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Two others had stood silently by, listening to the words spoken by the mindflayer and surrounding students without bothering to offer anything of their own. One, because he hadn't gotten to know the fallen Red. It seemed only right that he didn't interrupt the words of those who had come to know her. Their deep respect for the werewolf moved him, making him glad that he hadn't chosen to remain in his dorm during the ceremony.

It wasn't until everyone began their howls, shrieks and bellows of the professor's final words that his own voice rose to join them. He tried to manage a howl with them, as a final farewell to Red.

"We are Halloween, and we cannot die!"

The one alongside him would have sooner not come. However, there was always that risk that somehow he would be missed. Even with all of the cloaks to hide the identities, who knew if the student council would somehow take a tally of who did or did not attend.

He supposed it was worth it, in a manner, even though he personally didn't see how screaming into the night did any of them any good.

Of course, that wouldn't stop him from trying to shout above the rest of those assembled. Howling, though, was very much out of the question.

"WE ARE HALLOWEEN, AND WE WILL NOT DIE!"

They howled, they cried, they cheered, they shouted; Junko could even swear she heard voices all around them. This was perfect. This was what they needed. For the most part it seemed their spirits were raised again and they could move on and stop their mourning. Red wouldn't want them to sit on their asses and cry that she was physically gone from Halloween. The student council had banded together to do something to honor Red and give the students closure and that seemed to be exactly what they had accomplished. This was the happiest Junko had been in a week.

She heard the sound of metal scraping through dirt and looked over to find Christof already digging the hole they planned to bury the box in. Good, good. That was the only thing left to do was bury the box. They boogeymen couldn't be given a chance to find and destroy it, and since they couldn't bury it in the graveyard without risking something terrible happening to it this clearing would do fine. Junko could barely remember it but this forest was where she'd had her first real experience with the late gym teacher.

Junko waited patiently for the voices to die down before finally speaking up again, clearing her throat. "All that's left to do is well..." She wasn't quite sure what to say now, glowing green eyes darting nervously to Riley before turning back to the rest of the students. She couldn't thank them for coming. That somehow seemed too strange to say. Thank them for coming to give one final goodbye to Red? Well...when she put it that way...

"Thank you all for coming to this. Whether it was hard for you or no trouble at all, everyone's presence was much appreciated." She looked past the students in the direction Arel had left earlier. "Everyone's." Junko smiled again. "We can't forget what happened that day, or even today. Stay strong, stay determined, and stay proud." If the adults weren't going to do anything then it was going to be up to them to find the answers Red had told them they needed to find.

They needed to get stronger. Junko had been wanting that for months now but...now she didn't know who to turn to for that.

"Christof?" Was he ready? She turned to Christof to check on his progress. Was he ready now? Because this box even empty was far too heavy for her to pick up.

Like sheep, he was herded with little fuss. A lone snob amongst the established peers, he kept his head ducked and his presence as unassuming as possible. It helped that the cloak was baggy on him, his stick figure once again covered by billows of red cloth. Who had made them all, he wondered. He knew of two students who could sew, but they couldn't have possibly done it all. How many had set aside time to create these symbols of restitution, the restitution of a proper funeral, proper and right?

He remembered the sewing group in the monster dorms briefly and wondered, watching the small horned figure lay his cloak down before leaving. Was he too a student? Certainly one who did not plan on staying. Perhaps he had had a strong connection to the professor and could not bear to see the urn . . . He could not blame the guy if so. After all, it was hard for him to be amongst students who had actually known Red and not be able to participate in the mutual remembrance of the dead. The most he could bring to the table would be his scared impression at the beginning of the trip, the monstrous being she ended up becoming, and the final rebellious attack that had been meant to send them away from danger, the fire that had filled him with cold fear as it killed him instantly.

And really, who would want to hear about that now?

One of the council laid the professor's urn down within the box, and students began to set items down within: a small vial, a letter, pieces of her skeleton recovered from the battlefield. Should he have brought something? All he had managed with his fail attempts was a backpack's worth of ash. Even if he had not been rushed to find this meeting place, would he have brought it? He would have felt so cheap . . . Disrespectful even.

And then came the rousing funeral speech, a combo the boil had never thought he'd use together. He recognized the ghoul's voice from the one time he went to the Movie Club. She seemed the leaderish type, he thought, as he tried to listen to what she said. What stuck out to him was what stuck out to most everyone there: that one simple phrase Red herself had uttered before she hurtled herself towards death.

The one that, even with the illithid's additional comments, he could not feel. At least not right now. It was a common sense thing: a person could be gone, but so long as other people remembered them, they would live on. But then it had him thinking. He had died once already, that was how he got here. Was he as celebrated at his funeral in the human world? Had even half as many people come to say goodbye?

It made his non-beating heart clench. No memories, no way to know.

It was a thematic addition to many of his comics, video games, and graphic novels, the act of remembering that someone lived on in others - right before justice or revenge was enacted in the dead one's memory. He wondered if that was what this would eventually lead to . . .

Silence on his end. Noise everywhere else.

Noise? No. Howling. Shouting. Cheering. Perhaps even a whimpering cry.

Him? Silence. Awe. Isolation. And a feeling of emptiness. No chorus left his stitched lips.

The hunchbacked cloak soon rammed his shovel deep into the mound he had made while emptying the hole. It was done. It was time. He hefted himself out, and limped his way back to the box. Glancing about, by the trajectory of some of the Robes watching him, that must have been his queue.

Once it was within his grasp, there was a ceremonious way to how he replaced the lid. He pulled out a small cordless drill (B. Mudd had been written on the bottom of the handle in black marker) from under his cloak, and there was a steady, practiced motion of sinking a screw evenly throughout the box's edge. What might have been too heavy for Junkos was just barely heft-able to the larger, bulkier set of red robes, although he gave a grunt and a wobble as he did so.

The box would have weighed a lot more if it had contained a proper Body.

Definitely would have needed help if they had brought back that whole skull, at least.

It still didn't feel right. Unnatural. He didn't quite understand the full nature of Fear, but... in all the times he thought death was upon him... it had been different. He had reformed elsewhere, startled, frazzled, terrified, but generally unharmed.

If Red really was dead... what, exactly, had those Hunters... those... humans... done to her?

Things like that could be pondered later, for now there was a rope-rig to fumble with and a gentle decent of the box to the bottom of the hole. At least it being smaller than a proper coffin meant less amount of time digging the hole.

Shovel in hand again, the lid painted with a certain crest was blocked from view by a curtain of dirt.

He moved slowly, partly because of the thrill of the action of being able to handle actual hands-on funerary grave-digging, but also in case any student wanted to throw in one last hand of dirt before taking their departure.