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Watching the match progress in a pitch black tunnel wasn't as interesting for the spooktators as it was for the participants. Rory looked away from the big screen to admire the rest of the crowd. It wasn't a huge crowd, maybe a hundred spooktators at best. But boy...all these kids were so lucky. Rory felt left out; his mother did not approve of him fanging out with kids from Monster High, and she had certainly slammed the coffin lid on any ideas he had of transferring over to Monster High.

He'd had ONE incident outside of Mirrorverse when he was young, and now he felt like he'd have to pay for it for the rest of his unlife. So unfair!

Rory watched the fearleaders as they tried to break up the quietness of the pitch black section of this match with a few routines.

"Huh...." Rory was getting a Feeling about the Fearleaders. Not a 'wow, those ghouls are super-cute,' feeling, but a 'Those Ghouls Are About To Have Something Epic And Possibly World-Changing Happen To Them' sort of Feeling. Feeling with an uppercase "F."

"Shadow eclipse, huh...."

These sorts of hunches were the downside of being a mirror witch...Knowing Stuff was the name of the game. He wondered if there was a way he could warn those ghouls...He'd have to think on it later. Unless one of them had a magic mirror handy and just happened to ask (in rhyme), his Feeling would have to go unstated. At least this time he didn't have a Prophecy to worry about. Prophecies gave him the hiccups something fierce.

"Are the lights supposed to do that?" He watched the screen for a bit, but nothing much seemed to be happening except a small light spinning around and around. It was a little dizzying. He looked away and noticed Rory, who was acting stranger than usual.

"excuse me?" Ronan stared at the mirror witch, what was he going on about?

The baby skunk, Lin's beloved pal and pet, landed on the lap of none other than Dashner, surprising the teen boo! The tiny little critter looked up in faux annoyance at 'Dash' and took in his wings and talons and the first thought that crossed Sweety's mind...

Predator!

So he did what any skunk would do! Spun around, lifted his tail and....

something black and white flew at them and landed angrily on dashner, distracting ronan completely as his dorm mate screamed and the creature retaliated to it's unceremonious landing.. He gagged, now that really was disgusting.
He almost felt sorry for Dashner, but couldn't help but be thankful it wasn't him.

Still, where had that skunk got to now? Dashner's panic to get the thing off him meant they now had a terrified animal hiding somewhere.

"Where in the seven seas did that come from?!" Holding his sleeve over his face to mask the remaining stench, he scanned the ground for the creature before it could get hurt in the crowd. "and where'd it go?" It couldn't have got far.

Ronan turned, just staring at the sight for a few moments before he could quite believe what he was seeing. "This skunk has remarkable balance." He tilted his head and very carefully held out a hand to the skunk, testing the waters so to speak on whether it would let him touch it or attack again. He was hoping for the former obviously, but animals were as frustratingly unpredictable as monsters. The only difference was they had fewer wants and needs, and were wonderfully obvious in making these known. He liked that about them.

"Come on, that cannot be a good place to sit." He spoke softly, much more gently than he ever seemed to talk to other monsters.

Meanwhile, in the maze...

Atomica was spinning around, faster and faster and faster. It wasn't affecting her, but she could tell her teammates weren't going to make it much longer without tossing their lunches. Trying to steady herself, Atomica's scanners picked up the exit from the Pit of Darkness they were in.

"Meat-based teammates! Grab my hand!" She cried to them.

"Hah! No chance!" Manny Taur shouted, realizing that Atomica had figured out the way out. He body-checked Marceline out of the way. "Manny wants out of here!"

His big meaty mitt grabbed hers, and it was too late for her servos to auto-correct. She spun Manny mightily and released him with a flawless trajectory towards the exit. However, her previous blow from the stone column had messed up her biometrics a bit....and she realized too late that she had calculated far too much lift for Manny's mass....

"AAaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!" Manny cried out as he flew out of the pit, up over the viewing screen in a beautiful arc, and landed flat on top of Gil Weber in the waiting area.

*SPLAT*

"Aw, man, not again!" Clawd clapped a paw on his forehead as medicgoyles flew over to check on Gil and Manny. "Manny Taur is out of the race!"

Normally, in a regular SKRM match, the next skater on the team would enter the maze to take Manny's place. In tryouts, however, there were no second chances. Robecca's team was down to two members! Finally, the famous SKRM-star found the exit and led Rochelle Goyle out. Atomica reached up a hand, smacked herself in the temple and finally fixed her gyroscope.

"Ghouls! This way!" She shouted, her atomic battery beacon now leading the way to the exit for her team.

Of course, Gryff was ]always raising his voice about one thing or another so it didn't come to no surprise for Lin to hear his surname shouted -- only, that wasn't Gryff who actually shouted it.

Hunh. Interesting.

Lin stood up on the bench to look around to see who it might have been but just then Robecca pulled a most fangtabulous maneuver in the rink and the crowd stood up and cheered, blocking any view he had.





Dorianna couldn't have picked a worse place to be leaning in close to.

Sweety inched closer toward Ronan's fingertips and gave them a light sniff. The little skunk's nose twitched as it leaned in closer and closer, then stepped carefully off of Rory's scalp one paw at a time and onto Ronan's open palm.

Then that blasted horn sounded and Sweety streaked right down Ronan's arm -- leaving Dorianna in a cloud of, well, YOU KNOW!

Sweety ran up onto Ronan's scalp, tiny claws firmly digging in for a grip while the critter trembled -- his tail sticking straight up, just in case.

"THERE you are!"

The voice emanated from somewhere down in the vicinity of Ronan's waistline and there stood Lin, glaring up at him with narrowed eyes. Lin took in this new situation, sizing Ronan up before he turned and brought the megaphone up to his mouth.

"I FOUND HIM GRYFF!!!"

And the feedback sent Lin reeling back again Rory before he was able to steady himself. Lin shook his head to clear it and slapped his palm against his temple a few times. He then looked at Ronan.

"Can I have Sweety back NOW please!? I'd like to be ablw to continue cheering my fiend on!"

As if Ronan was keeping his beloved pet away from him.