Halloween Horrors
It had been something of a turbulent month, that pesky October. Between the Surrounding fiasco which not only required a big senshi presence in space to fight big a** dragon monsters (Space dragons?) but also caused a mass panic thanks to a bunch of people flat out missing without a trace, and Ellie pushed off a roof and trussed up in a cast, it hadn’t been fantastic, even with discovering a new teammate and all those civilians magically being okay somehow.
So when Evelyn put on the shades that offered a final touch to her Top Gun Maverick costume, she was glad to take this most glorious of holidays and say “******** you, magical alter ego.”
Halloween was her favorite holiday, except maybe Christmas. They had their good and bad, what with Halloween being costumes and free candy and Christmas bringing treats and presents balanced with crushing financial stress.
And there would be free candy, damn it. Evie found her little sister Dana to be soul crushingly obnoxious but Trick-or-Treating was something they gladly did together. Dana could stay out later and walk further and Evie would take a 10% ‘candy tax’, letting both sisters end the night thoroughly sugar high.
“Daaaay naaaah… aaaaaah!” She practically wailed as she pounded on the Keep Out sign plastered door her sister lived behind. “Come on, are you almost ready? I want to hit Mrs. Reynolds’ house before all the good stuff’s gone.”
She was met with silence, which was only tolerated for about 30 seconds before she pounded with both fists and wailed even more dramatically until the door swung open. Dana was dressed a stereotypical witch costume with striped stockings and a pointy hat involved in the ensemble, and she was very visibly unhappy. “I’m not going trick-or-treating this year, I’m going to a party.”
Well that was ******** unacceptable.
“Uh… what?” Evie needed a second to process this.
“I got invited to a party, I’m going. I’ll be officially in high school next year and I need to start working on my social connections,” The twelve year old announced very matter of factly with her nose in the air very similarly to how Evie spoke down to people she was displeased with.
“You’ll be in Knightside just like you are now.”
“Yeah, but it’ll be different. Eighth grade is a very big deal.”
“Until you get there and then ninth grade will be the very big deal and last year seventh grade was the very big deal and none of these are as big as college,” Evie argued, but Dana was not convinced.
“You just don’t understand, Evelyn,” She replied in the most mature voice she could muster.
Evie was not pleased.
“Will there be boys there?” Evie asked, putting her hands on her hips
“Uh, yeah?” Dana gave her probably the twentieth eye roll of the evening. But Evie had a motive besides just getting information.
“DAD, DANA’S GOING TO A PARTY WITH BOYS!”
“Dad’s go—“
“What?” The doddering middle aged man was hosting an event at the church, but he’d forgotten something. Or that was what Evie assumed when she heard him come through the front door a few minutes earlier.
“High school boys.”
“Absolutely not.”
It was a dirty trick, yes, but Dana had a boy crazy streak that nearly made her father gray, and she knew the odds of him unleashing her on a party, at night, with high school boys was less likely than the world ending tomorrow.
“Bu—you--- but dad, you… UGH,” Dana ended her stuttering with a screech, a door slam, and several foot stomps, even though she hadn’t even left her doorway and didn’t have anywhere to stomp to. Evie could hear her ranting behind the door, probably to her vlog camera. She’d burn herself out and then they could go get some candy. Yessss.
Dana finally reappeared, video camera in hand as predicted. She put the lens in Evie’s face at an unflattering upward angle. “Elder sister, any comments on the alleged destruction of my social life for our viewers?”
Evie just waved in the camera before grabbing her sister’s arm and half running with, half dragging, right out the door.
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“And so the abusive saga continues as we embark on hour two… of the night my sister ruined Halloween…” Dana said dramatically into her own camera as the two girls walked. “Evelyn, commentary?”
“I think that last house was giving out full sized bars,” Evie said offhandedly as she dug through the pillowcase they were using. She was obviously more into this than her sister.
“Take heart, dear viewers, the my—“
“You don’t have any viewers. You’re not allowed to post your videos online.”
“Yes but someday when I’m rich and famous and live in a castle people will want to know the truth of how I survived my childhood.”
“Oh eat some Skittles and shut up,” Evie was really only half listening. Dana’s dramatic documentaries weren’t exactly anything new to anyone in the Caffrey household. Or even, in fact, frequent visitors.
Dana let out a growl. Evie went on ignoring her, taking inventory. Dana gave her the silent treatment. Evie pulled out her phone to map out their next targets with the GPS. Dana was still silent. Evie kept pretending she wasn’t there.
“Okay, I think if we take a right on Palmer street we can--- Day?”
Unfortunately, Dana wasn’t there. But there was a group of generically costumed kids up ahead, and she assumed Dana had melded in with that crowd. “Hey, Dana—“
“What kind of costume is that?”
“Are you a garbage man?”
Evie just ended up with a dose of reminders about why she hated kids. “Where’s Dana?”
“Who?”
“Blue hair? Witch costume?” There were three witches in the group, but none of them were her witch. “Aw, s**t. Dana!” Awesome. She spends all her free time being a superhero and she can’t keep track of a measly twelve year old. She ended up tearing back up the street they were walking along, screaming as loud as she could, hoping to embarrass her sister, who she was hoping was hiding out of spite, into appearing. “DANA DORTHEA CAFFREY! DANA! DANANANANA! Dana~!” But she just ended up with a lot of strange stares. One concerned woman chaperoning a pair of trick-or-treaters asked what was happening and after a quick explanation she agreed to keep a look out, but it wasn’t all that comforting.
Minute after agonizing minute went by, and there was no sign of Dana. Evie had circled back around to the spot where they had been initially separated, suddenly too paranoid to leave it. But then she got too restless waiting and ended up making a mad dash to a nearby park, still calling out her sister’s name like a mad woman. She couldn’t call her, because she’d taken her cellphone earlier that evening. She wondered if she’d gone home, or to the church their dad ran, but she was too afraid to call and send her dad into a panic just yet. Besides, she was either going to get a ‘yes, she is safe’ in which case her procrastination meant nothing other than extra energy on her part, or she was going to get a ‘no’, probably kill her dad with a heart attack, and need to shimmy off to try and find her anyway.
She had started wandering down a more empty part of town. Or maybe it had just gotten that late. Evie didn’t know, she had gotten somewhat lost herself in her frantic search. And then she heard the worst sound ever. Someone screamed.
Evie pounded pavement and was huffing and puffing by the time she rounded a corner to find Dana, looking all scratched up with her witchy stockings ripped and a terrifying blast of red running down her leg, trying to keep a dumpster between her and a mangled looking youma. “Dana, don’t move!”
“Evelyn, run!” Dana shrieked as the monster turned its one good eye on Evie and lunged.
It was like all three of them let out their own screams and yells, but Evie’s rang out over the other two with a loud “Eunomia Power, Make-Up!”
The youma hit her like a barrel she only half blocked with crossed arms, and then she dug her boot heels into its underside to savagely kick it off and flip back over to scramble up on her feet. She paid no attention to her sister, who had slumped up against the wall to watch her sister scramble and wrestle and kick at the creature as a fully suited up sailor terrorist with her draw practically on the ground.
The youma was easy to deal with on her own without calling for back up, but judging by the way it was already torn up, it seemed to have already had a head on collision with a senshi or a knight earlier in the night. But she could imagine all the kids out seemed like easy targets, even for a messed up youma.
Once it’s head was low to the ground, it took one well placed boot stomp with all of Eunomia’s weight behind it to crush what was left of its skull, making the monster explode into dust.
Eunomia was out of breath, and so was Dana, and they both locked eyes, both wide, both with gaping mouths, both dead silent. Dana was sitting on the ground, her ripped costume partially stained from the bleeding scratches. Until Dana lifted the camcorder still strapped to her hand and said in her best narrator voice, “And there you have it, dear viewers, my sister is a terrorist, and monsters are, in fact, real.”
“Dana, give me that!” Eunomia made a dive for the camera. Just what she needed, her sister recording her powering up for the world to see. She didn’t even want to think about her dad’s reaction, and if mom was alive… ugh. Maybe the fact she wasn’t made her perceived reaction so much worse.
“No! Are you kidding? You just killed a monster! I almost got eaten by a monster!” Dana flailed and waved the hand with the camera in a desperate attempt to keep her terrorist sister from smashing it. “The world needs to know!”
“The WORLD needs you to give me the damn camera!” Eunomia shouted back, pretty much on top of her sister at this point as they ended up as a tangle of grabbing arms and kicking legs and she was pretty sure at one point, Dana actually bit her.
Eunomia did successfully confiscate the camera, though, and she grabbed the disc out of the camera and promptly crushed it.
Dana stared in utter horror. “I can’t believe you did that to me.”
“Yes, horrible am I, saving your life and all,” Eunomia said sarcastically as she flopped next to her on the asphalt. “Are you okay?” She asked, going back to frazzled concern and ripping off a ribbon of butt bow to clean the half coagulated blood off of her leg.
“Yeah, it’s just a scratch. I’m pretty quick, it was just allowed to bleed for a few minutes.” And it was just a scratch. Enough that Eunomia could release the cluster of nerves and knots that had built up in her chest.
“Oh… good,” She sighed before shifting abruptly to yelling. “What the hell is wrong with you? Just leaving like, and how did you end up here anyway? If you were going to ditch me why didn’t you just go home?!”
“I dunno,” Dana pouted, crossing her arms and sinking into her shoulders. “You were being an a** so I left. And then I saw the dog. But it wasn’t a dog.”
“…And you got cornered,” Eunomia finished with a sigh. Man, it seemed easy for just anyone to become a victim these days.
“Actually I followed it to film it but then it got weird so I threw rocks at it.”
Eunomia just outright facepalmed at that. Of course, only Dana would see a youma and catch its attention on purpose. For ~action~.
“So where’s the candy?” Dana’s question pulled her out of her thoughts. Normally, maybe, Eunomia would deride her for thinking of candy immediately after nearly being youma food. But the entire purpose of tonight’s drama was to go collect candy, and Eunomia realized with horror that she had left it on a park bench during her epic search for her sister.
“Let’s go home,” She said with a defeated sigh and getting to her feet. She powered back down into Evie Caffrey and started walking towards the sidewalk. Dana scrambled to her feet and climbed up on the top of the dumpster to point the empty camcorder at Evie. “So now you’ve saved the day, terrorist!” She said in her best announcer voice. “What are you going to do now? Go to Disneyland? Explain yourself?”
“Get down from there!” Evie hissed.
“My dear sister, terror inducing sailor suited warrior of the suburbs~!” Dana shouted dramatically. “Oh how will the Caffrey family endure the SHAME?”
At this point, Evie was too paranoid and ended up grabbing her to physically yank her down herself. “And now she’s manhandling her own baby sister!”
“Dana, I swear,” She growled, trying to keep a grip on the lanky preteen. “I’ll tell you everything if you promise not to blow my cover to everybody on the street.”
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Evie would be ashamed to admit it, but on their trek home they totally made a detour to try to find their candy. Some opportunistic punk had already gotten to it, though. Now the two sisters were sitting in their tiny bathroom, Evie with Dana’s legs in her lap as she carefully dabbed the scratches with disinfectant and made sure they were all covered.
“Don’t we have any normal band aids?”
“Uh, no,” Evie snapped. “You’re the one who insisted on these My Little Pony ones, it’s all we have.”
Dana let out a dramatic sigh, prompting a ‘what’ from her sister. “Well that was back when Bronies were cool. Now they’re annoying.”
“Deal with it.”
“I can’t go to school with these!”
“Wear jeans! It’s October!”
“November.” Evie just shot her sister a look for correcting her and went back to cleaning up her leg.
“Day,” She said, trying to impart a bit of seriousness into this conversation. “You can’t tell anyone.”
“That you’re a terrorist?”
“We’re not terrorists. You saw that monster.”
“So all this time, you’ve been secretly going out to fight monsters, and didn’t bother to tell me?” Dana huffed and picked up her camera that Evie was about to offer to graft to her hand to save on time. “This is gold!”
“Too bad I wrecked the DVD.”
“…Yeah.”
“And Dana, if you ever tell anyone, you won’t live long enough to be killed by a monster, got it?”
Dana just kind of shifted her shoulders and pouted. “Not even dad?”
“Especially not dad!”
“Fineeeee.”
The conversation continued with pinky swears and threats of death and humiliation and tales of senshi weirdness that was only half believed. But at least by the end of it, Evie felt confident she had explained to her sister that outing her was a line that was not to be crossed. No matter how horrible they could be to each other, there always had to be a line. This would be okay. Maybe even for the best, as her busier schedule now had an accomplice for cover. Evie would count this as a win. Even though they had to drive down to the nearest corner store and BUY their own candy.
