I can't say this is the most exciting chapter I have made, but it is important if I ever decide to make another story to this series.

It depends on whether people would be interested in reading about a Security Breach of this AU.

Can't say he's particularly happy about the thought of going to an entirely new school, but Mike was steadfast that he and Hope needed to be with kids at their age and go through the education system. Soren would honestly have preferred to be schooled at the restaurant, around spirits and people that know him, but Freddy had vehemently refused him that request. So, guess he has to deal with whatever horror the new school awaits him.

Mike was at least kind enough to go with them the first day, mostly to speak with their headteacher about the trauma both had dealt with. Soren appreciated the man sticking around for a while, giving them a sort of place of comfort before the trials of the big day would come. Soren's headteacher brings him to his new class, and after the introduction, he takes a seat at the table with the only lone chair. At first, the four students are giving him curious stares but quickly forget about it when the teacher resumes class. Soren already knows that he's behind since he joined class half-in the season, man, he hopes some of these students will give him some slack and help him catch up with the rest…

The first day wasn't that bad; the other students were curious about him and asked many questions. Some of them made him feel uncomfortable. Like why he's not with his real parents after Soren explained that Mike was only his current guardian. At least they didn't press him too much and soon accepted that he did not want to talk about why he was in the foster system.

Over time, Soren started to more or less figure out which of the students he could work with and which he would be better off staying clear off. Soren spent most of the time with Hope and is glad to hear that she has gotten herself new friends. Wish he could say the same, but he got the strong feeling that the kids of his class weren't that interested in getting a new member into their already established friendship groups.

Then, about a month after joining the school. When Soren went to a seemly random restroom, one of his classmates stopped him from entering it. "Don't go in there. It's haunted." Soren raises a brow at that "warning."

"Haunted by what?" he asks, not recalling having seen any child ghosts at the school, only a few wandering animal spirits; at least they were a lot more interested in simply roaming around than deciding to haunt the place or him for that matter.

The boy steps away from this restroom, "Rumors have it that some boy killed himself after excessive bulling. There was blood all over the place, and I hear they never arrested the people who did it." The boy explains as if it was a scary story.

Too bad for him that Soren has lived through something much worse than a simple, plausible true story. "Ah-ha… so, how long ago did that happen?"

"Guess you're not from around here. It was all over the news." The boy remarks by this sharp deduction. "Well, it was about three years ago. So the bullies might still lurk around these halls."

Great, guess even school is not safe for him… if it's actually true. "Right, well, I'm not scared of ghosts. So, if you will excuse me." He steps past the boy and heads into the restroom. Ignoring the boy's astonishment: "You're nuts. Don't tell me I didn't warn ya when the ghost jumps at you." Yeah, whatever.

Finishing up his business, Soren goes to wash his hands. And the moment he looked up into the mirror, 'Okay, guess that story was true.' For standing right behind him, is a dark grey spirit, glaring at him with so much hatred. He notices dark marks on the wrists, and Soren quickly concludes how this person died. The spirit lunges at him, but it is, fortunately, a weak one, so all it did was make the lights blink for a moment.

"Get outta there!" The boy shouts, scared at this small display of anger. Soren ignores him and this restless spirit, dries his hands, and only then does he leaves the area. "Dude! You got balls of steel." The boy exclaims, awestruck at his indifference in an honestly minor angry spirit. Soren merely shrugs as it isn't that big of a deal; nothing is when he has faced a monstrosity of the Twisted One.

Word about his "bravery" spread like wildfire to the other students and, in a matter of days, became a bit of a game for them to watch him go into the restroom and get scared, yet awestruck when the spirit tried to chase him out which made the lights blink for a short time.

Did earn him some respect from his classmates, which is nice, but Soren is starting to feel sorry for that restless spirit. His invading its haunting place really upset it, and every time he provoked it, it caused the spirit to get into a river of heartfelt sobbing. Soren decides to chat with this spirit, maybe allow it to find some sort of closure.

During a recess where the other kids didn't dare him to aggravate the spirit, for once leaving him alone, Soren walks over to the spot the ghost always appeared when he provoked it. The spirit is sobbing at the spot, 'They are nothing, they cannot hurt me anymore… I am… better than them…!' the spirit sneers out in anger through sobbing.

"Who hurt you?" He asks, making the spirit snap its attention up to him. It flickers for a moment in an attempt to look scary, but this sort of trick does not really work on someone like him. "Enough to kill yourself; that's what the rumors say anyways."

The spirit retakes a humanoid form but is still angry, 'Get out! I don't want you here!'

Wow, a spirit that actually does not want him to magically save it from its misery. Now it got his attention, "So you're just planning on staying here? Feeling sorry for yourself?" he retorts back at it.

The spirit disappears through one of the restroom stalls. 'why do you care anyway? You're just like anyone else….'

"Yeah… sorry about that." He will wholeheartedly admit that continuing to provoke it wasn't his best move. But to his defense, "I don't exactly have lots of good experience with dark spirits." He is stepping over so he can see it again, although it isn't entirely black. This spirit still got the same dark grey coloration as Twisted One has. "You're weak compared to the one I last encountered, so, yeah, I kinda let my frustrations at you." The spirit flickers between humanoid and to whatever it thinks will scare him away, though it is not very good at it. "Anyways, if you haven't noticed, I can see and hear you. So, what about you tell me who made you do this?"

For what feels like forever, although it's only the extent of the recess, the spirit refuses to acknowledge him. The spirit speaks up only when the chiming clock forces Soren back to class. 'I was once part of the group, was one of them. But I was NEVER one of them.' The spirit shows signs of anger, but mostly a great sadness. Soren hates to leave it when this spirit finally speaks, so he gestures it to follow, and fortunately, it does.

It follows him down the hallway, where it continues on its story. 'I don't know why, but I hated doing the things the other boys did. Not the loud and being obnoxious, but just… what they spoke about. It's all about hooking up with some random chick or winning the biggest dick contest. I didn't mind them talking crap about others, or putting people in their place, but... Yeah…' The spirit takes a seat at the table inside the class; although it looks unaware it is surrounded by people and giving the nearby girl the chills. 'I admit, it was crappy of us.' Soren raises a brow, not daring to talk to it now that he's surrounded by people. The spirit, fortunately, got the subtle question, 'They were my friends. We were the repels, the boys that would show everyone no one would screw with us. I had to follow the flock, even though I hated pretending I enjoyed half the shit we did.'

The spirit goes quiet when the girl moves; unaware she got out from the spirit's presence. The spirit watches the other students; a faint aura of anger yet great sadness comes over it. 'I got together with this girl, was only a fling, but shit, I really liked her. Long wild hair, like she has just gotten out of a storm. Curvy and darn beautiful.' It's hard to tell in its current form, but Soren gets the sense that the spirit is smiling from the memories of this girl. 'It felt good being around her. I liked looking at her body; it made me think….' The spirit stops itself very suddenly, an aura of fear, and before Soren knows it. The spirit flees the room.

'Hm, guess something happened between this spirit and the girl.' Soren muses to himself and ponders if he can perhaps find this fling of the spirit. For now, he is curious as to what caused it to become close to a black spirit and what sort of bullying made this person kill themself.

The girl beside him leans over, asking him quietly so the teacher wouldn't hear: "Was it just me, or did it cold all of a sudden?"

"Just you." He replies, well aware of why she felt the chills, but Soren got no plans to reveal his little secret. Less so to a bunch of kids who think jumping off the climbing tower is cool.

School ended for the day, and Soren made a detour to the restroom as he would like to finish that conversation, but the spirit didn't feel like talking or showing up, so he had to leave this mystery for another day. Soren meets up with Hope at the drive-in while waiting for Mike to arrive. "Did you know there's a ghost here?"

Hope's reaction tells enough: she didn't know. "Well, I don't know the full story. Only that this spirit apparently killed themselves after some extreme bullying." A quick glance to the area this spirit haunts the school; the same place where they died. "It got the same dark grey coloration as Twisted One" Hope gasps, and she already fears the worst. Soren quickly assures her. "It's far from as powerful. All this spirit can do is make the light blink for a short time. It's harmless to the material world."

That's good to hear; Hope really does not want to be chased around by another dark spirit. Does surprise her that there's one here at school. "Any idea why it is a dark spirit?"

Soren shakes his head. "No, but I am planning to find out." This spirit has perked his curiosity, and maybe he can figure out what caused the spirit to become black through it. The dark blue car arrives, "Don't tell the others. I don't want them to worry about something so little." Hope nods, she will, so Mike asks about their day when getting into the car. They both instead talk about how school is and not the spirit haunting the halls.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Soren tried the next couple of days again but met quite the obstacle of getting answers from this minor black spirit, by it having no sense of time nor able to form new memories. Proving it to be a spirit of the weaker kind, and Soren is not sure if that's a good thing or not. On the one hand, the spirit's angry outbursts cannot harm him at all, only make students scared with the blinking lights and icy atmosphere it can create. On the other, it's infuriating that he has to go through the same song and dance by gaining its trust, and every time the subject came to this girlfriend it had, or why it got bullied, the spirit will clam up and flee to who knows where.

If he wants more answers, he needs to find that girlfriend or figure out where this angry yet super sad spirit is hiding. The school is a tad too big for him to search it without any sort of idea where to start, so Soren decides to speak with the upper classes about this spirit— or rather, the person it used to be.

Most of the older students got the same story as his fellow students, though they seemed way more reluctant to speak about it.

One was at least kind enough to tell him who this mystery girl was, though the students at this year are much closer to being considered adults than children.

During the big recess, Soren approaches a group of young women, all standing at the edges of the playground, talking about something he does not care much about. "Lucille?" They all stop their chatting and stare, surprised that a younger student got the nerve to approach them, but only one of them got the look of that name belonging to her. The spirit was right; this young woman is pretty. Her clothing seems to fit her just right, showing that she is a woman and wants the entire world to know it. Soren doubts Hope will dress up like that; she's more into many colors yet simple clothing. This one looking at him is more up to look as pretty as possible. "Can I talk to you in private for a moment?" He asks, highly doubting she wants others to hear what he got to say about her former boyfriend.

Lucille gives her group of friends a look, and they all start giggling. Much like Chica does when her friends make an inside joke. Soren hadn't made a joke, far from it, in fact. The young woman kneels down, so she gets closer to his height, hands on her thighs, "Look at you being all serious. What's wrong little man, lost one of your toys?" she cooed mockingly at him, the other girls giggle at it.

He is not impressed by this behavior, and if she's like that, then he won't show her any respect. "I know about your dead boyfriend." That made her drop that fake motherly smile instantly, and so did that stupid giggling of her friends. A dead silence falls over them, and Lucille stares at him with a mix of horror and shock that he knows. Soren does not see sorrow in her eyes, so he guesses the feelings were one-sided. "Are you willing to take this privately now, or should I continue?" He asks dryly, for he will say the rest if she keeps treating him like a baby.

At least Lucille sees now that this is indeed a serious matter, "private," she says hard, takes his arm somewhat hard, which gives him some serious flashbacks to how his mother grabbed him right before plunging the knife into him. Didn't make it better that he got pushed hard to the ground, and he only just heard her words. "How the hell does you know—" to suddenly be replaced with a startled scream. Surprisingly, that scream snapped him out from his terror, and he saw her stare into the nearby ally way, right outside the school's borders. Following her fearful stares, he sees a pair of glowing eyes, surrounded by a white face.

…. What is Eric doing here? Guess he must've been watching him and Hope and got pissy when this young woman manhandled him a bit too roughly. "I'm fine," he calls out, causing Lucille to stare at him in shock.

The white mask disappears slowly into the darkness of the alleyway, and the eyes grow smaller until they are gone too. Looking up to the much older student, "Don't grab me like that again. Unless you want him to get up close and personal." He points at where Eric's puppet body stood a moment ago.

"…What was that?" She asks with a trembling voice. Well, guess he has to thank Eric for standing up to him; it sure got Lucille's attention. "Some kind of masked freak?"

"He's a dead person" Lucille snaps her attention to him, eyes wide in terror at his following words. "Murdered by his own brother, which made him into a vengeful spirit. And he likes me, so he does not like when people manhandle me." She turns to stare at where the puppet was a moment ago, and maybe Eric is still there, just not doing the angry glow eye thing. "I spoke with your boyfriend. He is… lost." She slowly turns her gaze back to him, eyes still filled with terror, but Soren needs to solve this mystery. Why is this spirit close to being a black one, and what is the deal that caused the bullying that ended up with them killing themselves. "He is very angry, but I get the sense he's using anger to cover up a great sadness and confusion. He speaks very fondly of you."

These last words snapped her back to the subject of why he wanted to speak with her. Brushing some of her long hair away from her eyes, Lucille steps further back to the school grounds. "You really spoke to Mads, didn't you?" Soren nods, not seeing a reason to hide that he got a connection to the spirit world. "What did he say about me?"

"He liked your body very much." That thing is obvious, but the issue is why he came to her. "But for some reason, he always clams up and disappears for days when he starts talking about you." And guess that's an excellent way to start asking, "What happened between you two? Did you get into a fight?"

"No! no…" Lucille is quick to deny, yet deflate for some reason, "we just… couldn't be together."

"Why?"

"You wouldn't understand."

Has she already forgotten what he deals with on a daily basis? "You are aware that I can see dead people?" Soren points at the alleyway, "They don't exactly give me a choice when they start telling me how they died. And a pair of slit wrists is tame compared to others I have seen." Her face goes a bit pale at those words and the reason why he's acting so much more mature compared to others at his age. "So trust me, Lucille, I will understand."

Lucille bites her lips and begins to fiddle with one of her many wristbands, then a sigh. "Alright, fine…" She heads over to the fence and leans against it. "Mads is trans," Soren raises a brow, as it's the first time he has heard that word. "it means that he may have been born a boy but is, in reality, a girl. Though…" Lucille hugs herself, and her gaze seems suddenly so distant. Soren notices a glint of regret in her eyes for the first time. "he hadn't fully realized it. Guess I only knew due to the way he obsessed about my body and was way more interested in hearing about the things I barely thought about. But oddly fascinated him."

Huh, now that Soren thinks about it, he has noticed that some spirits form didn't point out what gender they were, and he didn't bother asking as he was running from his life. This Mads is one of them. The only reason he concluded this spirit to be male is how it spoke about their 'friends.' "Is that why they continue to avoid the subject when I ask them? Because you broke it off after finding out that boyfriend was, in reality, a girlfriend?"

"I only told Mads I didn't want to have sex with him, not that I didn't want to hang out." Lucille's tone is stern, but Soren gets the sense that she's relieved to speak about this. Her aura feels sort of happy. "Past that narcissistic guy exterior, Mads was incredibly sweet. He made me appreciate myself." She smiles, but Soren is more surprised by the tears that have appeared in her eyes. "Love my body as he loved it. I wanted to help him figure out why he hated looking himself in the mirror, why he enjoyed the feminine stuff. But…" her hand covers her mouth, but it didn't cover the sob nor the tears breaking out from her eyes. "they… they couldn't accept him… not who he truly was…."

Soren thinks he's starting to get the full picture of what happened. It seems Lucille tried to make the spirit embrace them being a she instead of a he, but this friendship group of assholes didn't like it and started tearing this Mads down. "How bad was it?" He asks, though aware enough that it was bad enough to make this person end up killing themselves.

"Very bad…" Lucille whispers. The clock chimes for the end of recess, but she does not move. Nor does he; this is a bit more important than class. "They called him every transphobic name in the book, beat him after school, and… they even came after me. Told me that if I continued to poison his mind, they would make sure 'that I never could look myself in the mirror' and by how they are… I know it wasn't an empty threat."

"Why didn't you report it?" Soren asks and feels a bit hypocritical, as he avoided the police when on the run. He felt he couldn't trust them. Still, Soren has learned that one cannot do everything alone.

Lucille shakes her head slowly. "They always were careful, never causing too much trouble at school, although we all know they are bad news. Mads held some twisted loyalty to them as well, so even though they sent him to the hospital, he refused to inform them to the police…."

"And one day, it got too much, and he killed himself." Soren states out, and the older student nods; that's what indeed happened. That solves that mystery. "Thank you for telling me this." It helps him understand that this Mads was in an incredibly dark place when he died. Maybe that's what is affecting the spirit's colors.

He leaves, figuring it's best to get back to class before the teacher decides to get him in trouble or something. "Wait, little boy." Soren stops, glancing at the still very tearful Lucille. She hesitates with whatever she wants to say, "Could you… could you tell Mads that I am sorry?"

"I can, but he won't remember your apology." That's not how spirits work. They live in the past and present, unable to realize that the world has moved on, while they are stuck in the time where they died. "Ghosts cannot form new memories; all he ever will remember is whatever you told him back when he was alive." It made her burst into tears, guess her last words weren't some Lucille was proud of. He leaves her be, for there is honestly, she has people to help her through this. The spirit of her friend does not. Perhaps now, he can get the spirit to open a bit more up around him. It not… well, maybe he can get it to a better place than a dirty toilet.

I apologize if I wrote how it feels being trans wrong. I read a bunch of Reddit posts on how trans people think before they go through a transition or realize that they have the wrong gender. I don't know a trans person personally, but it's not easy, from what I can tell.

A lot of people hate on you people, and that's why I decided to make this chapter, make this character who will get a much bigger role if I ever make a Security Breach version of this AU.

If not, well, I will make a few more chapters about this person in the future.