LotS/The Story/Lu Bu's Halloween

Lu Bu's Halloween

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"Zone Intro"=
Zone Intro

Lanjin Cheng, twenty years ago...

"I'm going to suck your blood!" the vampire intoned.

His red-smeared mouth widened, revealing a pair of sinister fangs that promised to pierce the flesh of the living and bring about an exsanguinating feast of crimson death.

Sun Xi laughed. But only for a moment. When she saw the look of disappointment on the vampire's little face, she suppressed her merriment and assumed a look of terror. She even gave a little shriek -- which made the young boy's eyes sparkle and drew a grateful smile from his mother's lips.

"Stop scaring Mistress Sun!" the woman chided.

"Sorry, mother!" the vampire said, though the pride in his eyes belied his words.

A crowd of diminutive witches, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, and other assorted horrors careened into the marketplace from one of the pedestrian paths. They filled the air with exhilarated shrieks, howls, and bloodcurdling roars, before dashing across the square -- raising clawed fingers and glaring terrible doom at shoppers, merchants, and passersby with cheerful impartiality. Most of those victims laughed or frowned in accordance with their natures. A few played along and gratified the children with their apparent terror. One or two stall-keepers added genuine screams and shouts to the medley when the children bumped into their merchandise.

The vampire ran off to join the horrific horde. His mother sighed, gave Sun Xi the resigned expression of long-suffering parenthood, and followed at a more sedate pace.

Mistress Sun beamed at the children's departing backs until they vanished around a corner. There were many on Sian who bristled at the festival's observance. Some went so far as to declare that shopkeepers were debasing their own culture in the name of commerce. Part of her wondered how anyone could feel so bitter after witnessing the wondrous joy Halloween evoked in children. But in truth, the nature of human thoughts and emotions were no secret to her of all women.

She continued her stroll, letting her gaze roam across the stalls and storefronts. Every sight brought a fresh gentle twitch to her lips. Holographic phantoms flitted here and there, dancing in the warm evening air. Some were amorphous creatures, little more than vaguely humanoid bed sheets adorned with round black eyes and gaping ebon mouths which shaped smiles or ghastly howls. Others were rather more detailed. On her right a cartoonish man was fleeing for his life from an equally cartoonish axe-wielding psychopath. The psychopath was evidently an athletic fellow, for he caught up to the unfortunate gentleman and proceeded to hack him to bits with savage blows from his weapon. Holographic blood and gore rained in all directions.

Sun Xi raised her eyebrow. Several nearby women gasped. But the children simply laughed and ran beneath the unreal confetti of carnage, as though it were a blazing summer day and they were playing under a fountain's cooling splashes. She shook her head and walked on.

"Ghost, Mistress Sun?"

An elderly woman bowed at her from behind a stall. Between them, covering its surface in the orderly arrangements of a military force on display, was a vast assortment of ghoulish treats -- from slivers of cake shaped and iced in the image of severed fingers to marzipan zombie heads and steamed buns splashed as though with blood.

The stall-keeper extended a wrinkled hand over the sugary battalions. It clasped a yellow-white specter. Sun Xi bowed, and reached out her own soft, slender fingers to accept it. They brushed the woman's hand...

A young girl plays a flute, sending trills of haunting music through an open window. The notes drift out into the world, where the other children laugh and play. They escape to a freedom that she herself is denied. The girl's mother has told her to practice. To become skilled. To make her proud. She doesn't want to disappoint her mother.

...and took hold of the white chocolate ghost it passed to her.

Mistress Sun sighed. Confusion slipped across the old woman's face. So Sun Xi flashed a quick, bright smile, and moved to swipe her credits.

"No, no! Please!" the woman said.

The stall-keeper's outstretched hand brooked no disagreement. So Sun Xi expressed her gratitude, bowed, and slipped the chocolate into her mouth. Her teeth penetrated its phantasmal form, sundered it into creamy chunks that tingled her tongue and the roof of her mouth with their silky sweetness. She gave a little murmur of pleasure. The old woman's face lit up, as though she were the one tasting the treat instead of Mistress Sun.

Sun Xi thanked her once more, and said -- making sure her voice carried without seeming raised -- that the chocolate had been delicious. When she turned and continued on her way, men and women were already crowding around the stall. If its goods were worthy enough to delight the Emperor's respected advisor...

She smiled as the noise of the old woman's commerce blended into the overall babble the tumult of the market. Then the corners of her mouth descended until her lips were pursed. A single touch had brought that glimpse of the lady's past to her inner eye, unbidden and unwanted. It was the second time such a thing had happened that week. She'd dismissed the first, deemed it a simple quirk of psionic happenstance -- an isolated curiosity brought about by a weary and careless mind. But now... Perhaps she should speak to Wu Tenchu, and seek his counsel.

Mistress Sun walked on. She tried to find distraction in the market's sounds and spectacles once more.

A little witch was riding a broomstick, and complaining to her mother when it failed to take flight. Nearby a small werewolf was dribbling a basketball. Sun Xi wondered if werewolves usually played that particular sport. It seemed unlikely. She'd never seen it happen, anyway. Thugby would perhaps be a more appropriate athletic activity for lycanthropes.

That absurd train of thought returned the smile to her lips. She continued on her way, and allowed her gaze to wander over the stalls with their various seasonal offerings. Sweets and toys for children, pumpkin sake and vodka for adults... Halloween's grand grim bounty was displayed on all sides.

"Bob for apples, Mistress Sun?"

The grinning man gestured towards a large, ornate basin filled with dark crimson liquid. Scarlet apples lurked within its bloody depths, each of their stalks inviting the teeth of adventurous fruit-lovers. A teenage girl stood beside it, staring into the redness like a scryer. Then she took aim, and dived. Her head descended towards one of the apples in a sharp, predatory lunge. Her teeth snapped. When she rose, an apple hung from her victorious jaws. Her face and hair were splashed and dripping. It looked like she'd stood too close to a chainsaw-wrought massacre. But her eyes gleamed, and the people around her applauded.

As for Sun Xi, she uttered polite words of demurral, and moved along.

The next stall was a riot of orange -- its entire length, double that of any of the others nearby, dedicated to Halloween's fruit. Oft neglected during the rest of the year, forced to inhabit the gloom while strawberries, bananas, and other more popular fruits basked in the sun, it now sat resplendent in all its gristly finery.

There were organic pumpkins in every size. Some were unmarred, a row of blank faces ready to receive whatever identity a customer saw fit to buy or -- if they were confident enough in the steadiness of their hands and the caliber of their artistic capabilities -- bestow. Sculpting implements lay on the vendors' side of the table, lest those steel blades or laser-edged cutting tools be mistaken for props, snatched up by high-spirited children, and the cause of bloody mayhem.

Other pumpkins had already been carved by expert hands, the orange flesh sliced and shaped to grant them dreadful visages, gleeful smiles, witches flying across full moons, wolves howling at the same, and countless other impressive things as well. Sun Xi marveled at each of these in turn, wondering how the most intricate had come to dwell on so unlikely a canvas.

At last her roaming gaze passed over the last of them, and onto the synthetic versions -- artificial pumpkins for those who wanted something more permanent. Many were cheap and cheerful, just plastic buckets with lights behind their eyes and mouths, made for children to fill their innards with whatever comestibles they managed to beg or threaten from the neighbors. But the most elaborate were works of art in their own right -- sculpted metal jack o' lanterns with murderous eyes, shrouded in...

A planet explodes in the void. A world of wonder dies, and bequeaths its legacy to the galaxy. It's a sight that should leave her awestruck, overwhelmed by the cosmic magnitude and existential importance of what she's witnessing. But she's seen it before. She knows of that place, which existed beyond the knowledge or even the faintest suspicion of those who live and breathe in the present age.

She's seen it before. And yet this time... This time something is different.

A tiny fragment, a miniscule sliver, dominates her consciousness. The rest of the cataclysm slips away in its wake. This single chunk, one piece of vanished greatness, draws her senses. She probes it. Her mental fingers, across the gulf of time and space, reach out and touch it... It burns. She flinches and withdraws them. It's as though blazing flame lashed out and bit at her. No. Not flame. A darker thing. Malevolence.

But she glimpsed something before it drove her away. This fragment of ill-omen, cast into the void from a world whose time has come and gone, serves as a tomb. It bears an ancient corpse in its cold, lifeless womb.

The journey takes centuries. Perhaps millennia. She can't tell. Time, space, and thought's relationship is complex and ever-shifting. It doesn't matter. Not to her, and not to the malevolence. Its hatred and its dark desires don't diminish by an atom in all that time. They burn in ebon tongues, then rise in triumphant inferno when a world appears in its path.

An interstellar odyssey which began with an explosion terminates with one as well. The tomb smashes into the surface of the planet, penetrates its hide like a murderous blade twisting in a victim's flesh.

...holographic flames that lent an infernal aspect to their sinister countenances.

Sun Xi blinked. A word, one single syllable, found its way to her lips and escaped in an uncomprehended whisper.

"Jack..."

• • • 
      

The present day, somewhere in Sian space...

Nick Hallix was dreaming. He knew this. He'd been a lucid dreamer since he was a small child -- a common trait in psychics.

So he didn't panic when he found himself standing naked at the front of a familiar high school classroom, about to deliver a presentation for which he hadn't prepared. He didn't cower away as the other students, and the attractive history teacher, pointed at his crotch and laughed. It would have bothered him in the waking world, of course. But here, it was less of a problem.

Dream control is different from mere lucidity. Often a person will discover that they're dreaming, then wake up to the morning light and deep disappointment when they try and fail to make use of this knowledge. Nick was a past master at both, however. Morpheus' realm was his playground. Hence he decided to play.

The first thing he did was put some clothes on. Dream or not, a man in his profession shouldn't have been standing around naked in a school. Society frowned on that kind of thing, and with good reason. So he imagined himself wrapped in a fancy suit -- like a Contella enforcer. Say what you want about the Consortium, but they're snappy dressers. The wish was father to the thought, and grandfather to reality. A suit appeared on Nick's body. Trousers, shirt, jacket, and boots were all a perfect fit. Of course they were.

Next, he decided to get some payback.

Nick Hallix's psionic powers didn't develop to their full extent until his early twenties, when an ex-girlfriend's fist achieved what over two decades of regular neurological development and cerebral activity had failed to. Thus he hadn't been able to wield those abilities in high school, which would have made the entire experience rather more palatable. Instead, he'd been bullied just like all the other nerdy kids. Especially by Neel Chaudhry...

The swarthy eighteen year-old sneered at him from the back of the room. There, within that place fashioned by Nick's subconscious, Chaudhry was frozen in time. In the waking world, he was a senator. Nick had seen his dusky features -- decades older -- beaming at him from holo-posters emblazed with the Rabid Rhino Party's eponymous mascot, mocking him with the bully's continued success. Once an alpha male, always an alpha male, they seemed to say with their sophisticated smile. But the face across the classroom was the same young, handsome, vindictive visage that had loomed over his high school days and been present at almost every single humiliation and torment. The body it adorned was bulky and bulging, its bloated muscles filled with performance enhancing chemicals. He'd slimmed down for politics. Voters probably found hulking, muscle-bound goliaths rather too simian to be trusted with the handling of the economy and the like. But back then football was his game, and the coaches made sure chems flowed like water.

Nick walked across the classroom, between the desks and their half-forgotten occupants. Neel kept sneering.

"Hey, Hallix," he said, "how'd your mom like my driving?"

An old, familiar taunt. Nick's mother had died in a traffic accident when he was only five years-old. Chaudhry always seemed to consider that an endless source of amusement. He'd even found a picture of Mrs. Hallix online, and bullied one of the art students into painting the image of her smashed and splattered body onto the hood of his car.

"Screw you, Neel."

He kicked Neel Chaudhry in the face. The dusky head exploded, showering the wall behind with a cascade of blood and mushy brains. The other children cheered, applauded, and started chanting his name:

"Hal-lix! Hal-lix! Hal-lix!"

Nick Hallix loved dreams.

He sauntered over to the attractive history teacher, took her by the hand, and drew her to her feet. She swooned. He wasn't sure if women really swooned anymore. They'd certainly never done it in his waking presence. But Miss Andrews, the beautiful educator he'd spent his high school years fantasizing about... She almost melted into his arms. Nick kissed her. And because this was his dream, damn it, her lips tasted of toffee.

Childhood thus conquered, he released her and pondered what he might do next. He was sure he hadn't been sleeping for long. That meant he could enjoy a spot of dreamtime entertainment before he had to wake up. Perhaps he'd set up a classic cross-company prizefight between Ace of Spades and Elam the Shadow, or maybe a monster versus monster beast war pitting a Garlax ragebeast against a Quiskan psi-hound... Though on reflection, splattering Neel Chaudhry's brains all over the wall had satisfied his lust for violence. A mellower pastime might be more pleasing. A night of music, for example... He could attend a concert given by some of his favorite historical composers and musicians, from Beethoven to Beeblax Sool. Yes... That sounded like fun.

Nick span on the spot and willed the classroom away. It vanished into blackness, cast back into the ocean of memory. He span again, and visualized a grand concert hall worthy of the luminaries whose works he wished to hear.

Nothing happened.

He frowned, and tried again. But still the blackness remained untenanted save for his own dream-self -- an endless empty void. Strange... That hadn't happened to him before. He'd always been able to conjure up any location he yearned to, whether remembered from life or fabricated within his imagination.

A faint smile crossed his unreal lips. Of course! His subconscious was telling him he had more important things to do. Halloween was approaching, that festival which would be celebrated across much of human space, more or less in accordance with Earth's calendar -- spread over the course of a week or so. It was a crucial time of year for people like him. As Gax Grayson, his employer, was fond of telling them all in his incessant holo-vid messages, a few good days over the Halloween period could net them as many credits as they'd make during a couple of months at any other time.

When he wasn't using them to explode bullies' heads or listen to long-dead musicians, Nick treated his dreams as a place to practice his craft and hone his skills. He should be doing that now, he mused -- not kissing history teachers and planning other frivolous things. He needed to make sure his routines were ready to delight the many hundreds of children who'd soon come aboard his Haunted House. After all, he had a reputation to maintain. His was the highest grossing ship in Grayson's Halloween Extravaganza. Granted, he had an advantage over the other managers. He only recruited fellow psychics, whose powers gave them a distinct edge in the realm of children's entertainment. But even so, he was proud of what they'd achieved. Moreover, he loved his work. There was nothing like seeing boys and girls squeal in delight, or else scream in the enjoyable terror of the season.

So Nick span round once more. This time he imagined a big crowd of children dressed in their spooky costumes, the kind of audience he performed to and welcomed aboard his Haunted House for a tour of frightful fun.

And still nothing happened. Blackness surrounded him. Blackness, and nothing more.

Nick was confused. His dream control had never failed him like this. Even before he'd mastered it, a failed attempt had ejected him into his warm bed -- not left him standing in a dark abyss. He should wake up and go to the med bay, he decided. Something might be wrong with him.

He clicked his fingers.

He didn't wake up.

Icy talons grasped Nick's heart. Something squeezed at his throat, bringing a pain and breathlessness more real than anything from even his most vivid dreams.

"They must die."

The voice was a roar and a whisper. It drowned the universe and slithered into his ear.

"You will kill them."

Flames burst into existence, violating the darkness with the terrible suddenness of their inferno. Searing heat lashed at Nick's body. It singed his hair and roasted his flesh, filling his nerves with immolating agony and his nostrils with the sweet stink of barbequed pork.

Amid the evil conflagration, forcing its way through the fire like an unfathomable abomination rising from the deepest depths of an ocean, burning yet unscathed, was a grinning orange face. A huge pumpkin... A jack o' lantern blazing both within and without. Tongues of fire danced behind its wicked eyes, beyond the cruel angry curve of its maw. They raged across its entire surface, as though it were a malevolent star illuminating the galaxy with its unquenchable hatred.

Its mouth opened. Orange flesh pulled away and unleashed a fresh burst of heat that made Nick's eyeballs sizzle. An endless inferno, blazing from the birth of the universe to its inevitable destruction, surged inside. It drew him, pulled him inexorably towards an eternity of fire and damnation.

Nick screamed until the voice died in his charred throat. Then the maw closed and swallowed him.

"Kill them." |-|

"Tricks, Treats, And Trollops"=
Tricks, Treats, And Trollops

"Halloween is a human festival which originated on Earth. Its exact genesis and initial purpose are the subject of scholarly debate, though it once carried certain religious connotations which are no longer part of its contemporary incarnation. Instead, present-day Halloween largely consists of children dressing up in costumes and extorting unhealthy foodstuffs from adults via threats of mischief. On certain worlds, this behavior may technically fall under local legal definitions of terrorism. However, no children have yet been prosecuted on this basis. A Neo-American senator recently put forward a bill which would have designated 'trick or treat' as a terrorist threat, and authorized lethal force as a response. But it was defeated by a significant margin."

"Mr. Lu Bu..." one of the children said.

"Yes?"

"We're not here to learn stuff. We're here for candy."

"Oh. Very well."

Lu Bu conducted a quick headcount, to ensure that none of his young charges had disappeared. In a tiny fraction of a second, his computerized brain ascertained that the number of vampires, mummies, witches, fairy princesses, superheroes, lycanthropes, Twisted Steel fighters, and other beings, was at an acceptable level. This was important. Several of the event's organizers had been very reluctant to place children in his care, and had only relented because of Lady Hollister's personal assurances. It wouldn't have reflected well either on himself or on the esteemed lady if any of them had gone missing.

The transport had deposited them all at the bottom of their group's designated street. To accomplish his mission, he only had to lead them from one end to the other without mishap, stopping at each domicile on the way to demand candy or similar products. It seemed simple enough. He would-

His hand shot out, seized a wizard by the collar, and yanked him back onto the sidewalk. A vehicle's horn blared. Then its red metal mass sped by -- through the space the boy had occupied a moment prior.

"Why did you run into the road?" Lu Bu demanded.

"I wanted to play with the cat!" the boy said.

He pointed across the way. A black feline was indeed sat on the lawn opposite, licking at a raised paw. It glanced over at Lu Bu, as though to deny its responsibility in the whole affair, before returning its attention to the pursuit of saliva-induced cleanliness.

"No one is to cross the street without my permission. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Mr. Lu Bu!" they chorused.

He scanned their faces for signs of deception. And when he ushered them onward, he brought up the rear so he could better keep watch over them. The robot's practical experience with children was limited. Telemachus was the only child he knew well, and Lu Bu suspected that the young prince was somewhat atypical of his age group. But he was beginning to sense the evening's duties might be more difficult and frustrating than he'd initially expected.

To his satisfaction, none of the others tried to run in front of vehicles, and they all reached the first house intact. So far, so good. He followed them down the path which ran between the two halves of neatly trimmed lawn, and stood back as they crowded around its entrance.

One of the vampire girls kicked the door.

"Give us candy!" she shouted.

"Myxi!" Lu Bu said, modulating his voice for maximum severity. "What would your parents say if they saw you behaving like that?"

"They'd tell me to stop..."

"Exactly. It's not-"

"...and sneak in through the window. Then grab anything that looked expensive."

"Oh. Well, you shouldn't do that either. It's wrong."

"Sorry, Mr. Lu Bu."

She knocked with her hand instead. The door opened, revealing a plump couple with merriment on their faces and huge buckets in their hands.

"Trick or treat!" most of the children said.

"Your candy or your lives!" one humorist added. He was dressed as an archaic highwayman, so Lu Bu decided to classify it as acceptable theatrics and refrain from reprimanding him.

The man and woman went to work with a precision that bespoke many years' practice. They distributed kind words to each child, pouring lavish praise on all their costumes. More importantly, they doled out candy from their buckets with equally liberal hands. An even amount found its way into each pumpkin-shaped bucket the children had been issued with. And when one of the boys tried to pick the woman's pocket, she grabbed his hand with a firm but gentle grip, then gave him a quick lecture with more kindness than severity. It seemed to leave him suitably and sincerely contrite.

Yes, they had to be seasoned veterans -- well prepared for the annual ritual of interstellar celebrities descending upon their neighborhood to give underprivileged children a night of wholesome fun. Lu Bu thanked them, before ushering his flock back up the garden path.

The little monsters laughed and chatted, comparing their hauls. That first taste of blood had satisfied them for the moment, and taken the edge off their voracity.

"Why didn't you wear a costume, Mr. Lu Bu?" a fairy asked.

"I am wearing one," he replied. "I'm dressed as my prototype. It had a slightly different finish."

"That's stupid."

"Its cognitive capabilities were indeed inferior."

A short walk brought them to the door of another large house. This one had grinning pumpkins and fluttering ghosts arranged along its roof. Like the previous dwelling, it too bore an architectural style from Earth's past. It was a traditional neighborhood, emulating a sedate American suburb of yesteryear -- its technology hidden behind the classic veneer. Traditional and affluent. Rich and generous enough to have volunteered for this charitable role, alongside a number of other districts.

This time there was no kicking. A ghost pressed the doorbell. The portal opened inwards in one quick, sharp movement. The children screamed. Then they laughed, when the revealed 'hanged man' winked, let himself down from the noose, and picked up a big tin of bite-sized chocolate bars. His co-conspirator stepped out from behind the door and did the same. More unhealthy snacks were placed inside plastic pumpkins, thus enhancing the happiness of all concerned.

With this fresh success under his proverbial belt, Lu Bu directed the children back towards the sidewalk with rather less trepidation than he'd felt before. That contentment only lasted for a moment, however -- until the children up ahead started shouting.

"More kids!" Frankenstein's monster exclaimed. He pointed down the street.

"They're taking our houses!" a witch yelled.

"They're stealing our candy!" a mummy shrieked.

"Let's stab their faces!" a pirate cried.

Lu Bu hurried across the garden to investigate the former claims and prevent the latter violence. When he reached the sidewalk, beyond the line of evergreens which divided the house from its neighbor, he saw them.

Another band of children, attired in an assortment of Halloween costumes like his own charges. And a taller figure that towered above them. A voluptuous blonde woman, dressed in a risqué vampire outfit which seemed to display more of her legs and breasts than it covered.

She glanced over at him. Her eyes widened. Then she laughed.

"My, my... What a small galaxy!"

"Natasha Cybersmash!" he said.

• • • 
      

The mattress beneath Sun Xi was soft and comfortable. It yielded just the right amount to cradle and support her body in the manner she preferred. The chamber around her was dim, lit only by the faint moonlight which shimmered through the unveiled window and formed a murky pool on the carpet. Night's breeze rustled through the cherry blossom trees in the gardens outside.

All the sensations, sights, and sounds were right -- the accompaniments to slumber that she most relished. And yet she lay awake, her mind untouched by sleep's soothing caress.

The vision from the marketplace swam before her eyes. It had refused to leave her thoughts, to slip back into the vast depths of esoteric knowledge housed within her brain. This troubled her. Mistress Sun had seen wonders the likes of which others couldn't even have dreamed -- for their minds hadn't the clay to fashion such things. And she'd glimpsed horrors that might have torn the sanity from those who lacked her mental strength.

But this one thing haunted her. That meant it was important, for reasons she couldn't yet comprehend.

What did it mean? And who was 'Jack'?

She had to find out. |-|

"Running From Monsters"=
Running From Monsters

"Get away from her, children!" Lu Bu said. "This woman is a dangerous psychopath!"

"Oh, look who's talking, Mr. Kill-them-all-and-let-the-algorithm-sort-them-out!"

Her musical laughter made her breasts undulate, a fact which her coquettish pose did nothing to conceal. Some of the older boys stared. Lu Bu stepped forward and interposed himself between his children and the offending cleavage.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. "If you require directions to the nearest brothel, as your manner of dress appears to suggest, my memory banks contain local maps which-"

"Ha! Those TALOS nerds programmed jokes into you?"

"My humor capabilities are actually autonomous, and allow me to... That isn't relevant. What are you doing with those children? Given their varied ethnic traits, I don't believe they're all your own offspring!"

"My offspring? I thought robots were meant to be smart! They're the kids I got assigned."

"We're her Cybersmashies!" a girl in a Rylattu mask said.

"Cybersmashies!" some of the others chorused.

Natasha reached over and patted one on the head.

"Of course you are!" she said.

"They entrusted you with the care of children?" Lu Bu asked. "You?"

"Hey, I was a kid once. And I'm very popular with the tween demographic! Anyway, what about you? Are you taking those guys trick or treating, or did the robot uprising start early? Maybe you're leading them off so they can be processed into robo-food!"

"I don't want to be robo-food!" a vampire wailed.

"I do!" a furry monster declared.

"No one is going to be robo-food!" Lu Bu said. "I don't even consume food. And if I did, your nutritional value would be... That's not the point! Get away from those children. I'll contact the Lady Hollister, and explain that someone must have inadvertently allowed you to take charge of them."

The robot strode towards her.

"Screw you, nutless twerp!"

Natasha Cybersmash stepped forward to meet him, between the two crowds of costumed children.

"Actually, my body contains several... Oh. Your language is inappropriate."

"Kick his metal butt!" a werewolf howled.

"Go Natasha!" a fairy added. Several others took up the cry.

"Hey, our adult's way cooler than yours!" shouted the wizard he'd saved from vehicular homicide.

"He can transform into stuff!" a ghost added.

"Actually," Lu Bu said, "I cannot-"

"Our one's hot!" a cyborg Hitler exclaimed.

"Our one's awesome!" the highwayman retorted.

"At least our one has a soul!"

Natasha laughed, and stuck her tongue out between her fangs.

"Get lost," she said. "Otherwise I'll let my Cybersmashies tear you to bits!"

"Get lost?" Lu Bu crossed his arms in what he believed was a suitable stance to illustrate his scorn for the notion. "This is our assigned street!"

"Yeah!" several of his children said.

"Our street sucked," Natasha replied. "They were handing out fruit. Fruit!"

"Fruit's for losers!"

"Fruit's lame!"

"We should've beaten them to death with frozen bananas!"

"We want candy!"

"And chocolate!"

"And reindeer!"

"That's Christmas, sweetie," Natasha said. "But I'll see what we can do."

"Actually, children," Lu Bu said, "fruit is an important part of-"

A shriek tore through the night and brought a premature end to his discourse on nutrition. Halloween or not, the robot knew genuine terror when he heard it. He and Natasha Cybersmash turned with synchronized swiftness.

There was a narrow pedestrian path between two of the houses on the other side of the road. A little girl in a flowing pink gown, her head adorned with a tall pointy hat of the same hue, was hurtling along it. A pumpkin bucket dangled from one of her hands, swinging this way and that like an orange pendulum -- spilling candy in her wake. She screamed again, from a pale, terrified face.

"Stop!" Natasha cried. She held her hands out, as though her palms could brace the child and stop her flight in spite of the distance between them.

A blue car was speeding down the road, roaring to simulate an archaic engine. It shifted and swerved as it came, annexing first one lane and then the other.

The girl didn't listen to the Twisted Steel fighter. And the engine's hellish growl didn't even make her turn. She ran out into the road, tears streaming from her eyes, a fresh scream wailing from her mouth.

Natasha Cybersmash dashed forward. So did Lu Bu.

The car zoomed towards them. Its headlights glared like a predator's shining eyes. Perhaps it was that blinding white light that made the girl aware of her peril. Perhaps it was the sight of the robot and the vampiress running towards her. But she stopped in her tracks and turned towards the oncoming vehicle. Her eyes widened. She screamed once more.

Natasha Cybersmash leapt. She threw her lithe body into a spearing tackle, the kind she'd used to break her opponents' bodies in the Twisted Steel ring. A distant part of her perception was aware of the smashing of glass close at hand. She ignored it, as her arms wrapped themselves around the girl. She turned her body as they fell, adjusting in mid-air with practiced agility. When they hit the ground, Natasha was underneath -- the girl unscathed in her embrace.

The siren of sports entertainment sat up. The car had stopped in the road. There was a gaping hole in its windshield. The lower half of Lu Bu's body protruded from it.

As she looked on, unconsciously cradling the sobbing girl out of maternal instincts she didn't even know she possessed, the robot drew himself out of the vehicle. He dragged its driver out with him -- yanking a fat man in a red jumpsuit through the hole in the glass, enlarging it with a fresh series of tinkles. Lu Bu pulled him over the hood. A moment later both stood in the street, and Natasha laughed in spite of it all.

The driver's obese body was bulging against the stretchy fabric of a replica 'Ace' Flashheart outfit.

Something fell from the driver's hand. It smashed in the road, a fresh cascade of broken glass. Orange liquid dribbled away from its remains. Natasha had recognized the object before its demise. A bottle of pumpkin vodka.

"You're drunk!" Lu Bu declared.

His metal fists grasped the man's stretchy lapels.

"Sho?" the man replied. "It'sh Halloween! Shposed to be drunk!"

Lu Bu pivoted, and threw him down into the road. The man sprawled there, grumbling unintelligibly. He made no effort to get up. A moment later, he was curled up -- snoring.

"I've called the cops!" a man's voice said.

"I saw everything!" another added.

The plump couple, the hanged man, and several of the street's other residents had gathered at the scene. A few of them applied semi-surreptitious kicks to the sleeping drunk, none of which resulted in him waking up.

Natasha shifted the girl off her, and moved into a kneeling position.

"What happened?" she asked. "Why were you screaming?"

A look of sheer horror overtook the girl's face, banishing the warring emotions of her near death experience and subsequent rescue.

"Monsters!" she wailed. "The monsters killed our adult, and took the others!"

• • • 
      

Many curious glances followed Sun Xi as she made her way through the imperial palace. Patrolling guardsmen stared at the object under her arm. Servants raised their eyebrows. A clerk who emerged from one of the offices frowned, perhaps deeming it an unseemly thing to be carried through such august corridors.

But no one thought to question one of the Emperor's closest advisors. At least not until she drew near to her quarters. Then a lovely giggle turned her head.

"Why do you have that, Mistress Sun?" Princess Illaria asked.

The little girl stared at the metal object, and met its ghastly glare.

"I... It might brighten up my chamber," she replied.

That wasn't a lie, at least. Sun Xi didn't wish to deceive the child.

She exchanged a few pleasantries with the smiling Princess, then excused herself and entered her chambers. There she set the grinning metal pumpkin down on the floor of her sitting room. The psychic sat cross-legged in front of it, before its sculpted features.

Mistress Sun tapped the pumpkin's nose. Holographic flames sprang to life.

She gazed into the flickering fires of the jack o' lantern's eyes.

There was an ancient expression about the difficulty of locating a needle hidden within a haystack. Compared with her present task, such a labor was child's play. For she had to locate a needle in all of time and space.

Under normal circumstances, she would have rejected it as impossible. To find a single thread among all that turbulent vastness... But her vision of the previous day had been powerful. So perhaps it would guide her mind. Thus she'd purchased the jack o' lantern in the hope of directing her psionic forays.

The pumpkin's burning eyes widened into twin infernos.

"Jack," she whispered. "Jack."

The world shimmered. Reality span aside to the right and left, like a troupe of dancers whirling their way offstage. In its wake came something else.

A man wanders between heaven and hell, denied the former because of his sins and the latter for the jests he played upon the devil. He's left to roam the world, with a lantern to guide his path. His name is Jack.

No. That wasn't it. Not what she was searching for. The image was sharp and clear, but tinged with unreality. The scene before her was woven from imaginings -- folktales passed from lip to ear, page to eye. Held firm and regarded as chronicle by many, perhaps. But discernible for one such as she who's witnessed so much of thought's raw fabric.

False etymology. She'd come across it before. Ancient and forgotten truth carried in the great collective unconsciousness of humanity, the racial memory which bound every man and woman on a level so unfathomably deep that it often passed unregarded. As Terracles gave birth to the legend of Heracles, so too did the Jack she sought become the genesis of this other.

Her mental self pressed onwards. Burning pumpkins glared at her from the periphery of her vision. Perhaps they wished to frighten her away. But they only served to guide her. Earth's lost neighbor was her destination. It's there that she had to go...

Ah, yes. A thread gleamed in the maelstrom. She would never have caught sight of it were it not for the vision in the marketplace. But the connection had been made.

A man stands in a field. There's a knife in his hand and wickedness in his mind. He thrusts and slashes, cuts and tears. His victim is bloodless. A pumpkin. His blows aren't those of murder, but rather of sculpture. He's bringing a horrible face into being on the fruit's hide. Ah... This is its true origin. The first carved pumpkin, which will have descendants first on this world, then on Earth, and then throughout the void.

Satisfied with his handiwork, he places the absurd yet terrible helm over his head. Then he rushes into the village, where his nemeses await the fright of their lives. The children... How he despises them.

The boys and girls scream when they see the pumpkin's ghastly, infernal features. They run in terror. He drinks their fear as though it were a fine wine, and pursues them.

But some of the children are brave. One of them seizes a club, and smashes the supposed fiend in the groin. The man doesn't laugh after that. Instead he falls in the street. And he can only groan when another child douses him with pitch. Then a burning torch is flung at him. His head and its pumpkin guise burn. Thus Jack dies, and legends are born.

That body, with its incinerated mask and skull... Yes. That was what she'd seen, entombed in a fragment of the planet, hurtling through space -- carrying a dead man's malevolence within. |-|

"Monster Mash"=
Monster Mash

Lu Bu ran. Natasha Cybersmash ran alongside him.

The robot didn't relish his former foe's presence. His computerized memory banks never forgot anything. And even if they had been prone to that failing of organic neurology, her sneering words would have lingered in his mind.

"When I win the tournament, I'll sell that prissy bitch to the Centurians."

Anger welled up within him, finding purchase among his electronic impulses as they would have done in a human's soft, squishy biology. As always, such emotions raised questions. Existential ones, perhaps. But now wasn't the time. There were children in danger. And whatever he thought of Natasha, he knew she could fight. Her aid might prove necessary. Besides, she saved the girl. She cared about the kids...

Sirens blared in the distance, from more than one direction. The authorities had been alerted. But they were still far away when the robot and the sports star reached the park and heard the more immediate sounds of combat.

Something caught Lu Bu's eye. He glanced upwards, and saw a glowing shape ascend into the star-studded blackness of the sky. A shuttle... There was another shape in the heavens. It was smaller than the first, but the robot's mind calculated that it was a much larger vessel -- merely further off. His vision zoomed in, and revealed an absurd fusion. A mansion mounted atop a spaceship, built on the upper side of its hull to stand in the void as though it rested upon a windswept hill or some other such more appropriate location.

A Haunted House ship. There was more than one of them on the planet, part of the entertainment was which supposed to follow the trick or treating. The shuttle was flying towards it.

Lu Bu passed through the first line of trees. Beyond them was an open expanse of grass, lit by the moon, the stars, and the harsh glowing lights of another shuttle. This one's boarding ramp was down. And in front of it...

"I'll rumple you, street-scavs!"

The speaker -- a big, broad-shouldered bruiser -- possibly made good on his promise by smashing the crown of his head into a vampire's face. Lu Bu couldn't be entirely sure, however, due to an unclear understanding of what exactly the word 'rumple' meant in context. In any event, the vampire collapsed. And if the word was confusing, the voice and dialect were familiar enough.

"The Blood Alley Gang!" Lu Bu said. "They're abducting children!"

That burly gang member's flesh was rather greener and more rotten than when the robot had last seen him, leading Lu Bu to believe that he'd subsequently dressed as -- or else become -- a zombie. More likely the former.

"Help! Chou! Help!"

The cry came from a child. Two young boys were being dragged towards the boarding ramp in a mummy's powerful grasp. And Lu Bu realized that they were addressing the Blood Alley zombie...

"Phage your noosing meat!" he roared. "Phage it with crispies if you don't get the drek off the paeds! Aaarrrggghhh!"

He grasped his head with both green hands. Nearby, a werewolf glared at him.

"Psionics!" Natasha exclaimed.

She ran towards the children, who kicked and struggled in the mummy's arms. A woman dressed as a witch turned to her -- just in time to take a clothesline from Natasha Cybersmash's forearm. Even without her customary battlesuit on, it did the trick. The witch completed a 180-degree flip before landing head-first on the grass.

The Blood Alley Gang member -- Chou, the boy had called him -- must have been fighting alone. There were no signs of his allies. A single glance showed Lu Bu that the half dozen other adults there were enemies, moving in for the kill while he was incapacitated by the psychic attack. That meant the robot didn't need to worry about whom to hit...

He charged. A ghost glared at him, eyes flashing with psionic energy. But whatever powers she possessed, they rebounded from Lu Bu's mechanical mind. All she got for her pains was a metal fist in her face. Her jaw gave in with a crunch.

The ghost toppled. But Lu Bu didn't let her fall. Instead he grabbed her, lifted her up with the effortless power of his robotic limbs, and threw her at the werewolf. They tumbled on the grass together. Chou roared, free and furious.

Green fists swung. Costumed faces were battered.

Near the boarding ramp, the mummy lifted both children into the air -- one in each muscular arm. Perhaps he thought he'd be able to make a dash for the shuttle. Or maybe he figured they'd provide a good pair of human shields. Neither transpired. Natasha Cybersmash's sprint became a leap. The leap became a flying kick. Her boot became the last thing the mummy saw before he toppled backwards and crashed to the ground. The children tore themselves free as he went down.

The shuttle rose off the ground, its ramp still open. The pilot had evidently seen enough. It shot heavenward, towards the Haunted House.

"They twocked more paeds!" Chou yelled. He stomped on a downed ghoul's face, smashing a dozen assorted teeth -- some genuine, some part of the costume. "We need to baino after them!"

"We can get a ship at the spaceport," Lu Bu said. His metal knee struck the werewolf's testicles, and those organs suffered considerably for the experience.

"No chono, street-scav! No chrono!"

"I've got this one, boys," Natasha said.

They both turned to her. She held up a small device. A red light blinked on its surface. There was a roar of thrusters. Then a large green mass loomed overhead.

The ship touched down on the expanse of grass. Its boarding ramp shot out like a lizard's tongue. Natasha said something inaudible to the two boys, and gestured in the direction of the sirens. They ran. She bounded up the ramp.

Lu Bu and Chou followed, and found themselves in a lavish green and purple chamber.

"Welcome aboard the Cybersmash Cyclone," she said.

• • • 
      

A great deal more swirled around Sun Xi's mind -- sights, sounds, and smells beyond reckoning. An indiscernible tapestry of existence that could only be understood though raw emotion and sensation. She understood enough. Jack's evil caused its share of harm on that lost world. Even as his body moldered in its soil, his soul became twisted into something infernal. Burning pumpkins grinned, scowled, screamed, roared, and raged at her from a myriad different images too brief and fleeting to envelop her. Ah... But one loomed larger than the others.

Mistress Sun allowed it to flow around her.

It happens in a pumpkin patch. Of course it does... His night is approaching. The festival Jack wrought through his deeds and death, celebrated each year since. The pumpkin is its fruit, its symbol. And it's connected to his power. Apocolocyntosis Flammea.

Pumpkins glare and burn.

The monstrosity rises. Jack, returned from hell, centuries of scheming brought to dread realization. An immense flaming visage, with gnarled, tangled limbs like roots. He roars at the heavens. He's come for the children. To kill them all.

But others won't allow that to happen.

This world is a place of monsters and evil. Yet also of champions and glory. Heroes come with weapons and esoteric powers of their own.

Jack is destroyed, hurled back into the hell he thought he'd escaped.

Sun Xi shivered as the echoes of his dark outrage tingled across her flesh. And then she sensed that the thread she had to follow no longer concerned that world. It had revealed what was important. The rest lay elsewhere.

Again she saw Jack's wandering tomb, teeming with its hungry malevolence, crash into that world. This time the vision continued.

Humans spread across the stars, taking their place among the other spacefaring races of the galaxy. They colonize world after world, first with old flags and then with new banners. In the midst of all this, settlers come to Jack's tomb-world. They give it a name. They make it theirs. And beneath the ground, or perhaps some realm deeper still, the malevolence grins.

Terraforming occurs. Human industry tames the land and binds it to mankind's will. A small colony takes root on the landmass where the tomb bit into the world. Neo-Americans, bringing with them all their ways and customs. Including their festivals. Halloween.

Living minds are manipulated by long-dead evil. Those of a religious persuasion might call it a demon. Others, whose thinking turns more to science and rationality, could perhaps speak of psionic echoes. But the results are clear enough, whatever explanation one might lay upon them.

A pumpkin patch is sown. Right above Jack's resting place.

That's where the murders take place.

Blood among the pumpkins. Crimson splashed across dark dirt and orange flesh. Poured into Jack's hungry maw. Murder grants him strength.

But fate has a sense of humor, however black and grim. The murders are ended by an even greater slaughter: war. Colonies burn. The pumpkin patch is immolated. That portion of the planet is abandoned, left to the ghosts and ashes.

Jack is thwarted once more. And yet he endures, lurking and scheming and dreaming of his revenge against the children.

Sun Xi's eyes flashed open. That planet, that neglected place upon its surface... Something was going to happen there. Something terrible enough by its very nature, but made into an even greater abomination by what it would usher in.

She had to prevent it. |-|

"Haunted House Hunting"=
Haunted House Hunting

"Hello, big boy!" chorused four perfect simulacra of Natasha Cybersmash.

They flanked Lu Bu and Chou on either side, and ran indecent hands across both their bodies.

"Deactivate pleasure mode," the genuine Natasha said.

"Yes, ma'am," they replied simultaneously.

Their lascivious arms pulled away from the robot and the pseudo-zombie.

"Take off," Natasha said. "And go after that Haunted House."

"Yes, ma'am!" This time the chorus contained an extra voice, which came from an open communication link somewhere.

"This way." She strode down a corridor.

"Your crew..." Lu Bu began.

"My Cybersmashettes?"

"They're pleasure bots."

"Yes."

"Pleasure bots who are identical copies of you."

"What can I say? I make the best lover..."

Chou barked laughter.

The ship was already out of orbit when the three of them entered the bridge, which was -- like the previous chamber -- crewed by more androids fashioned in Natasha's image. If the genuine article hadn't been in Halloween dress, they would have been indistinguishable.

"Take a seat," she said. She stepped towards a door in the flight cabin's right-hand wall. "I need to get changed."

The portal slid closed behind her. Lu Bu and Chou sat down on either side of the Cybersmashette at the main flight controls. The Haunted House was visible through the window ahead of them. It hadn't had a chance to hit hyperspace yet.

But its big engines were glowing...

The Cybersmashette smirked, the expression a perfect replica of that Lu Bu had seen on her mistress' face.

"We'll get them before they can jump," she said. "That piece of crap can't outrun the Cyclone."

She tapped one of the buttons. The ship's additional thrusters kicked in, hurling them forward.

"Board or blast?" she asked.

"Board," the real Natasha replied, from a nearby speaker. "There are kidnapped children on that thing."

"Yes, ma'am. Ramming shields engaged."

• • • 
      

Sun Xi stepped from the shuttle, onto the planet's whispering dust. The guardsman looked at her from the doorway, as though uncertain of what she should say or do.

"Are you sure..." the guardsman began.

"I am. But thank you."

The woman hesitated for a moment longer. Then she apparently decided that she'd done all she could be expected to. She bowed and stepped back. The door sealed itself shut.

Mistress Sun walked across the dusty ground.

The company of loyal friends and allies would have been comforting. But there was no saying what insidiousness Jack might have wrought upon their minds.

No. She had to do this alone... |-|

"Nosferatu Nick"=
Nosferatu Nick

Nosferatu Nick

"Hangar secured," said a Cybersmashette's voice. "We've overridden their access to the pressurization controls."

"See?" Natasha said. "They're not just pretty faces."

She stood near the exit, clad in a battlesuit's green armored plates -- her beautiful visage hidden beneath its mask even as it smirked from the androids behind her.

"Ladies first," she added.

With that, she jumped out. Her bound took her clear of the ramp, and onto the hangar's imitation wood floor. There she flicked her arms out to either side. A rod detached from each vambrace and slipped into her grasp. With the next flick of her hands, long lengths of metal snaked out from each one. And when she pressed the buttons, luminous sheaths of energy surrounded the whips.

Lu Bu and Chou took the stairs instead.

The robot's weapon attachments, his elegant sword and vicious claw, were on the ends of his arms. He'd pulled them from their compartment and assembled them, whilst the Cybersmash Cyclone ploughed through the barrier that had sealed the Haunted House's hangar. That astral maw lay ruined behind them, its screams muffled by a shimmering energy field.

Chou had requisitioned a pair of hefty laser-edged axes from the Cyclone's arsenal. He brandished them like some kind of zombie berserker, and looked as though he belonged on the poster for an especially gory Halloween holo-vid.

The room was remarkable. Its walls were covered in imitation oak paneling. Chandeliers swayed high overhead, amidst the cobwebbed rafters. There were portraits of creepy men and women on the walls, each one huge enough to be viewed in perfect clarity in spite of the chamber's vastness. The Haunted House took its role seriously...

But there wasn't time to enjoy the ambiance. Up ahead, some of the Cybersmashettes were already moving deeper into the ship, in search of the kidnapped children. The three of them followed, leaving the other androids to fan out behind them.

• • • 
      

"You can't let them stop you!" the voice hissed. "The children must die!"

Nick Hallix didn't know if it was coming from outside his head or within his brain. He didn't even know if it was his own voice. He'd stopped asking those questions. The questions didn't matter. Only one thing mattered: The children had to die.

They had to reach that world. The world in his dreams. In his mind. The world he'd been shown. And he had to paint its dusty ground with blood. Because Jack needed the blood.

He rose from the captain's chair and left the bridge. None of the others said a word. They understood what must be done. They continued to fly the ship towards its destiny.

Nick walked down the oak-paneled corridors, lined with their portraits' sinister visages and dusty suits of plate armor. His long black cape billowed behind him. Nosferatu Nick... The vampire entertainer. He sneered, displaying his fangs. Soon he would be so much more.

A blonde woman stepped into the corridor in front of him. She turned, and began to bring her laser rifle to bear. Nick was faster. A ball of flame flew from his hand. It screamed as it whooshed down the hallway, its fire twisting into the image of a grinning pumpkin. It blasted a hole through the woman's chest. No... Not a woman. A robot. Melted metal instead of cooked innards. It didn't matter. She fell anyway.

Footsteps... More enemies were coming. The fools. They couldn't stop him. No one could stop him.

Three of the robot women, all identical, all dressed like prostitutes, surged into the passage from one of the side rooms. Nick thrust both his palms towards them. A wave of whiteness, a spectral tsunami of billowing ghosts with howling black maws, washed over them. Their broken, sparking bodies collapsed in a heap.

They were trying to take the children. To steal his precious victims. Jack's victims. They would all die for that.

Nick Hallix threw the dungeon door open. The cells were empty. A vampire and a pair of zombies lay dead on the ground, in pools of deep, dark crimson. He hissed. But they hadn't won yet. He knew his ship better than they did. He knew its shortcuts. Its secret passages.

He pulled at a candelabra mounted on the wall. An expanse of fake stone blocks opened inwards.

Nosferatu Nick ran down the passage, his cloak flapping in his wake. There... At the other end of the long, hidden corridor, he saw them. Beyond the one-way mirror that marked the route's terminus.

He didn't slow down. He didn't stop to work the panel. Instead he crashed through the glass, and landed before them.

A robot, a hulking zombie, and a woman in green armor whirled round to face him. Beside them was a big crowd of shrieking children. His children. His victims. Jack's victims.

Nick's hands glowed with purple light.

They would all die.

• • • 
      

She felt its darkness. Just like in her visions, but now even more potent and undiluted in its black malevolence. Mistress Sun had made it in time. No splashes of crimson daubed the ground. The screaming victims hadn't yet been dragged to that place, their throats slashed and their blood spilled as libations to the infernal spirit whose mind haunted the dust where a pumpkin patch had once burned.

"Jack..." she said.

But there was no need to evoke him, to bring him forth by force of will. He was already coming. Coming for her.

Jack rose. But the dust remained undisturbed save for the mournful shifting of the breeze. For he wasn't a creature of matter. Not yet. Not unless and until he drank his fill.

He was a creature of thought.

And so his burning pumpkin face blazed inside Sun Xi's mind.

---

The hallway whirled around Lu Bu. Its shapes collapsed and its colors ran, until his world was one great kaleidoscope of twisting, turning, blending unreality. Only one thing in the entire universe remained whole, to mock existence with its eternal stability. The vampire.

His red eyes glared murder and triumph. His fangs gleamed with the shining light of dying suns. His cloak billowed, the colors of blood and death. Ghosts danced around him in a spectral corona. Burning pumpkins grinned as they orbited that anchor of solidity in the shifting universe.

It was... impossible.

"Your mind is a tinkerer's toy, golem," the vampire said. "Nothing more. It unravels like any other."

Lu Bu screamed.

• • • 
      

The burning maw opened. Its jaws parted wide to reveal plains of fire, oceans of boiling yellow-redness which threw a sulfurous stench into the air. Flames danced along her limbs, across her face, within her lungs.

"You're mine!" Jack hissed. Each word was seared into the tissues of her brain.

Images hardened before her inner eye.

She's standing in the dust, above Jack's entombed remains. One of her arms is wrapped around a girl in a white dress, clutching her tight, overpowering her feeble resistance. The girl is sobbing. Not just in fear, but from the magnitude of the betrayal. A long, curved knife gleams in the psychic's other hand. One single thrust, and blood will flow. One single thrust, and Jack will-

"No!"

Mistress Sun shrieked the word. And it cut through the flames like a celestial razor, a war god's mighty blade. The pumpkin face contorted in pain. It howled as its flesh parted beneath the might of pure will.

Jack knew many things in his malevolent, ancient brain. But love was beyond his comprehension. He didn't understand its power. He saw weakness and vulnerability in what was truly strength.

Sun Xi smiled. Then she gathered all of her psionic might into a single, shining, invincible lance.

And thrust it into Jack's mind.

She blinked. The world was as it had been. A gentle breeze flitted across her face, and sifted through the dust. She sensed no trace of darkness, of the murderous malevolence she had come to vanquish.

It was gone.

So she turned, and walked back to the ship.

The dust continued to dance and shift for long hours after she left. All was silent save for its soft susurrations.

Until a voice, a faint echo lodged in time and space and thought, cried out.

"No!"

In a deep place... a deep, burning place... Jack smiled. For that echo was his doorway.

• • • 
      

"No!"

For a moment Lu Bu believed the scream was his, only half-understood in the wreckage of his mind. But then he knew that it was a woman's.

Natasha's? No... The voice wasn't hers. She was still moaning in agony nearby.

It didn't matter. What mattered was that the world stopped spinning. Its colors separated. Its shapes regained their form.

A look of incomprehension dawned upon the vampire's face.

Lu Bu's mind fell back into its orderly system of processes and mechanics and electronics. Logic and normality returned. And there was only one sensible, logical, normal solution to the matter at hand.

He lunged forward and thrust with his sword. It took the vampire through the heart.

The vampire screamed... Though it seemed to come from far away. Then he slid from the blade and thudded on the ornate floor.

"Heh... You got him..." Natasha said.

Her face was hidden by her helmet, but her tentative movements bespoke her anguish. And Chou... He looked as though his zombie makeup concealed nothing better underneath. The big man staggered, and had to brace himself against the wall.

"We should leave," Lu Bu said, "before more come."

The children, who had shied away when the fighting started, ran the moment he gestured -- towards hangar at the end of the corridor, where the safety of the Cybersmash Cyclone awaited.

Lu Bu brought up the rear, ensuring that none were left behind. And strange thoughts flitted across his mind.

They remained lodged there as the green and purple ship left the hanger, and flew out into the void. Behind them, the Haunted House made its jump into hyperspace at last. But it wouldn't go far. The alert had gone out, and someone would locate it.

So Lu Bu continued to ponder, as he gazed out into the void. </tabber>