{Paralogue: Halloween Special}
Early in Duel Academy's second year for Jaden and Co, before Aster and Zane's duel...
Winds howled, the night was cold, and silence ruled...
SLAM!
Until Torrey, president of the Occult Club, pounded his fists on the table. "This is outrageous! This is unfair!"
Mukouda, a chunky young man, lazily turned the page of his horror novel as he asked without taking his eyes off his book. "What is it this time, Torrey?"
Isaka, a smaller Obelisk Blue, poked his head out of the desk with a wrench. "Aww, man! I just fixed that table!"
"This is more important than a table, Isaka!" Torrey shouted as he stood up. "We're the occult club! But we haven't found anything supernatural at all!" The president slumped. "I thought for sure we'd find something in the Abandoned Dorms, but all we got was a headache."
"But there are supernatural stuff?" Isaka raised his brow. "The Shadow Riders and the Sacred Beasts were a thing last year."
"Isaka..." Mukouda groaned as he heard the younger Obelisk Blue say that.
Torrey pointed towards the dirty Obelisk Blue. "But that's the thing! We didn't find any of that! It was all..." The Obelisk Blue with glasses narrowed his eyes in a random direction. "The music club."
"Congrats on saying that with venom, dude. I'm sure you don't have any issues whatsoever and are a totally normal-sounding person." Mukouda turned the next page of his book.
Torrey shook a fist at his best friend. "We were the ones who wanted to hunt down the spooky and scary stuff first! But why do they get all the cool stuff!?"
"Wait, don't they like... lose their soul if they don't win a duel?"
"That's not important, Isaka!" Torrey snapped at the handyman of the group. "They're stealing our gimmick! What are we if we aren't the super stoic and cool hunters of the night!?"
"Safe and sane people?" Mukouda decided it was too much trouble to ignore his best friend and put his book down.
"Nay!" Torrey shouted, his eyes ablaze with passion. "I say we challenge them for the right to handle the occult happenings in the school!"
"Wait." Isaka blinked. "Isn't the Music Club filled with the best duelists in the school?"
"See!?" Torrey looked to Mukouda as if that was proving his messed up point. "They're the whole package! They can't keep getting away with stealing other people's gimmicks!"
"Dude, for the love of whatever gods are out there," Mukouda sat up. "This stuff doesn't make you look cool and attractive to chicks."
"How dare you!" Torrey would have been more intimidating if he didn't sound so scandalized and made a gasp that sounded more like a duck coughing. "I have nothing but the purest intentions! To free the other clubs from the shadow of the Music Club's Tyranny!"
"You're a dingus," Mukouda stated with succinct sobriety.
"I mean, he's kinda not wrong." Two pairs of eyes turned to Isaka. "I wanted to meet cool ghosts, and it does suck that all the fun stuff we could be doing is being done by someone else. I think it's worth at least challenging them: after all, we made the club to brave the unknowable and strong?"
Torrey's eyes started to water. "Isaka, I'm promoting you to Vice president!"
"Eww. No thanks; I can't handle you. I'm giving it back to Mukouda."
"Huh, demoted and promoted in under three seconds. Neat." The chunky teen sighed. "But fine; Isaka has a point. But I still stand on not challenging them to duel. They even recruited most of the best duelists in this year's freshmen class!"
"That's alright, Muko," Torrey smirked as he pushed his glasses up dramatically. "I have a true challenge in mind that will make The Occult Club the true hunters of the night!"
[Tag Force: Heroes and Villains]
"A test of courage? Really?" Wilona tilted her head slightly after hearing that.
"That's so childish!" Gloria Tyler scoffed from the Music President's right side.
"I think it sounds kinda fun!" Grace Tyler clapped her hands together.
"I've never even heard of this before. What is it?" Wilona unfolded her arms.
"Hahaha!" Torrey pushed his glasses up again. "It's simple! A pair of people will have to brave a scary place, and the first to leave loses! Since we've all been at you-know-where, there's only one other place to go!"
Wilona knew they were talking about the Abandoned Dorms. But aside from that area, what could be considered scary?
[Tag Force: Heroes and Villains]
"Behold! The Abandoned Secret Laboratory in Duel Academy!"
Wilona and the rest of the Music Club watched Torrey make a grandiose motion to the lab where Wheeler once was. It was late at night when The Music Club and The Occult Club stood in front of the imposing building.
"Sam Hill! There really is an old abandoned lab here in Duel Academy!?" Hassleberry pointed his flashlight to look around the building.
"Ohhhh!" Jaden's eyes sparkled. "You know, good for Wheeler that those scientist guys got kicked out. But man, there must be some sweet stuff in there!"
"You won't be saying that for long!" Torrey pointed at Jaden. "Rumor has it that the people who left didn't take everything with them, so there's a chance something spooky is waiting around the corner! So the game goes like this: there's a rumor of a secret treasure on the lowest floors. Whoever can take a picture with your camera or PDH of the last room and come back here first wins! You lose if you leave too soon!"
"Doesn't this sound incredibly dangerous?" Alexis raised her brow.
"And don't forget: scary!" Isaka pointed a hand up to add the need to go in, not as a point to deter anyone.
"Isn't this also illegal!?" Alexis shouted after hearing his tone.
Gloria folded her arms. "This coming from Ms. I-go-to-the-abandoned-dorms-for-first-year-every-night?"
Alexis narrowed her eyes at the other blonde.
"That doesn't stop Rhodes from her point." Wilona folded her arms. "While we have a nasty habit of ignoring the rules, our club already attracts problems: I'd rather not risk their safety more than they already do."
"I thought about that." Isaka moved forward, bringing a bag and taking out a pair of walkie-talkies. "I was able to tinker and change the thrown-away junk and added compass magnets to each of these things. If there's an emergency, we can press this red button on the side, and all the other walkies will lock on to the distress signal, and we can all hurry up and get those guys out. But it's all pretty complicated and homemade. It only works ONCE for everyone. So only activate it in an emergency."
Isaka handed enough for every other person.
"I must admit, this looks well made. Quite the mechanic you are." Bastion inspected the additions. While they looked crude, their foundation was solid.
"I suppose it is better than nothing, and we are already out here," Wilona said.
"Just to make it safer, we're going in pairs!" Torrey exclaimed as he picked out a jar with straws. "I labeled numbers with matching pairs since our clubs combined have an even number. Everyone picks a number, and we open it up when everyone gets one!"
Secretly, in his mind, Torrey took one beforehand. With a little sleight of hand, he was sure to share and ensure Alexis Rhodes, the hottest girl in school, would be paired with him!
His plan was foolproof!
[Tag Force: Heroes and Villains]
"WHY AM I PAIRED WITH HER!?" Alexis AND Gloria pointed at each other with matching numbers.
"Why is she paired with her?" Torrey started to sniff as he had the same number as Mukouda.
"Because as your best friend, it's my job to make sure you are miserable at every turn." The chunky teen gave a meaty slap to his best friend. "That, and you're waaayyy too predictable."
"Yeah! We should switch!" Syrus and Hassleberry shouted at the same time, also wanting to not be paired with each other.
"Can I have the same number as Jaden!?" Blair shouted as she stood next to Sora.
Wilona hated—(totally what she was feeling and absolutely no other feeling related to happiness)—that she shared the same number with Jaden. She had half a mind to give her ticket to Blair. (And there was no other part of her brain dropkicking any attempt to explain away the ticket.)
"Look," Mukouda stepped up. "Random is the most fair way of distributing partners. If you just picked whichever partner you wanted, it wouldn't be much of a game in the first place. Besides, think of it as a new experience or adventure."
"You know what!?" Jaden spoke up. "When you put it like that, it does sound like fun! I mean, I still got Wilona, but our adventures are always some of the best!"
Besides the few loud people, everyone else outvoted the loud and disappointed pairs.
The pairing teams went like this.
Gloria and Alexis.
Mukouda and Torrey.
Sora and Blair.
Hassleberry and Syrus.
Jaden and Wilona.
Bastion and Serra.
Jasmine and Isaka.
Mindy and Chazz.
Damon and Marcel
Grace and Dimitri
Belowski and Daigo
And the rest were all Occult Members.
Seeing pairs, the groups went into the lab in search of its lowest room...
[Tag Force: Heroes and Villains]
Syrus started to shiver as he held the flashlight forward. Honestly, he had been to scarier areas like the Abandoned Dorm, so why was he walking down this spooky abandoned laboratory?
"What? Are you scared already?" Hassleberry looked to his smaller senior.
Luckily for Syrus, his rivalry with Hassleberry made the small duelist lose his fear and turn into a heated rivalry. "I-I'm not scared! I've been to scarier places than this!"
"I bet you ran out of there the quickest too!" Hassleberry rested a fist on his hip.
"Did not!" Syrus almost did if not for Jaden convincing him otherwise. But he wasn't going to tell Hassleberry that.
"You're lying!"
"Am not!"
"I bet you are!"
"I'm not!"
"Fine!" Hassleberry looked around after their back and forth. "If you're so confident, then go in that room all by yourself!"
The dino-themed man pointed his flashlight to a rather dark room with a plaque that read, "Discarded Robotics Room."
"Alright, I will!" Syrus huffed as he went ahead into the room. Even though it was dark already, this room seemed especially daunting. He could barely see anything outside the light of his flashlight.
Syrus' annoyance faded, and his fear returned to him. But turning to look at Hassleberry only made Syrus angry again to stomp into the room.
The silence of the dark room did not help soothe the younger Truesdale. And everywhere he moved his flashlight, he saw robotic limbs and heads as if this was a robot graveyard. The area worsened his feeling of dread to the point his goosebumps had goosebumps.
Clink!
"HYAAAHHH!" Syrus would later vehemently deny that he screamed like a little girl. However, he turned his flashlight to the sound and saw a loose screw falling out.
However, that screw was near a robotic leg that Syrus followed to see a relatively intact robot with a humanoid shape except for the television for a head.
"There ya are, private!" One shrill and girly scream later, Syrus calmed down after hearing Hassleberry's voice.
"Don't scare me like that!"
"So you were scared! I knew it!"
"I-I didn't mean like that! You just took me by surprise!"
"You just screamed like a little girl!"
While the two were arguing over Syrus being scared or not, they didn't realize that Syrus' shrill scream activated something. The robot that the younger Truesdale saw seemed to twitch after hearing the high-pitched scream. And as the two Jaden fans started to butt heads, an old program suddenly sparked back to life.
"I don't know why the sarge puts up with ya!" The two didn't notice the screen slowly activating.
"Jaden is my best friend, unlike you-you leech!" While their eyes were on each other, the robot stood up, looming over the two teens.
"That's lies and slander! Alright, short stuff, you asked for it!" Those two really, REALLY should turn around! But no. They aren't!
"...YeS~. Ho-HoW may WEEEEE ZZT! Serve, you~?"
It was only by the sound of a distorted, glitching, and electronic voice did the two Jaden fanboys slowly turned their heads to see a television screen looming over them.
"I aM HAPAAPPPppppp- Happy Harry! Let me- Let me- let me! HURT YOU 3!" The voice started to distort and repeated in a loop as it moved its hands toward the two in an aggressive manner.
Two girlish screams escaped the room faster than the two teens bolting out of the room. However, a glitching, malfunctioning robot moving on all fours barreled right after them.
Syrus and Hassleberry didn't care where they went as long as the revived robot didn't get them. However, the robot only seemed to chase them through the hallways, even using its limbs to climb the wall like a spider without ever losing momentum.
"What is that thing!?" Syrus screamed before he and Hassleberry made the mistake of looking back.
The being was climbing and running upside down on the ceiling. "~Happy Harry is here to Help! Happy Harry WILL DRAG YOU TO HELL!"
"There ain't anything happy about this! Run, private, run!"
Syrus did so, running faster than he ever did before. However, a question rose from his lungs. "What kind of robot is this!?"
[Tag Force Heroes and Villains]
"Wilona?" Jaden looked at the girl picking up a folder near some shutdown computers. "What ya got there?"
"Some old papers on an abandoned robot helper project," Wilona positioned her flashlight over the paper as she turned to the other file. "It says here it was terminated because the robot miscalculated that the only way to make its subjects happy was to eliminate all sadness. Hmmm. Well. I can see why they turned back to dueling monkeys." The green-haired girl closed the file.
"I kinda want to see it." Jaden's suggestion made the girl frown.
"Let's not," The girl picked up her flashlight. "I don't like it here. We should hurry up and find the lowest floor."
The two walked further into the lab, unaware that Syrus and Hassleberry had met others, such as Bastion and Serra with Damon and Marcel... and promptly got them involved in being chased by Happy Harry.
[Tag Force: Heroes and Villains]
"Quick!" Bastion cried out as he pointed ahead to a hallway with many doors. "Get in there!"
Bastion opened a door as the other five students went in and closed the door behind them. Happy Harry continued to sing its distorted tune as opened the door and went in after them.
Another door on the opposite side opened as Sera and Bastion ran across the hallway and went through a different door they went to.
Syrus and Marcel opened a door different from Bastion and Sera's and ended up crossing to the door right in front of them.
Happy Harry opened the door opposite where it first entered and was about to enter a new door until it saw Damon open the door south of the hallway. Damon screamed and slammed the door shut before Happy Harry ran and dove into the door after him.
Just like a famed hallway scene involving a talking cartoon Great Dane with a bunch of meddling kids, the hallway doors opened and closed with many people, some not even being part of the original six—and was that Paradox? The Neo Shadow Riders? And Sartorius? If one were to squint, would they even see Mr. Truth in there?
Anyway, six students went in, and around twelve more came running out as Happy Henry chased them.
[Tag Force: Heroes and Villains]
Wilona and Jaden seemed to have this odd luck as neither was close to Happy Henry's hunt. The Emergency Call was a bit redundant as many didn't think of pressing it as a majority of them were being chased by the runaway robot.
"Hey, Wilona! Check it out! There's an elevator!" Jaden pointed to the door.
Wilona stilled as she looked around. "I don't see any stairs."
"I think this Elevator is working!" Jaden noticed the light inside the box.
Yet, Wilona felt hesitant. "W-We should look for another way down. I don't trust a machine in this place."
"I thought you said that you wanted to get over this quick? This does seem like the quickest way to the bottom."
"I-I," Jaden raised his brow as Wilona looked flushed at something. "F-Fine! But if we get trapped in there, I'm killing you!"
Jaden pressed the button as the elevator closed and started to go down. However, he wasn't expecting a tug on the back of his jacket. The brunette looked back, seeing something he thought he'd never see: Wilona looking at the ground, unable to look him in the eye.
"Wilona?" Jaden was about to ask what was wrong until the light started flickering.
The lights shut off.
When darkness came over the two, Jaden felt a weight behind him. Wilona held on to him like a vice grip.
"Whoa! Wilona?! I wasn't expecting you to be..." Jaden was about to say afraid of the dark as she'd never acted like this before in dark places. But even as she held him tightly, Jaden could tell Wilona was scared.
"Sorry," Wilona said, barely a whisper if Jaden could feel her voice at his back. "It's not the darkness... I-I don't do well in small spaces... because... bad memories." She held Jaden tighter as if the memory gave her pain.
"Hey, it's alright. We're all afraid of something." Jaden tried to say.
"I'm not supposed to be afraid anymore!" Wilona shouted before her voice became soft. "I... I can't be afraid."
"Now why not?"
"... M-My mom," Wilona's hold loosened over Jaden. "My mother always told me to be brave. And... I had to be. Sometimes, for both of us. If I don't stay brave...I'd be letting her down."
"Come on, Wilona," Jaden's expression softened. "You would never let her down."
"... I almost destroyed the world because I was upset. I doubt she'd be singing praise about that."
"I dunno. You were playing out of your mind, and it was sick!" Jaden felt a sudden drop in temperature and an intense glare at his back. "I-I mean! You're pretty amazing, Wilona. Everyone here wants to aim for their dreams, but you? You're giving every second to go for it. Almost makes me want to try school harder to catch up with you."
A scoff turned into a snort, which turned into a laugh as Wilona let go. "You? Wanting to do schoolwork?"
Jaden shivered. "I know! Realizing what I said gave me the shivers." Wilona let go as she gave a soft chuckle. "But yeah. You're pretty intense a lot of times Wilona. But you're intense in a cool way. You don't have to be brave all the time."
"Unlike you, who's just the bloody dumb kind of brave," Wilona whispered to herself before exhaling. "Thank you, Yuki."
As soon as Wilona said the words, the lights flickered back on, and the elevator opened.
Wilona and Jaden walked out, seeing a large computer room. The brunette spotted an active screen that looked to be showing an image of many of the other members. As he walked closer to the screen, he noticed a giant red button.
Jaden, while Wilona was looking away, pressed the red button and only then read the label above it: emergency power rerouter.
The lights in the lab all lit up, as did the special Radio Signal that ensured all robots were set back to sleep mode. Many of the members from both clubs screamed as the singing, multiarmed robot trapped them in a conor...before depowering and falling face-first into the ground.
Wilona saw the lights and turned to Jaden. She also noticed the screen that showed her friends and spotted a mic that connected to all the speakers.
She pressed on the mic. "Hello?"
"Wilona?" Some of the voices asked as they looked up to the ceiling.
Jaden and Wilona could hear them through the screen.
"Well, I think Yuki and I found the lowest room. So... I suppose we win?"
"WHAT!?" Torrey yelled. "How did you avoid the killing, singing robot that played banjos aggressively!?"
Wilona held an unreadable face. "I'm going to ignore that question and assume you're all joshing me."
"But you're Wilona, not Josh." Jaden's voice echoed through the speakers after Wilona.
"Well, as fun as this all was, I think we can all go home now," Wilona told the groups.
"Yes! Finally!" Syrus was in tears after hearing those words. "I never want to come back to this place again!"
Meanwhile, miles away...
Professor Cobra didn't understand why, but he felt like smiling hard right now.
[Tag Force: Heroes and Villains]
{Author Notes}
A relatively short chapter because of life and school. But I wanted to post before October was over. In my timezone, it technically isn't over.
Also, it's a bit rushed, but I can change it if I need to.
Anyway, Happy Halloween!