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There were a lot of cool things about being a Jr. Trick or Treater - things like going to other holidays, or running the battle of the bands, or secret codes and stuff--but those were kind of rare. Most of the time he was either running errands or doing stupid s**t for the ToT'ers entertainment. That's why Roch had decided to come up with an idea of his own. Something he could do as a Jr. Trick or Treater--if Nox said he could.

So the punk boil was sitting on a bench on the campus grounds with several pieces of paper and a ragged looking book that said "So You Want to be a Trick or Treater" written by Anonymos. And when you opened the front page it said in big, blood colored letters



And then if you weren't careful, it started oozing something strange and stinky. But it was the only book Roch could find, so he was DEALING with it. He had a list of barely legible notes that he was writing in red marker. At the moment it was on the bench next to him as he tried to clean the ooze from the book off of his pants.

"Seriously, man, why is EVERYTHING out t'get my pants?" he muttered to himself.

Roch glanced up. Saw a mini reading. Remembered QB classes--yes, but more importantly, remembered Desu and her pal's joke on them the first year.



He choked for a second, hesitating and looking away slowly before looking back. "Uh... sup, Professor?" he said belatedly, raising a hand. He would probably have this problem with contract pets for the rest of his life XD.

Roch nodded, slowly, then opened his book again, trying to ignore the fact that it was dripping some unknown liquid on his leg as he tried to read. Anonymos was kind of a d**k, he thought as he read the next page. But he should have figured that out when the book started stinking the moment he picked it up.

He couldn't concentrate. He kept finding his eyes going over to the contract minipet, as if certain that at any moment he was going to do something... like make Roch hug a human.

But... he'd asked a boogey this once, he thought, he might as well ask a DETH guy, right?

"Hey, Professor," he said. "What's the relationship between trick or treaters and DETH?"

"Yeah, I'm learnin' t'be one," Roch said. "A trick or treater, that is--I'm mentorin' under one. I'm a hob, y'know?" he said. "We gotta figure out what we're doin' after graduation at this level." He stretched his legs out in front of him, slumping. By the looks of him, you'd have expected he'd be the last of the students to have a plan laid out--other than probably a long stint in prison.

"But it sounds like y'gotta work with the trick or treaters, right? Since they're bringin' in the FEAR and you're doin' the managing of it, right? So... y'know, I'm not plannin' on BEING DETH or anythin, but I should probably find out about dealin' with it, right? Can you give me some pointers?"

Roch thought about it, a serious expression on his face. "Okay, I can't just go 'I wanna prank' even though it's my first instinct--cuz I got a liiiiittle bit of trainin' already, stuff that might influence what I become, y'know? See, the first job I took was runnin' a massive thing for Halloween--a Battle of the Bands. It went pretty well, but I sortta think the trainin' was for makin' sure everyone was where they were supposed t'be, which can be a pain in the a** when you're dealin' with gnomes, and makin' sure nothin' screwed up behind the scenes enough t'screw up the scenes, see?

The second job I got was t'infiltrate Thanksgiving Land," he went on. "It was just t'learn t'fit in without gettin' sniffed out, not t'scare, cuz seriously, there's no FEAR in Thanksgiving. Everything's GRACE. It ain't easy doin' that, I ain't gonna lie. But that mighta been because nobody told me how Thanksgiving guys lived an' acted. But..."

He seemed to be thinking something, something huge. "I ain't sayin' I'd start out doin' something like infiltratin' and setting somethin' up that humans would CHOOSE t' do all on their own, but I think... with enough plannin' and know-how, I could, possibly, maybe... pull it off," he said, hesitantly. "Jack that sounds egotistical," he added under his breath. But--he was sure he COULD with more training.

His best, huh? He sighed, his mind full of past memories, all the times he'd screwed up, all the times he'd given his best and still failed. A little bittersweet smile pulled at his lips before he shrugged it off. Then looked at the minipet.

"Ok, I'll do it," he said. "You know more about humans than I do--and if y'swear not to try an' convert me to DETH--I LIKE bein' a trick or treater in training--I'd like y'to give me some help, please. Show me how best t'deal with humans?"

He was probably going to regret this, but hell, the professor'd been alright to talk to so far, right? Besides, it was just for a little bit!

"Pers'nally, I've only met two--maybe three types," Roch said. "There's the hunters, which I've seen way too many of, an' then there's the old lady you introduced us to an' the kids we went to on Halloween," he said. "But I also know, as a reaper that was raised surrounded by monsters an' undead, that they're supposed t'be a lot like us reapers. An' I also know that there's gotta be a lot of them, t'keep a place this huge in FEAR, right? So if all of them were like hunters, we'd be dead by now."

He frowned, thinking about his knowledge. "There's reapers that spend a lot of time over there, pretendin' t'be like them, makin' music and movies t'get an influx of FEAR, right?" he said. "So if they don't notice those guys--or they notice them, an' like them well enough t'watch an' listen to their stuff, then that means they're easy enough t' deal with as a group. Maybe." At least he liked to hope.

"But there's differences," Roch said. "An' not just the whole we regenerate they die once sortta thing. There's words they use, food they eat, ways of movin' an' actin', not the stuff y'think about when you're talkin' FEAR class, but the stuff that becomes glarin'ly obvious when y'get there. I mean, that's how it was in Thanksgiving--I almost blew my cover simply by the way I dress, an' by not knowin' how t'do the farming stuff they all do."

He frowned, trying to figure out how to put it. "But they barely let us into the human world here--an' even then it's usually a spot without humans. So how are we goin' t'learn how to fit in when we graduate?"

But he was getting an idea. A tiny little idea that might help. "Hey, another question," he said abruptly. "Other holidays, they're sustained by humans too, right? So are they a lot alike humans, too?"