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A strange gurgling sound emitted from Ethen's throat as he was dragged downwards, the weight of another's arm around him making him slouch. Turning for the arm's owner, ethen saw the boy who had fallen earlier... what was his name again?

Underneath had been furrowing deeper into Ethen's arms, but at the taunt of the fox-daemon, she poked her face out from Ethen's shirt. "Fear has nothing to do with it," she said cooly, careful not to raise her voice - she was more cautious than angry, anyway. "Call it intuition if you must, but... it can't be... any good..."

Underneath shook her head as Ethen sighed (from the stress on his neck rather than the argument between the daemons). It didn't seem sane to fear a door, but she just knew that nothing good could come from it. She couldn't be wrong! Sometimes, you just... knew. Right?

"I'm not afraid!" Ethen half-shouted, somewhat boyishly. He tried to look up at the person holding him, but once more the shadows revealed nothing of the individual's features. Despite his scrutinization, all Ethen could see was the basic oral and nasal features.

Before he could speak further to his point of view, he was being pulled through the door Underneath had so desperately tried to warn them about. She quivered as the breezes stirred by the movement of the door fluttered around Ethen's fluffy hair.

((I won't be online July 1-4 because of Anime Expo, a convention in California. If you're going, I hope to see you! In the meantime, I apologize for inconveniences my absence might cause. Sika is also going, but I don't know if she'll be accessing her computer/internet during that time. ))

The door crumbled with an oddly deafening howl, as if it was upset to be crumbling. As if the house was losing a part of itself. The group of teenagers had no choice. It was more than a pull into the room. One minute they were outside it, and the next they were inside, piled in a crumpled heap on the creaky wooden floor of an almost pitch black room, with Ethen on top and Fawkes on the bottom and the others, daemons and all, in between, despite what little sense it might have made. Even the light coming from whence they came seemed to help very little in revealing the contents of the room.

What they could see of the room appeared to be a long forgotten storage area. There was a mattress with springs poking out of thin, worn fabric propped up against the left-hand wall and, oddly enough, a wooden floor propped up against the right-hand wall. It made the room look vaguely like one of those 'slanty shanties' popular in amusement parks and county fairs.

Suddenly, there was no light. Then all light, as the room flashed brightly, as the light flickered on in the room, and everything was visible. Another door was immediately visible, straight ahead, with that sweet scent of being habited wafting from it, and a trumbling bit of noise.

Now visible in the room were several large armchairs, all different shades of pink, faded and worn, one with another bottle peering out from behind a leg. Some of the armchairs were stacked, some haphazardly placed. None were normally worn by the room, and none looked inviting in the least.

Just visible behind the flooring was the glint of yet another glass bottle.

Declan had graduated from under-equipped science projects to making a sandwich in the kitchen. His ears pricked up at a shout.

Now, he knew that voice. But was it just the house playing tricks? Either way, if it was who he thought it was...

He wouldn't be alone for much longer.

Grasping Ethen gently by both shoulders, Simon hefted and moved him to the side so he could remove himself from the pile of limbs and fur in which he was now situated. One moment, he and Death had been in the doorway, peering into the darkness; the next, had brought them to their current position. Death squirmed and struggled her way out from under the muscled boy, grunting and growling about the predicament.

She could see in the dimness, as could Simon, though not to as great of an extent. Shadowy humps which may have been furniture dotted the walls, the most visable of which was an old mattress leaning haphazardly against the wall to the right. Simon disregarded his surroundings momentarily -- nothing smelled out of sorts -- and reached out a hand to aid the boy he had so unceremoniously relocated. "Need a hand?"

Death, in the meantime, was not so nonchalant as her soul friend. Sniffing about surreptitiously, her search for whatever agent had disrupted them was temporarily halted by a glint behind the wooden boards leaning opposite the mattress. She took a step forward, right paw hovering in the air, when the lights went out. Before that paw had reached the ground again, a bright flash drowned the room in light, destroying what little night vision Death had left. Squinting and shaking her head as the light settled to a more normal level, she peered through the dazzle in her eyes, able to recognize, at long last, the tell-tale shape of a bottle. "When you are done playing with the others, cub, I have need of you. I have found one of the items that rude child requested."

The handle turned readily, and without urging the door swung wide. Clean white steam pushed out from the small room, roiling as a nearby shower curtain was ripped aside. Clutching the edge to her chest, wide eyed with indignation, Nisha practically screeched. "What the <********> are you doing?!" The steam rushed impossibly back into the room, streaming in towards the girl as she yelled. Stooping to grab a bar of soap from the ledge, Nisha drew back like she intended to hurl it.

"Get out!" The steam swirled tightly around her, hiding the bounciest bits as she gestured. What the hell was this? A prank?!

"Your equipment?! They're going to need a microscope and tweezers to find that. And if it's nothing you haven't seen..." Nisha spoke through clenched teeth, obviously even more furious to find Declan involved in this. "Then why did you look twice, you a**?!"

The steam from her shower seemed to solidify around her, settling into the draping folds of a short white dress as she made good on her threat of violence. She wasn't the strongest arm, but at this range, it didn't really matter. She made sure to aim low.

"Don't you all have something better to do?! GET OUT!!" Hurling the bar of soap with all of her strength at Declan, Nisha let it fly from her hand just as Desperate hooted in alarm down the hall. Already, she questing for something else to throw.

From his stooped postition next to the bottle, Simon had not the bird's eye view of Nisha that was everyone else's pleasure; however, the blush that had bloomed on his angular face suggested he had seen enough. He carefully directed his vision elsewhere, studying the bottle in his grasp with intensity. It was a bit dirty, with a chip in the top, but otherwise, unremarkable. He wondered why Declan needed all this stuff anyway.

DeeDee, on the other hand, watched Nisha's tantrum with something of a twisted pleasure. Her tongue lolled to the side, maw curled in the semblance of a smile. "Perhaps this vixen can teach the boy some manners," she quipped, making a doggy chuckle as the soap was heaved at Declan.

As the bar of soap smacked Declan, it bounced off his crotch and plopped right into Ethen's waiting hands.