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 Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 1:41 pm
"Nice meeting you too!" Dashner gave Roswell a Brofist, and said bye to his beasties. He then walked out of the maul and flew home.
What a great day.
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Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 2:21 pm
Meme had become accustomed to the screech of the intercom but still jumped, the tray full of coffee cups jiggled.
"Aww manster, it's been such a long day!" She stretched her legs and groaned.
"Bye guys!" She shifted the tray to one hand and waved as the other monsters left.
"Hey, could I get a lift back with you and your dad?" She asked Ascreama, who was already on the phone and nodding.
"I can't wait to get back to bed." She mumbled to herself and sipped her coffee as they walked towards the maul's entrance.
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Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2013 5:41 pm
"We'll have to finish another time, Vanissha," Melody sighed as she waved goodbye.
She gathered Brandon who was chatting up a cyclops and headed home.
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Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2013 4:08 pm
"Well," he laughed nervously, "actually it's just for school clothes, my mom gave me money but I can't drive yet soo..." His words trailed off.
"But, hey, it's nice to see someone else from school besides, Dash, you know?" He shoved his hands into his pockets as he looked at his hooves.
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Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 5:23 pm
It was the next day after school, the day after his beast friend Nero had just up and run away to join the circus, that Kai found himself at the Maul. He had driven over there in the hopes that he'd see Nero at the Sunglass Crypt or Banshee Bling, but still it seemed that the big blue Sphinx was nowhere to be found.
With a sigh, Kai stopped in Grave Expectations, the shop at the Maul that carried Spellbound cards. Bouis Bane, the shop owner gave Kai a nod when he strolled in.
"Greetings, Kai. You will notice on your left the newest booster packs for the Blistering Bog expansion."
"Thanks, Bou, does Glen know?" Kai looked at the preview poster to see if there were any cards with art that caught his eye.
"Silly child. He was here before school to ensure the choicest picks of the packs. That is the action of a TRUE Spellbound Grandmaster." Bouis dipped his brrr-ito in some scummus and took a bite. "Alas, but he failed to pull the holofoil Gargoyle this time. Perhaps it still awaits a proper owner, if you wish to try your luck."
"Thanks, but money's kinda tight this week. Maybe next week."
"Beeeeyow zing-zing. My depressive-sense is tingling. What has you down, my multi-monstered friend?" Kai half-smiled. Bouis was a balding, bearded uber-geek ghost with no tact, but he was good to his ghostomers.
"I've got a friend who's acting strange. You know Nero? Big blue guy who comes in here with me sometimes?"
"Yes, I am aware, he is the one who keeps calling me 'pudgebro.'"
"Well, he quit school yesterday to join the circus."
"Really. Well, that's unoriginal. I can think of at least ten comic book characters who have circus-themed origins."
"I don't think he's looking to become a superhero...In fact, I can't figure out why he did it at all!"
"Well, the circus tent is right there on the edge of town." Bouis pointed in a random direction with his brrr-ito. "Why not just go and ask him?"
"Yeah, you're right. I couldn't go last night because it got too late, and before school I was dropping my dad and his wife off at the scareport. I should have headed there right after school. It just feels so...I dunno, you know? I get this weird strong feeling that I SHOULDN'T go there."
"Then you will have to decide which one matters more...an explanation from your bro-tastic friend or your gut feeling." Bouis polished off his brr-ito and Kai nodded.
"You're right! I'm heading there right now."
"Be sure to come back tomorrow, we will have a new shipment of art books by JH Killiams the 3rd!"
Kai gave Bouis a wave and headed out of Grave Expectations to find the nearest Maul exit.
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Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 5:40 pm
The east exit to the maul, right there in the food court, was the closest and easiest to get to from where Kai had just left from Grave Expectations. All he had to do was manage to maneuver his way through the crowd of hungry monsters and food court employeeks who were constantly holding trays laden with samples in his face.
So after a few of those samples, Kai was almost upon the exit when a colorful sign caught his artistic eye.
It was floating in the air, with the letters in colordul shades that seemed to change color at a whim, which just made Kai more interested in what it had to say.
The sign read;
CRYPT ART CRAWL - 2013!
Featuring the most infamous New Salem Street Artistic talents! See the latest works by;
Devoid!
Al-ick Moanopoly!
Poster Boo!
Dead Ghoul!
Wraith47!
And many, many others!
Got your portfolio? Bring it and these infamous experts will give you their professional opinions! Do a bit of artistic work with your favorite!
All this and much more happening at CRYPT ART CRAWL!
Between the New Salem Maul and the Catacomb Crypt!
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Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 5:51 pm
"WOAAAAHHHH." Kai read the sign and flexed his fingers excitedly. An art crawl! Right here, in New Salem! Right now! How had he not heard about this?!!!
"Oh man...my porftolio's at home! And I have to get to the circus! What do I do..." Normally, having to make a big decision would cripple Kai with trying to make up his mind on what to do. But luckily, this time, it felt as though all of the choices were aligning...he could do ALL of them!
"I'll go to the crawl, hit up Devoid and ask him for a portfolio review in a couple hours, drive to the circus, snap some sense into Nero, then drive home and grab my folio! Easy!"
Kai looked left and right.
"Who am I talking to?!"
Kai shrugged and turned down the thin street between the Maul and the Catacomb Crypt.
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Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 6:05 pm
All along the sidewalk pavement between the maul and the crypt were colorful paintings and sketches done in chalk, paints and stencils. Each one was an original and had the artist's signature in the lower right corner.
There were a surprising number of monsters looking around at th different exhibits, and the first thing Kai thought was a wish that Nero and Layla were here to enjoy this as well!
Then from the corner of his eye, Kai spotted him;
Devoid! The absolute beast street artist of all time!
Putting the finishing touches on a fresh, new chalk painting, Devoid looked up and smiled.
"Well hello there! I was starting to think nobody around here would take an interest in my work."
He motioned around to the other artists enjoying the attention from the pedestrians and he sighed.
"Perhaps it's time for me to consider retirement? Perhaps you'd like to see a few of my pieces I haven't shared yet?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 6:13 pm
"Oh! OH! OH!" Kai nearly jumped up and down. "Yes! Please! Oh, this is incredible" Kai hovered around the chalk painting Devoid had just finished. Yes, to some it would just look like straight chalk lines next to each other, but Kai could see the incredible painstaking visual effect of differing pressures in the chalk layout, the passion of creation breaking out against the impermanence of life, all laid out right there on the sidewalk.
"I would UNDIE to see undiscovered Devoid works! Seriously! Oh! Do you do porfolio reviews? I don't have it here right now, but I can go and get it! I have sort of a fusion style where I work with different mediums and styles all at once and sometimes I work on canvas or work in found art and even sometimes I've tried impasto on driftwood and I'm rambling aren't I, I can't help it, I'm just such a total art freak...."
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Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 6:28 pm
Devoid smiled at young Kai and patted him on the shoulder.
"Hey man, I'd be happy to look over your portfolio. Hey, maybe we can grab a bite after the Crypt Crawl somewhere and I can look it over? But first things first! I believe I promised you a look at some of my newer works?"
Devoid stepped aside to allow Kai a pass between two of his works where there were tall stacks of crates filled with, presumably, his work.
"After you, my aspiring young artist!"
"Manster! This is so ghoul!" Kai said as he walked back behind the ee!sels. The smile on Devoid's face ended and he followed Kai back where there were no witnesses.
After a moment, there was a flash of magical light. Then slowly, the 'pedestrians' and works of art, as well as the artists, slowly faded from view. All a magical illusion.
All that remained was Kai standing inside of a colorfully painted cage on wheels, and Nero standing behind it. Nero grasped the cage by the bars and he started to wheel it, and Kai, away.
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Posted: Thu Sep 19, 2013 6:37 pm
Bouis Bane, finished with his shift at Grave Expectations, stepped out of the Maul and gave off a wearied sigh. Another day, another foolish child getting sticky hands all over the glass case that housed the Ultra Rare and Stupid Rare Spellbound cards.
Bouis floated over to the crosswalk and noticed something you don't see every day - a tall blue manster pushing a cage with a smaller gray manster inside.
"Is that-" Bouis's eyes narrowed. "It is! Kai! Where are you going? I presume that you have had some manner of discourse with Nero, seeing as how he is pushing your...cage...across the street?"
"Yes!" Kai turned to Bouis with a large, almost vacant grin on his face. "And everything is great now! I've finally figured out my calling in unlife....I'm going to join the circus freakshow!!!"
Kai waved goodbye as Nero pushed the cage down the street. Bouis raised a ghostly eyebrow and gave a light wave.
"Kids these days. Understand them, I do not."
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Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2013 7:23 am
It was the early mourning hours of the next day. School was not in session just yet, and although the stores in the maul were not open just yet, the maul's doors were to allow the elderly monsters to walk about in their early mourning daily commute.
Bouis Bane, owner of Grave Expectations, hovered near the store's gated door, looking at the clock on the wall stoically, waiting for the clock to strike, ready for the store to open its doors, when a startling number of cries caught his attention from outside the gated door.
"Look out!"
"Gangway!"
"Dive! Dive!"
Bouis turned his head to see several of the early morning choppers dive for cover, behind rotted plants and under benches, as a green streak blew past his door and skidded to a halt just out of sight with a loud screech -- and a crash. Bouis sighed. He knew he should not have placed that rotted fern there.
That was when perhaps his best customer, Glen da West, came back from the left of the door, holding his skateboard under his arm with one hand and dusting the dirt and shards of the pottery from his clothes with the other -- the bright smile never having left his face.
Bou gave him 'that look' and turned the key in the gate and up in went and in Glen came with a bound.
"Back so soon?" Bou said matter of factly as Glen watched him slide the doors open all the way. "Our next delivery is not until the weekend silly boo."
"Oh I'm not here for cards!" Glen chirped and he made a mad dash down an aisle, the wind whipping the oversized ghostly "Inhuman Torch" tshirt Bou sported.
"Then what brings you here so early, and so eagerly?" Bou asked, blinking as Glen dug through a display on a shelf. "Won't you be late for school?"
"Nah! I make better time on my skateboard than I do the car anyway. ... Ah-HA!"
Bou jumped as Glen pulled something from the stack on the shelf and he asked, "Ah-Ha, what?"
"Found it!" Glen waved the thick 'Spellbound' notebook and folder portfolio, featuring the Crimson Kitty Katastrophe artwork on the cover. H dashed up to the counter as Bou floated through and behind it, prepared to ring up the purchase. "I saw it yesterday morning but with th new cards and Nero joining the circus, I completely spazzed out and forgot! How unlike me!"
"Er, yes." Bou agreed with bemusement. "How unlike you." He accepted the cash from Glen and bagged the portfolio, stating, "I admit surprise you remembered it this morning, what with young Kai following suit last night."
"Huh?" Glen accepted the bag from Bou and blinked. "What do you mean?"
"Why, just last night I saw your bluddy Kai being escorted by Nero toward that new circus. Kai seemed quite enthused about joining the circus along with him."
KAI is joining the circus!?" If Glen had been Skelly, his jaw bone would have met the pavement. He shook his head. "No, there has to be a mistake! Kai loves school! He'd never quit to join a circus...!"
"I know what I saw young Glen." Bou leaned his elbow on the counter and leaned over, tapping a finger through his ethereal forehead. "I saw it myself after closing. Nero pushing Kai down the street in a cage..."
"A cage!?"
Bou continued, "And Kai mentioned something about joining the circus freakshow..."
"FREAKSHOW!?"
Bou cringed at Glen's squeeky voice rising an octave and he clenched his misty gray eyes shut and nodded.
"Saw it myself." He then placed a crumpled lunch sack on the counter and reached in, pulling out a jubo sized breakfast boorito. "Boo. After all these years I thought I saw everything..."
Glen said nothing else. He was just too shocked. Lin was one thing. Nero was something else altogether. But KAI!? Glen made his way toward the door, constantly looking back at Bou who seemed lost in thought. Glen hopped on his skateboard and took off for school, never minding the shrieks and monsters diving out of his way.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 1:06 pm
"You sure Farnie and Mistie won't mind? I don't think they want us to leave the circus at all." Kai asked his Circus-bro-for-life Nero as the two of them pulled up in the circus truck to the back dock of The Arrght-House.
"Nah, we're cool, bro." Nero assured his bro as Kai opened up the dock door. "Besides, they want the circus grand opening to be PERFECT, and that can't be true until you finish painting all of the sideshow banners, right?"
"Yeah, but-" Kai started to reply, before Nero cut him off.
"And all of the paint we had BEFORE was ruined, right? Completely by accident and not on purpose and we wouldn't want Farnie and Mistie to be upset, right?"
"Well, yeah..." All of the paint had been spilled when Nero and Kai had been working on part of their act, the part that involved Kai juggling chainsaws while Nero bench-pressed his bro above his head with one arm. It was a totally frighteous act, but the dang chainsaws seemed to have minds of their own sometimes and one of them had gotten away from Kai after Nero's third rep. It had flown over Ronan and Doriana's heads, narrowly missing sawing their diving board in half, and had landed in the pile of open paint cans, sending paint everywhere and transforming Vanissha's ferocious pile of white kittens into a ferocious pile of multicolored kittens.
Fortunately, the pie-launcher Lin had invented had been missed, and had continued to mercilessly assault Dashner's face with pies. So it wasn't all bad.
"Look, Farnie and Mistie are out recruiting more of our friends to join the circus, thus increasing it's clawesomeness, and we can't disturb them while they're doing that. So we're being proactive. Getting new paint. Getting the job done! Like true circus bros!" Nero held up a claw for a fist bump and Kai responded in kind.
"Circus bros!" Feeling better, Kai started loading paint cans from his FORMER place of work into the back of the truck.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 1:49 pm
Jewels really did need her supplies, she needed to pay Ascreama back for the items she'd borrowed earlier in the week as well so she headed down to the maul to once more try to get the new ghoul to HELP her.
Outside she noticed a truck, which immediately made her hopeful that a delivery had been made and her order would finally be in. But then she caught sight of... HIM. Kai! Her heart did a little flutter and she berated herself for such ridiculous infatuation. Oh he was cute, but she had exchanged a grand total of what, maybe a half dozen words with the boo. Still, hadn't he joined the circus?
She found herself approaching, then hesitated. What was she doing? She stood there stupidly, arguing with herself while the two monsters filled their truck with paint cans. at length she sighed and gave in, maybe they'd decided to end this foolish act of rebellion and return to Monster High?
"Kai?" She called out, waving and seriously doubting he'd even know who she was.
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Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 2:37 pm
Kai slowly turned around....and his face lit up as he recognized the ghoul calling out his name.
"Heyyyyyyyyy." It was the ghoul who got the weekly glitter order. Kai set down a gallon of "Ghastly Green" and gave her a wave. "Jewels, right? How's it going? Have you met my friend Nero? We're bros."
"CIRCUS bros." Nero corrected.
"Circus bros." Kai replied. "Circussssssss. Broossssss." The two bros fist-bumped.
"How's it going?" Kai asked "Wanna join the circus? It's blissssssss."
"Bliss bros!" Nero called out and held out his claw for another bump.
"Bliss bros!"
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