its pages like a wind was blowing it. And there was no wind.
The omipresent chorus then continued:
"This is Halloween!
This is Halloween!
Halloween!
Halloween!
Halloween!
Halloween!"
On every chorus of "Halloween!" the couch, the grandfather clock, and the wardrobe burst open to reveal they were coffins with vampires inside.
The children gasped. Yumiko screamed. Pip balked.
He felt his gut clench with rage. He hated vampires after what they did to take Seras away from him. It was because of them that she wanted to dress as a vampire this year, instead of a police girl like she dressed every year. (Pip had to convince her that she could be a vampire and a police girl at the same time, since vampires could technically dress like anything. All she needed was to flash her fangs and people got the message.) It was because of them that she wanted to spend all her time with her Master instead of him, and wanted to trick-or-treat in this horrible town instead of his home neighborhood like they did every year.
Pip just glared at them.
After taking some candy off the desk, the vampires led the children out onto the front porch. They sang:
"In this town we call home,
Everyone hails to the No-Life Song!"
In the middle of the town square, a young girl with long blonde hair and dark skin stood atop a buggy. She wore large round glasses and a school girl's uniform. Pip knew who she was immediately. Seras had told him all about her. She was "the Master of Monsters," the Master of Seras' Master, and therefor Seras' Master, and therefor the ruler of everyone here.
He had never seen a less threatening girl in his life.
Currently, she smiled and sang:
"In this town!
Don't we love it, now?
Everyone's waiting for the next surprise!"
And she pirouetted like the classy, high-born girl she appeared to be.
The children continued to trick-or-treat around this horrifying town, getting handfuls of candy by horrifying monsters in crooked homes.
As they walked near an alley, they found a frightening black cat tip-toeing along over glowing green sewage grates, gingerly preparing to hop atop a trash can.
The omnipresent corpse chorus continued as before:
"Round that corner, man hiding in the trash can,
Something's waiting now to pounce,
and how you'll..."
A chav with a face-full of piercings, wearing a black track suit and matching beanie with a yellow eye on it, burst through. "SCREAM!" he screeched.
All the children screamed this time, including Yumiko, and they tried to flee.
From the other side, a giant white wolf man with glowing red eyes and a Nazi uniform lunged and snarled at them.
"This is Halloween!" the chav said, "Red n' black!"
From the glowing green sewage grate, a man with long blonde hair and a white suit suit emerged. "And slimy green," he said.
The chav leaned over the children, stuck out his pierced tongue and flipped them the finger. "Aren't you scared?!" he sneered.
"Well, that's just fine!" a sweet voice sang behind them.
The children all turned around to find a tall, thin young woman riding a broom. She had a pale freckled face, long flowing black hair, and wore a black suit. She looked so merry, and sang with abandon as she flew around them.
"Say it once, say it twice,
Take the chance and roll the dice,
Ride with the moon in the dead of night!"
When the pale witch flew away, a tall, bulky, muscular woman with grey skin and tattoos on one side of her body stomped over to them. She had short spiky orange hair, narrow green eyes, one of which was a glowing lazy eye, and wore military garb with combat boots. She also held a large scythe in her hands, which she twirled like a color-guard flag as she approached the children.
In her deep, thick, grating, gravely voice, she bellowed:
"Everybody scream!
Everybody scream!"
She then flexed her tattooed hand with the palm facing the chlidren, and a giant purple eye blinked over.
The children gasped and screamed in horror.
In the shadows behind her, dozens of hidden creatures with glowing red eyes and sharp teeth half-hissed, half-whispered:
"In our town of Halloween..."
She then plunged her tattooed hand with the large purple eye onto the pavement, and then her tattoos began to glow and flowed off her hand like a thick liquid, and then spread all along the street. The children gasped in shock and terror, never daring to move, much less breath. The glowing purple tattoo liquid spread around them like a sea, and then lifted and morphed into the greatest terror the children could have imagined: a demon clown riding a unicycle. And it was riding right toward them!
"I am the clown with the tear-away face!" it exclaimed.
Then it indeed tore off its face; and kept talking!
In a demonic baritone, a voice from the faceless clown said: "Here in a flash, and gone without a trace!"
Then it disappeared in a flash.
Yumiko SCREAMED and then broke down into violent sobbing. She had been the most terrified all through the visit. She was always the first to scream, and the one to scream the loudest. (Besides Enrico, but no one cared about him. He had been so hateful and unpleasant that most kids didn't exactly pity him now that he got his just desserts.) Now she just couldn't handle it anymore. She buried her face in her hands so she wouldn't have to see anymore and cried and cried.
Heinkel, who was closest friend to Yumiko, and cared about her a great deal the way Pip cared about Seras, cried out in alarm and tried to put her hands around her. "Yumiko!" she said in alarm, and tried to comfort her. "It's okay Yumi, you're okay..." and felt powerless since there was nothing she could say to make her feel better.
While Yumi cried, Seras looked around trying to get a sense of what would happen next.
While she did, a very soft, faint, whispery, hissing voice said almost soothingly:
"I am the 'Who' when you call 'Who's there?'
I am the wind blowing through your hair!"
Seras grinned as the faceless, nameless wind tickled her short blonde hair. Some of the children felt a rather pleasant thrill by the wind the blew through their hair and clothes. Others shuddered, and felt rather creeped out by it.
Above them, the full harvest moon was then eclipsed by the shadow of a fat man with large spectacles and a wide grin.
In a thick, gravely, grating German accent, he said:
"I am the shadow on the moon at night!
Filling your dreams to the brim with fright!"
Then his abnormally large grin dissolved into the shadows of bats... then then turned into real bats, which flew right toward them!
Yumiko cried harder, and Heinkel tried to defend her by shooting at the bats. Frustrated that her toy pistols didn't fire real buttons (not even bee-bee rounds), she groaned and threw them to the ground in frustration.
On the other side of the town square, the gates opened as an elderly man wearing a smart suit and monocle led in a huge, armored, black warhorse. The horse snorted and stomped as it walked, and it took only the skilled hands of the retainer to keep it from breaking out into a gallop. The great black stallion was led by a presession of monsters, including a demon and a Mr. Hyde demon.
"This is Halloween," they sang,
"This is Halloween,
Halloween,
Halloween,
Halloween,
Halloween"
Closer to the center of the town where the children sat, a jack o' lantern was placed in a guillotine. When the blade dropped, the jack o' lantern exploded into dozens of pieces. From the cauldron where the head was to drop, a fat zombie child emerged. Several children emerged, including a little bat with huge wings it used to walk, and a mummy with one eye. When the pumpkin exploded into several pieces that flew everywhere (one of which fell into Seras' outstretched trick-or-treat bag), they all sang:
"Tender lump-lings everywhere!
Life's no fun without a good scare!"
Yumiko only cried harder because she didn't agree with them. She hated to be scared, and now she wanted to go home.
An adult couple, a ghoul wearing a clown nose and an overweight ghoul woman in a moo-moo, then approached her and spoke to her kindly.
"That's our job," he said.
"But we're not mean," she finished.
"In our town of Halloween," they said.
Yumiko sobbed and embraced the ghoulish woman who spoke to her kindly. Most children reach a point where they're so scared they latch onto the first grown up who makes them feel marginally less scared; the first one to speak to them in a kind, soothing voice. Yumiko couldn't stand all the scares anymore, and tried to hide from the horror by pushing her face into the ghoul woman's moo-moo.
The ghoul woman patted her head soothingly, and motioned for Heinkel to follow them as they made their way to the center of the town square. Heinkel stayed close to Yumiko and occasionally patted her shoulder to try to make her feel better.
Enrico was about as scared as Yumiko, and he found a much-needed grown up figure in the ghoul man with the clown nose. The ghoul man was also a kind grown up, and he did not know about Enrico's history of being an insufferable brat, so he let him tag along and clutch his shirt in fear as they drew near the main attraction.
It's not that Heinkel and Pip weren't scared like Yumiko and Enrico too. They were. But Heinkel felt protective of Yumiko and felt she needed to be brave for her. Pip might have been scared too, but he saw how ecstatic Seras looked to be here, and he felt it would be shameful if he cried out in fear when nothing bothered her.
The young girl with flowing blonde hair and the school girl's uniform, still atop the buggie, smiled:
"In this town,
Don't we love it, now?
Everyone's waiting for the next surprise!"
And she motioned toward the procession of demons, followed by the retainer leading the monstrous warhorse.
Pip realized the rider was the impaled man in the tattered red coat and the jack o' lantern over his head. He still seemed strung up and dead, still impaled on the pole
The demon and Mr. Hyde then informed the crowd:
"Vampire Drac might catch you in the back
And SCREAM like a banshee,
Make you jump out of your skin!"
By now, the whole town had gathered, and they all cried, "This is Halloween! Everybody SCREAM!"
Just then, the impaled creature removed the pole from his back as easily as though he had unsheathed a sword.
Most of the children watched from the crowd. Seras stood by the Hangman's tree and looked adoringly at the man atop the monstrous warhorse.
Around her head, the skeletons that hung around the tree said, "Won't you please make way for a very special guy?"
The man atop the warhorse then rose and cast a shadow over every shadow in the town. From the shadow sprang dozens upon dozens of blood red eyes. From beneath the gentleman's body the very fires of Hell seemed to burn, and from his cloak countless bats flew, centipedes and creepy-crawlies covered the grounds, and two ferocious black hounds with dozens of eyes sprang out and snapped and snarled.
The denizens of the town exclaimed:
"Our Lord, Vampire Alucard,
Is the No-Life King now!"
Just then, the creatures that the No-Life King summoned swarmed around the town, attacking and hissing and snapping and snarling and terrifying everyone within the town. Everyone gasped and balked and screamed in fear, as pandemonium temporarily ruled the town.
"This is Halloween!," they sang,
"This is Halloween!
Halloween!
Halloween!
Halloween!
Halloween!"
Then, just as suddenly, all the horrors he seemed to summon from inside his coat returned, he stood atop the war horse as a single being, then lept into the blood fountain into the town square.
The ghoulish children from before approached the fountain. Seras Victoria joined them. Like them, she placed her hands upon the hard stone edge and sang with them:
"In this town
We call home,
Everyone hails to the No-Life song!"
Just then, chills covered the flesh of everyone in town when the No-Life King emerged the liquid, no longer impaled or covered in a tattered red coat. He emerged clean and neat, with smooth pale skin, wild black hair that flowed in the wind, and an impeccable black suit with an un-tattered black coat that blew in the wind like a flag. He emerged from the fountain smirking insolently, like one who knew he was worshiped as a celebrity and enjoyed every second of it. He absorbed the praise as his due, as the whole town gathered and danced around him.
"La, la, la-la-la!" the children chanted as he emerged.
"This is Halloween! This is Halloween!" the townsfolk sang in the background.
"La, la, la-la-la!"
"This is Halloween! This is Halloween!"
"La-la-la! La-la-la!"
"WEE!"
The entire town then broke out with applause. Seras was one of the first among them, and soon the whole town cheered and whistled and howled over the No-Life King.
Eventually the cheers turned to laughs, and the denizens threw their hats up in celebration.
"It's over!" one of them cried.
"We did it!" said another, and they bumped their bellies in celebration.
"Wasn't it terrifying?" the chav asked the children.
Yumiko pressed her face into Heinkels' priest robe, as she had finally gotten confident enough to peel herself away from the ghoul woman's flowery moo-moo, but she was still too scared to look at the denizens. Also the chav. His metal face made her face hurt just to look at.
Heinkel, who was nearly knocked over by the force of Yumiko's hiding face, sighed deeply. "What a night!"
While the denizens congratulated the No-Life King and each other, Pip felt they'd been there long enough.
"All right Seras," he said, "We came, we saw, now it's over. Can we go home now?"
"In a minute!" Seras said, and she stepped on her tip-toes to get a better look at her master.
"Seras," Pip said, "It's after dark back home. We need to get back before trick-or-treating's over."
"But we just trick-or-treated here," Seras said.
"I for one agree with the filthy heathen's son!" Enrico said imperially.
"You know I'm Catholic just like you..." Pip said.
"We've been in this monstrous hell-hole long enough. I, for one, do NOT want to stay in Hell for eternity! Now it's time for us to go home, with normal people doing normal things."
"I told you, we'll go in a minute!" Seras snapped.
"He's right, you know," Heinkel said, still holding a terrified Yumiko in her arms, "We've been here long enough. If we wait any longer, it'll be too long after dark to get home safely."
"Ugh! Fine!" Seras snapped; but she still looked longingly back at her Master, the No-Life King.
Pip's insides writhed with jealousy. His green eyes almost flashed with envy over that horrible No-Life King. Tall, handsome, mysterious, and devil-may-care... He wanted to stab the guy. This asshole was the one who took Seras from him forever. Sure, he was told Seras would have died by some other means forever if he hadn't drank her blood, but Pip still hated what had happened and wanted someone to blame. If he had brought Seras back and things returned as close to normal as they could, he could understand. But Seras seemed to be able to talk and think of no one else since the night she met her Master.
It wasn't enough that the No-Life King spared her existence. It wasn't enough that Seras now had to work for them and was around Pip's home even less. It wasn't enough that he was seeing Seras less and less and feared the time might come when he would never see her again. It wasn't enough that the No-Life King was the one Seras wanted more than Pip. Now she wanted to spend every waking moment with him, and wanted to come to this realm of monsters instead of Pip's home block like they always did.
Pip's insides writhed with jealousy, but what could he do? On some level he knew the night day might come when they would not be able to spend time with each other anymore, but he didn't want tonight to be that night. He wanted to go back to his home, in his neighborhood. Away from this world of real demons and monsters, back where they could pretend that demons and monsters were just make-believe. He wanted to go back to a normal world filled with normal people, where they went door-to-door collecting candy from normal people, and go home to his grandma, who would make caramel apples and hot chocolate and let them watch old Hollywood Horror.
He wanted to enjoy it as long as he could with Seras, before her heart was taken by the darkness forever.
He took her hand, and she reluctantly smiled and turned back.
"Don't you want to go back with me?" he asked, his voice full of meaning.
Seras looked shocked. "Of course I do!" and she bounded after him without hesitation.