The Looking Glass Book Store

[Atomica Servo]

Thanks to Arillena pointing her in the fright direction, Atomica's eyes flashed towards-

"Marceline!" Atomica managed to make out before someone shushed her again. "I have brought you the band! The new band! For Woestock tomorr-"

*BONK*

An Unidentified Flying Hardcover fell from above and smacked Atomica right in the noggin. Taken completly by surprise, Atomica let out the most unattractive, overheated screech this side of a dial-up modem from 1986.

"SCREEE-EEEEE-WOOOWWWOWWOWWWWW-"

Atomica's system blared out, completely out of her control as her system did a hard reboot. The noise was worse than a six-armed cyclops running it's claws down a chalkboard. The MC Werewolf snapped his fingers along.

"Wow, that's some groovy primal noise, right there. I can totally feel what you're projecting, tin ghoul."

All of the poetry-progressive mansters and ghouls nodded and snapped along, apparently thinking Atomica's reboot was a new performance.

"-Row!" Atomica continued without missing a beat as her reboot finished up. She rubbed her head. Why was there a dent there? "That is, if you'll perform with us. Atomica and the R.I.P. wouldn't be the same without its aggoredian player."

"Aggoredian?" Someone asked. Monsters were buzzing.

"What's Woestock?"

"Oh, I saw a flyer for that at school. It's some fearstival...."

"In the caves by the woods, supposed to be pretty clawesome...."

"Jimi Hexdrix is going to perform-"

A dozen different conversations started going on at once, talking about Woestock. Atomica smiled confidently. Clearly, Woestock was going to be a huge success! Somehow, she had managed to get everymonster's attention and now they were all talking about her!....well, the show she was going to perform at, anyways.

How did she manage to get everymonster's attention again?...Atomica shrugged. Probably just by being her normal TRULY OUTRAGEOUS self.

show spoilerhide spoiler

Arillena

Marceline LaGhede

Regina Arche

 

[Harry Herne]

Outside...

Unbeknownst to the patrons of The Looking Glass, goblinjas were peering into the windows. Arguments broke out among the group on which ghoul to grab. The Armfuls wanted to grab Sally. The Metalheads heard about the young master's fascination with Atomica. The Fae Freaks couldn't figure out why the young master would want a non-Fae ghoul and vowed to get Ari. Finally, a new faction formed...the Wing Warriors. They had seen the ghoul with the wings, thought the wings were pretty, and wanted to get her. Burly Hurly was annoyed.

"Just....get them! All of them!"

Inside...

Near the door, a couple was discussing Woestock.

"Who else is there besides Hexdrix? Will there be food? Is it a green event? Who is sponsoring it? How much are tickets?"

"Oh my Grodd! I came here for poetry, I wasn't expecting the Goblin Inquisition!"

The Toenail Goblinjas burst suddenly burst through the door.

"NO ONE EXPECTS THE GOBLIN INQUISITION! GET THE GHOULS!"

The various goblin factions attacked their prospective ghouls with their fungus weapons. They would bring the young master Sally All The Arms...or Atomica Servo....or Arillena....or the ghoul with the pretty wings. Then the Toenails would have their fungus!  

[Atomica Servo]

*paf*

*paf paf*

*nub*

Once again, Atomica and her crew (and, apparently, the rest of the patrons of the Looking Glass) were being pelted by waist-high goblin attacks that seemed to involve mostly the throwing of mushrooms at and the poking with of mushrooms towards them.

A mushroom bounced off of Atomica's head as she gave the most 'as IF' look she could possibly muster.

"Now! See here, you...you...Goblin Inquisition!" Atomica looked around for something to fend off the mushrooms. The closest thing available to her was a chair. It was an especially comfy chair, too.

Atomica picked up one of its soft cushions. She proceeded to poke every single Goblin that got too close to her with the soft cushion!

"Stop!"

*poke*

"Trying!"

*poke*

"To!"

*poke poke*

"KIDNAP!"

*poke*

"MY BAND!"

*poke poke poke!*

Atomica made she she had the stuffing all up on one end in the cushion. That made it extra effective.  

[NeoSylum]

Regina gasps. "Oh my... ghoul." Swallowing her fear, she glides down to Atomica in a watery-eyed apology. "I'm- I'm sorry!" She says, flustering. Regina picks up Dante's Infearno and bows waist-down, hoping that the cyber-ghoul would forgive her - accidentally hitting one of the goblins in the face with her wings at the same time without even realizing it.

"I'm really SO so sorry. I'm new here. Please forgive me." Regina looks as if it may be the end of the world for her. "You see, I...."

The little angel continues to rant her apologies to the robot.  

[NanoAer]

Arillena timidly poked her head out from behind Helene and jumped as the unexpected sound roared from Atomica. The moment of surprise caused her eyes to flash from Green to white but she forced herself to calm down and her irises returned to their normal colour. It was getting very busy near the entrance of the book store- or rather, the doorway looked a lot like an Exit to the nervous changeling at that moment.

"..." For a moment she felt like running, her fight or flight instinct was itching towards the latter. But something kept her rooted on the spot. As the Faerie's eyes moved from the Troublesome Goblins, to the other obviously nervous winged girl, to Marceline- Ari felt the panic building up inside her...

...Which wasn't at all helped by the Goblins trying to kidnap her and the others. Ari took several steps backwards. Her eyes and hair colour swirling about like a dull-multicolored lava lamp and her skin shifted to a dark rocky grey. Not at all thinking straight the Faerie didn't even hear a voice yelp as she tripped backwards over one of the fallen ninja's from Atomica's counter attack. She slammed into something hard and was momentarily awoken from her panic attack to look up in horror as a bookshelf started to wobble back and forth, as if deciding which direction it wanted to fall...  

[NeoSylum]

Regina's daze was shocked back into reality as she noticed the clumsy changeling stumbling over herself... Then the bookshelf that seemed to wobble unsteadily over her. Oh no. She thought. Out of pure nerve and protective angel instinct, she flew up against the bookshelf right when it was about to fall over on the poor ghoul.

Regina, however, being as weak as she was, had trouble keeping the bookshelf from toppling over... Books fell from the shelves and on to the ground beneath the changeling ghoul. Locking her arms and thrusting her wings a little more, the archangel was eventually able to steady the bookshelf and land it back to its stable condition.

Sweating, Regina landed and sighed in relief. Picking up the fallen books, Regina took a look at the Fae she just saved. "Are you... Alright?"  

[Draconia St George]

The books toppling to the floor kicked up quite a bit of dust, and all of the poetry viewers coughed and sneezed for a bit. Another sound came up from the cacauphony of hacking and coughing, though...the sound of actual applause.

"Wowee wow wow! What an outta sight piece of performance art we saw fright here tonight!" The MC werewolf led the clapping - even snapping wasn't enough for the crowd to show how much they were enjoying this performance of (apparently) 'Goblins Try to Kidnap a Bunch of Ghouls - Books Fall Down.'

"I really feel like that performance spoke about the inner turmoil of the modern monster."

"Yeah, it was, like, just, so, like, woah, you know? Mind. BLOWN."

"If Woestock is anything like this, I'm going to be there fer sure!"

Convinced that the show was over, the many different beatnik monsters started filtering out the door. The glut of bodies made it impossible for the Goblinjas to continue doing any non-performance-art kidnappings.

Wyvernia St. George, Moanica and Dusky Duskwing thanked monsters for coming as they left. Soon, all that was left in the store was the new Atomica and the Rest In Peace, Marceline LaGhede, and Regina Arche.

And several dozen goblins, of course.

"Our plan! Our flawless plan! It had a flaw!"

"NOBODY EXPECTS THE-"

"Shut up, Doink!" Burly Hurly the Goblinja huffed. He pulled himself up to his full, eight apples-high hight and pointed at Atomica. "This is not over! We will continue to try to appease the wishes of the prince, no matter wh-"

"Ah-HEM!" Wyvernia St. George, standing next to the entrance, tapping her foot, pointed at a sign posted on the Looking Glass door.

No Solicitors

No (non-anthropomorphic) Animals

No Food

No Kidnappings!

"Blast!" Burly Hurly cursed to the skies. Foiled by eerily accurate signage! The goblins all gathered together near the door. "UNTIL NEXT TIME!"

In a blast of smoke, the Goblinjas all vanished...out the door. Arguing and pushing as they left. Wyvernia sighed.

"My Uncle thought of everything when he opened this store...." She nodded at the ghouls left standing. "So. This 'Woestock' event tomorrow. It's going to be a big thing, eh?"

"The BIGGEST." Atomica answered, with a resolute nod.

"I was hoping tonight would inspire me for the next story for my talk show. I'm sure you've all seen it." Wyvernia mused. "It sounds like Woestock might be worth taking a camera crew to."

"Oh, it will be. We're going to be performing!" Atomica assured the dragoness. Atomica gave a hopeful glance to Marceline, just to be sure. Marceline took a deep breath, and nodded in the affermative. The robo-ghoul gave a jump for joy. "Atomica and the Rest...in Peace, that's the name of our band! Except for her."

Atomica pointed at Regina.

"I don't know who she is. I guess she's our backup singer or something."

Before Regina could react to the news that she was a) in a band, b) a backup singer and c) performing tomorrow at Woestock, Wyvernia St. George pulled out her iCoffin and started making phone calls.

"FangTAStic! I'd better start getting the camera crew mobilized. Sorry ghouls, going to have to lock up the store now...Boolian! It's Wyvvie! I've got a story for us tomorrow!...."

And so, the ghouls were ushered out into the night by the Looking Glass's two employees. Ghouls Night Out had been pretty crazy - much more than any of them had bargained for. And now, tomorrow....Woestock....promised to be that much crazier.  

[Draconia St George]

Saturday. Late morning.

A knock came at the door of Draconia's room. She lived in the flat up above the Looking Glass store. The store (and the flat) were owned by her uncle, the Jabberwock. However, he had suddenly left shortly after the Scaremester had started, apparently summoned elsewhere.

(This sort of thing happened sometimes. Forces beyond Draconia's reckoning controlled her uncle's fate. Fortunately, dragons were quite self-sufficient.)

For the briefest of moments as she was waking up, Draconia wondered if the knock was dear Uncle Wocky, finally returned from whatever adventure had summoned him away. As she became more aware, though, she realized, much more sensibly, that the knocking was in fact, probably-

"Wyvernia!" Draconia yelped as her sister burst into her room. Wyvernia St. George didn't have a lot of patience for late risers. As a news reporter and host of an early A.M. talk show, she was always up before the sun. She had no appreciation for things like 'sleeping in on a Saturday.

"Up and at'em!' Wyvernia cheerfully roared at her sister as she parted the curtains and let the cold Decembrrr sun shine in. "You've already wasted half the day sleeping!"

Draconia cast a weary eye at her clock. Not even 10 A.M. yet. She groaned and sat up.

"I'm awake...unfortunately." Draconia gave her sister the scary eyeball as she brushed aside her hair and stretched her wings. "I was having the most pleasant nightmare about final hexams."

Wyvernia smirked at her younger sister.

"Only you could describe a dream about taking tests as 'pleasant,' Drake." Wyvernia pulled out her iCoffin and started scrolling through messages. Multi-tasking was her default setting. "I wanted to see if you'd like to come with me to this 'Woestock' Fearstival. I'm going to do a story on it for my talk show. Maybe grimterview the host."

"Harry Herne?" Draconia asked as she stepped into her closet to start choosing her outfit for the day. "I met him at school...briefly. He was scary polite and a total gentlemanster. Glen set us up on a date, actually."

"Another date?! Draconia, you sly were-dog." Wyvernia chuckled as Draconia's cheeks flushed a fierce dark golden. "Just how many dates are you planning on entertaining?"

"Thirteen." Draconia informed her sister by poking her head out of the closet. "Yes, thirteen different mansters! And I'll thank you not to laugh about it! Glen was very kind offering to clawditition some boos to set me up on a date."

"I still think it's a bit weird. But then, everything Glen does seems wonky." Wyvernia answered as some shoes spilled out of Draconia's closet as the dragonette went back to picking her clothes. "So, do you want to come with, or not?"

"Yes, yes, I'll be ready in just a tick." Draconia replied, settling on a nice, black velvet dress with a big satin bow on the front. "I'm rather curious myself to see what hexactly 'Woestock' is."

"Well, if Jimi Hexdrix is there, at the very least, it's going to be an entertaining fiasco." Wyvernia nodded sagely. She knew Jimi, from her years grimterviewing celebrities all across the monster world. And his reputation proceeded him....