Having the Coronavirus trotting about has made my country go into a sort of quarantine, which is freaking annoying, but at least it has given me time to write a few more chapters. so... yay?
anyways, now to the comments:
to Pastelpandabear99: glad you liked the past chapter ^^
to GameFan 335: heh, well by how you reacted, I take I did a good job making that chapter. As for your question as to why Jeremy didn't just run: He would, but Twisted One kept him trapped by its sheer presence inside his mind. He fought it for weeks in silince, but there are only for so long one can resist something like that. And he has something to lose, not only his own life/sanity but also his family, let it be biological or adobted.
for the rest, enjoy the story
She got placed inside one of the smaller rooms with a few tables meant for children. There are several balloons everywhere, very colorful too. The adults ready the place for today's show and when the specific tune only she and the others can hear, she begins to sing what song was put into her program.
People began to arrive, a lot of adults but her eyes are mainly on the children. None of the children wanted to sit at the tables, they instead wanted to play with the balloons or with each other. At first, there were four, then two, then six. Then for a time, there are none. She listens and can hear all of the children have gathered in the biggest room. Why, she does not know. The children did slowly return again, now several of them have a plate with cake and some take a seat to eat. There are currently ten in the room, then after a time, four.
One of the workers walk over to her and call for the children's attention. The five turn into thirteen and by the worker's command, she makes balloons through her fingers. The children love that.
More time passes and slowly, there arrive fewer children. Four, then three, then two and lastly none. She continues to sing, and when two children entered, her focus are on them. The older one does at one point leave, before he does he call for the girl. "Hope, are you coming?"
"In a moment." The child replies and the other child is gone. Something happens, not by program but something else. She stops singing, kneels down to this watching girl, opens up her stomach and makes a small bowl of ice cream. She offers the girl this gift and the girl approaches her, eyes only on the icecream.
Her eyes turn black the second the child gets close enough to touch her and then… she strikes.
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The adults are discussing and, at times arguing the best course of action after some evil monster has hurt Jeremy very bad. The Toys all decided to keep their distance as none of them really like to be around angry adults. Besides, it is way more interesting to watch Soren pour some weird dust onto the floor, making a straight line.
Vixey is the first to walk over and ask the question they all have on their mind: "What are you doing?"
"Doing a small test." Soren replies while evening out the line of dust. When done, he straightens up and walks over the dust line, then he asks one of the Toys to do the same. Chiara, Theodore and Vixey all title their head in confusion to such a weird request. BonBon, on the other hand, did not understand that it was a rather stupid question as he walks over to the line.
He stops about five centimeters away from the line, for some reason he does not move further. Soren notices that the blue bunny is beginning to get upset.
Chiara sees it as well and asks him. "What's wrong BonBon?" and to everyone's surprise, BonBon replies, for once with an annoyed voice. "I can't walk over it."
Theo blinks of what BonBon had said, he does find it rather stupid. "What's so hard? It's just keep on walking." He tells curtly to the youngest of the group. Did end up upsetting BonBon to tears and Chiara sends him a glare that says if he keeps going; she will slap him again. He pretends he didn't see that but does keep his mouth shut as Soren also is giving him a dark stare.
Ignoring Theodore, Soren steps over to BonBon and tells him in the same gentle voice he does when Hope is upset. "It's alright, you did really help me out." BonBon looks up to him, a bit confused about what he meant: "I did?"
Soren nods, he did have the suspicion that this mystery dust was made for spirits, hence why it didn't affect him the slightest. "Yup, and you did an outstanding job."
BonBon face lights up and returns to Chiara, who repeats pretty much his words. Chiara cast a thankful look to him, which he returns with a smile. Does fade slightly as he wants to put bullheaded Theodore down a peck. "Ten prize coins you if you can get past the line."
Theo grumbles something but does take the bait and steps over to the line, however, like with BonBon, five centimeters from the line and he stops. Theo looks to be struggling but his body refuses to get any closer to the line.
Frustrated that he cannot get past this stupid line and it did not make it better that Soren is smirking smugly and taunting him, "What's wrong? Can't get past a silly line?" so wanting to prove that this freakish line can be crossed so he can smear that smug look off Soren's face. Theo takes several steps backward, then charges at the line.
What happened afterward was something none of them expected.
The extra speed did allow Theo to cross but only his animatronic body, his soul wasn't allowed to pass, which would've torn him away from the body if not from the powerful seal, Marion put on. Which ended with Theo tumble onto the floor, paralyzed and in so much pain from how his soul is getting steched out by the seal and the spirit wall.
The other Toys only saw Theo collapse onto the floor after having passed the line. It was however, enough to freak them out and yell for the adults. Soren, on the other hand, saw the torment Theodore is in and starts to panic. As fast as his hands will allow him, he breaks away the line and when Theodore's soul is fully back into his vessel: he begins to wail from the pain he's still in from that traumatic experience.
Hearing the commotion from the Game Room, all of the adults hurry to the place. They find Theo crying his heart out, clearly, in deep pain, the other Toys scared and confused and Soren… he has a look of pure horror mixed with a butt-ton of guilt in his brown eyes.
It's pretty clear that whatever happed, Soren is the one who did it.
Mike dreads what the kid has done. He tells Soren to come with him, allowing Chica to comfort the wailing in pain Theo.
Passing Bonnie, the rabbit asks in quiet anger, "What did he do to deserve this?" Mike casts him a look but does not call Bonnie out that comment was uncalled for, he can see that Soren didn't mean it. Still, he also knows that part of his powers stems from his emotions and unfortunately, both Soren and Theo are two temperamental kids and they have in the past pushed one another to do stupid things.
He brings Soren to the office and when the door is closed, he demands the boy firmly. "What happened?"
"I never meant to happen!" Soren exclaims in fright, not because he's in trouble but... before he hasn't cared much, he has harmed spirits, but now, with everyone here offered him a home AND he had hurt a child spirit. The guilt refuses to be ignored and that is greatly upsetting Soren. "I didn't know—"
"What did you do?" Mike demands, maybe too hard for the clearly upset kid. But he's scared for Theodore, that kid already has plenty of bad things on his plate and he clearly does not need one more thing that can make him distrust people. Soren winches away, Mike is too upset himself to really notice though.
He really screwed up… "I… Marion took the pouch I made and put some kind of wood dust inside." Soren explains quietly, he keeps his gaze down, he feels too guilty to even look into Mike's eyes. "I simply wanted to know what it did…"
"And what does this dust do?" Mike asks.
"… Spirits cannot cross it and… I…" He knows he's at fault of what happened to Theo. He knows how much Theodore hates to be looked down on, and he made it worse by pressuring Theo to go so far. But Soren never thought it would get this bad. He thought Theo only would slam into an invisible wall. "I'm sorry, I didn't know this would happen..." This time he meets Mike's gaze but does quickly lower his eyes. He has never seen Mike look angry before.
He had heard his father once say: 'boys will be boys' when Tim got too rough on either him or Daniel, using that as an excuse that kids, especially boys, can do some terrible things when they are small is tolerable.
Mike, however, does not agree on those words. There is no excuse in hurting someone by getting too hyped up boys become once and a while. This isn't the first time Soren and Theo have pushed one another. In many ways, they are very alike. But there is a difference in having a play war out in the garden to literally hurting one to tears. "This apology shouldn't be said to me, but to Theo. He is the one you hurt." Mike replies Soren as calmly he can from the mass of emotions he feels of this whole thing. And from how the young bear reacted, a slap on the wrist won't be enough. "You won't be allowed to play on the arcades or the consol downstairs. For how long it depends on how much damage you caused him." Soren nods slowly, at least he's aware of the severity of his mistake of not arguing his punishment.
Mike is still upset about what has happened, but watching the close to tears teen, most of his anger frizzles away. "Do you have more of that stuff?"
Soren nods.
"I will need the rest of it." Again Soren nods and with that more or less resolved, Mike leaves the room and he heads over to check on Theo.
He finds the young bear lying on one of the large pillows inside the book corner, beside him sit Chica and Bonnie.
"How bad is he?" He asks the two.
"We had to turn him off, the pain made him unstable." Chica replies softly, that does change when spotting Soren, which the other of the Toys said caused this. "I know you and Theo does not get along, but this was uncalled for!" She snaps angrily at him, Soren flinches away and that look in his eyes better be because of his action and not merely of her yelling at him.
Bonnie turns around, like her, he's quite angry about this as well. "What the hell did you do?"
Mike was the one who ended up explaining them, did ease a bit on their anger but not much as Soren did provoke Theo to hurt himself.
"This better not happen again." Bonnie tells Soren hard and the kid shakes his head that it won't. Bonnie then gets on his feet. "Now, what's this stuff that won't allow a spirit to cross?"
Mike get Soren to fetch it and when done, both him and Bonnie sends him off. Mostly Bonnie for he's still really pissed of what has happened and that kid better feels bad for it.
Turning back to Mike, "If looking past this huge blunder, this;" he takes the pouch. "might be what we need to keep you and the others safe." Bonnie puts two fingers down after some of the dust but it won't let him reach it no matter how hard he pushes.
He returns it back to Mike there replies. "Yeah, but there's so little of it."
"Maybe the detective can help us out." Foxy suggests.
Mike can't help but cringe that Foxy does not call his father by name, "Why do you keep calling him that?" Foxy blinks and replies rather simply "He is a detective," where Mike has to remind his canine friend, "and your biological father."
Foxy shifts uncomfortably on his feet, oh right, Foxy doesn't consider Nathan his father anymore. Okay, well, there is another way to address him. "At least call him Nathan." Mike requests, he's not sure if Nathan would care, but he would much rather be called by name than his work title.
That he can do, Foxy nods, "Alright. But I still stand my point." not sure if the police movies held any truth, but it would be nice if the station at least has the equipment to figure out what this dust is made out of.
Mike nods in agreement that Nathan should take a look at this spirit warding dust. "I will give him the rest tomorrow if he has time for me that is." Never know with that man, really.
Several of you wanted them, now you get the Sister Location robots and a particular scene which spell big trouble for Hope. She really shouldn't take ice cream from robot clowns.
I really like to write about the interaction between Theo and Soren. Usually, they are just making innocent but (for the adults) headache-inducing shenanigans, this time, their little rivalry went too far. Mike and the others have every right to be angry at Soren.