Welcome to Gaia! ::

He stood before the giant behemoth of a structure, mouth agape and eyes wide. He’d heard about this place, even read about it on the Interweb. Yet he’d never actually set foot there and for good reason. It was possibly the most crowded placed he had ever seen. Already he was having second thoughts. All that jostling, all that chatter, all that social interaction! He shuddered.

Thus, Efflo had a dilemma on his hands. Recently it had dawned on him that while many other boils and all ghouls wore shirts, he did not. He didn’t even own a shirt! Just a few pairs of tattered pants of which he had a hard time convincing himself to replace as the glowworms would just chew holes in them again. Thank Jack, though, there had yet to be any... unnecessarily revealing holes. But what he really wanted, for whatever bizarre reason, was a shirt. Perhaps he wanted to fit in more (no, he didn’t). Maybe there was someone he wanted to impress (no, there wasn’t). Maybe, and most likely, he was jealous. Everyone else had nice clothes, why couldn’t he? He already didn’t have any friends, didn’t have any family, let’s tack on having no shirt to that list! Oh, the monstrosity of it all! Woe is Efflo, that poor unfortunate boil!

So, he was going to retrieve a shirt. Even if he didn’t really want to go in there, he was going to. He was going to be brave and keep his eyes down and avoid talking to anyone. Yes, that was the plan. He’d even bandaged up his wounds, in anticipation of having to ‘try things on’, whatever that entailed. The undead horse took a deep breath, and with all the grumpiness he could muster, pushed open the doors and entered the worst hell in Halloweentown…

…the Maul.

Once inside, his worst fears were realized, it really was as terrible as he’d imagined. Boils and ghouls talking, monsters and demons everywhere, weird smells coming from the food court, blegh! Hopefully he could get this over with as quickly as possible. How hard could it be anyway? He just had to pick one and wear it, right? Seemed simple enough. But as he wandered past one clothing store, then two, then three, he realized that no, it wasn’t going to be simple. There had to be hundreds of different shirts! And all different types! He sighed, this was going to be horrible.

He passed Cold Topic; a quick peer inside told him no, he wasn’t interested. It’s not that he wanted something fancy, really, but a shirt should at least button up right? He didn’t know why but he felt strongly that a t-shirt was not what he was looking for. He wandered into Forever 666 and carefully avoiding the gaze of the salesghoul, began sifting through a shirt rack. His ears perked happily, all of these ones had buttons! Unfortunately, what Efflo didn’t know, was that he was in the ghoul’s section. Apparently, the undead boil wasn’t turned off by pastels.

Efflo turned around, blinking. Someone was speaking to him? Not the most socially adept on the best of days, it caught him off guard and it took him a moment before he realized what the other boil was saying. That’s when the embarrassed rosy flush rose in his cheeks.

“G-houl’s clothing?” he uttered, looking mortified. He hastily shoved the shirt in his hands back on the shelf, trying his best to play it off. “Oh yeah, uh, I was just looking… You know…” He trailed off, unable to come up with a good excuse. Ghouls were a mystery to him, why in Jack’s name would he have a reason to be looking at their clothing? With his plan of convincing this stranger he wasn’t rapidly deteriorating, Efflo scratched the back of his head sheepishly, glancing at the ground. There wasn’t much else left to do but own up, after all he really needed a shirt, and it was probably best to be wearing one gender appropriate.

“Pretty hopeless huh? I don’t… know much about clothes.” His ears drooped; the boil was still super embarrassed.

“I, uh, don’t really know… I like the buttons on these ones, I guess,” he answered, staring blankly and feeling a little bit silly. There were so many things to choose from, and having little experience with shirts, he had no idea what he liked. If this was the easy part, he wasn’t sure he wanted to get to the trying on business.

Efflo accepted the offered hand, shaking it with a smile. “Hello, Etzer. I’m Efflo! Er… Thank-you for helping me out.”

Efflo stared at the vast amount of clothing Etzer seemed to be piling up, stamping his foot nervously. Wasn’t just one shirt okay? That was really all he needed… The way the frost demon was stacking clothes, Efflo felt like he would probably be set for the rest of his life. Then again, this was coming from a boil who had gotten by until now on three pairs of pants.

“I, uh, okay, thank-you,” he nodded, stepping into the dressing room and peeking his head back out. He held out his arms for the first outfit, looking worried. Pants too?

He accepted the single shirt graciously, he liked the look of it and thankfully, Etzer had only handed him one. Much less nerve-wracking. And the pants, well, he needed those, and he took them as well without fuss, nodding at the demon before turning and tucking himself into the dressing room with a close of the door.

There wasn’t much magic or mystery that went on behind the closed door, Efflo was pretty unceremonious about trying on clothes and it only took a few minutes for him to slip into the new outfit. He glanced at himself in the dressing room mirror… It felt very odd to be wearing a full-outfit, yet he didn’t entirely hate how the shirt made him look. In fact, he sort of felt handsome.

Pulling on his boots, he straightened, and cautiously pushed open the door and peeked his head out; he wanted to make sure Etzer was still waiting. Assured by the sight of the boil still standing there, Efflo stepped out, striding awkwardly in his new clothes. He liked them, a lot, but he was clueless when it came to showing off.

“What do you think?”

A definite yes? That was good, Efflo thought. Etzer surprised him, however, handing him a whole stack of outfits to try on too. He blinked, staring at the frost demon blankly for a moment. If the one outfit was good, why did he need more? Wasn’t one enough? Efflo was too confused to even be flustered by the wink, which really should have set him shuffling embarrassedly back into the dressing room.

“Every… one?”