Rule courtesy of MendelevianDescent

9791: Absolutely no summoning rituals are allowed on All Hallows' Eve!

October 31, 20xx, 2359hrs

For once, all was quiet at the base, the Halloween festivities winding up for the night. Destroyers had gotten their fill of candy, the ghost stories and urban legends had been told all throughout dinner and past it, and by now most were tucked away in sound (or less-than-sound) sleep, a foolhardy few wishing to prove their mettle by camping out in the summoning chamber as a supposed hotbed of paranormal activity, the boundary between the visible and invisible realms.

Maybe they might be able to summon something, or rather keep anything coming out from returning whence it came. The plan was to stay up until 0300, but having eaten a great deal, the would-be ghost hunters / paranormal investigators had all fallen asleep beforehand, seemingly at peace at this late hour.

The clock struck twelve: 0000hrs, midnight.

There was silence for a while, and then a jarring, discordant sound jolted the Admiral out of sleep, out of his bed. Confused and half-awake, he stumbled through the room, trying to make out the source of the noise as he hastily got his slippers on, thrust his head out the door to see what all the fuss was about. And as soon as he had done so, the sound softened, resolved itself into the faint but unmistakable strains of music wafting through the corridors. It was a beautiful tune, morbid-sounding and eerie, but gracious and elegant all the same, like something one would hear at the Addams residence, but it was midnight for goodness sake, his personnel ought to be sleeping at this hour, shipgirl or not!

But they weren't sleeping at this hour. As he made his way through the halls to find the source of the disturbance, he began spotting the shipgirls under his command leaving their rooms and heading towards the music as well. Which was all fine and dandy if their sleep had been interrupted, except they weren't walking: they were dancing to it like guests at a ball, traipsing down the halls like a much classier version of a street parade.

As he passed them, tried to weave his way in and out of the waltzing throngs, the Admiral noticed the blank, blissful expressions on their faces, eyes glassed over as they glided and swayed and spun to the music. Pulling a cruiser aside, he waved his hand in front of her face, called her name. Nothing. Snapping his fingers before her proved equally futile, and even punching her in the arm gave no reaction. What was it about this music, he wondered as he let her go to follow that strange insistent tune, that had them hypnotized just so?

Part of him wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery, but another part of him dreaded what he might find if he did, especially as he saw the doors to the summoning chamber were ajar. The music was not issuing from inside, but the doors were swung outward - someone had come out of there without him knowing it, and if that had something to do with whatever the hell was going on... Was this some new Abyssal type or weapon?

The Admiral's answer was found when he arrived in the mess hall, where he found the tables cleared away, and his shipgirls taking the floor and dancing the night away as though under a spell. Those trooping in from the halls joined the fray without missing a beat, as though they had been rehearsing this for months beforehand. Fairies leapt off shoulders and caps, climbed out of pockets, taking full-sized ghostly form so that they too could dance with one another and with the ships they served on in this morbid, macabre celebration.

It was a disturbing, eerie sight, a waltz of the dead, where erstwhile enemies danced with one another as equals, where class and status and ideology no longer mattered. Germans danced with Brits, Americans with Japanese and Russians, Italians with French, the differences and enmities of ages past now forgotten and discarded. Recruits and veterans, grunts and brass, all who had served and fallen in battle now made merry irrespective of rank. Was not Death the great and final equalizer after all?

And black-robed and skeletal Death himself stood there atop a table, his presence impossible to ignore. It was to his tune and to his violin those assembled danced to, accompanied also by musicians past, orchestrating this one great fete at the time when the veils between the living and the dead blurred almost to nonexistence. And all shipgirls present, as incarnations of ships no longer extant and therefore dead in their own way, were therefore under his power to command, his to regale with the Dance of Death on this night of nights.

The sight might well have driven the Admiral insane had he been made of lesser stuff, and he pinched himself hard praying it was all a bad dream and that he would wake up to find himself still in officer training. Alas all he got for his troubles was a throbbing pain in his arm - and then his hand was grabbed and he found himself being dragged away to join the dancing, trying unsuccessfully to wrench himself free or to shake off his insistent partner.

The Admiral opened his mouth to speak, to protest, to scream, but only the sound of chattering teeth would come out as Death worked his violin without mercy and he was passed from partner to partner, the living caught up amidst the festivities of the dead, made to dance with them unceasingly to the unearthly music. He was trapped in the clutches of spirits corporeal and incorporeal, whirled round from one end of the room to the other even 'til he no longer had the strength go on, for if Death wanted a man he would have him one way or another-

Cock-a-doodle-dooo!

With a start, the Admiral awoke, heart pounding and his face and neck cold and damp, sheets clinging uncomfortably to him as he lay there catching his breath. Slowly, he kicked them away, got to his feet and got dressed, taking a good long look in the mirror before heading out down the halls, his mind a confused, dazed blur.

It was only daybreak, and there didn't seem to be many up and about at this hour from the looks of it. Everything seemed to be in order, with nary any evidence that there had ever been any night-long dancing in the building - had it all been a dream after all? The man couldn't help but breath a sigh of relief at the idea, as he entered the mess hall and found the tables in their proper places. Just a nightmare, just a nightmare...

That is, until he saw the violin and bow laid on one table, crossed like the bones on a Jolly Roger. An icy chill shot down his spine at the sight of it, like it was something vile and not to be touched, and as memories of last night came flooding back to him in that moment he decided that it would be the one night of the year nobody was allowed into the summoning chamber.

Let Death have the evening all to himself, he thought. No more invitations for him.